Most people I’ve spoken with about California’s school finance system, regardless of their political views, seem to think it’s a mess. The researchers on the Governor’s Committee on Education Excellence described it as “the most complex in the country, lacking an underlying rationale and transparency.”
Mike Kirst, the Stanford University education Professor Emeritus I interviewed today, said he wouldn’t even call it a system. He called it “an accretion of incremental actions that don’t fit together and that make no sense.”
Will the courts finally force the deadlocked state Legislature to overhaul the formulas and regulations that dictate how California allocates money to its schools (and how much)? The nonprofit Public Advocates law firm hopes so. It filed suit today in Alameda Superior Court on behalf of a coalition of advocacy groups, students and parents, saying the status quo denies students the right to a meaningful education.