State Journal: Shock troops; Strange ways

Martial strains were in the air as the academics, lawyers, and consultants who are on the front lines of the states' increasingly frequent school-finance battles gathered at the annual meeting of the American Education Finance Association in New Orleans last month.

The military note was sounded by G. Alan Hickrod, a senior researcher in the field and a professor at Illinois State University.

Those who mount legal challenges to state education-funding systems are the "shock troops'' of the movement for equity between rich and poor...