Why Adequacy Lawsuits Matter
Adequacy lawsuits ensure education opportunity for all our kids.
Celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education this year have been tempered by the realization that Brown’s vision of equal educational opportunity is yet to be attained: Over the past decade, there has actually been an increase in racial segregation in public schools throughout the United States, and nearly half the nation’s African-American students and 40 percent of its Latino students now attend high schools in which graduation is not the norm. At the same time, however, equity advocates have been heartened by the accelerating success in recent years of education adequacy lawsuits, which seek to ensure that all students receive the programs and resources they need to obtain a decent education.
The record of plaintiff success in these cases is remarkable. As the federal courts have virtually ceased to enforce desegregation orders, state courts throughout the country are increasingly mandating the overhaul of antiquated school funding schemes that have for years perpetuated inadequate educational opportunities for poor and minority students. Since 1989, there have been 29 such lawsuits, and plaintiffs have won 24 of them, with five of those victories occurring in the last two years alone.
Opponents of this new wave of civil rights litigation, having largely lost the legal battle, are now seeking to limit the effectiveness of the remedies ordered by the courts in these cases. They are trying to raise doubts about whether providing adequate funding to educate poor kids will make any difference, asserting that efforts to do so will somehow lower education standards and weaken America’s democratic institutions. This is the essence of the argument that Alfred A. Lindseth, the lead attorney for the losing defendants in the recent New York litigation, set forth in the June 9, 2004, Education Week Commentary he provocatively titled "Adequacy Lawsuits: The Wrong Answer for Our Kids."
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