RELEASE ON RECEIPT


COURT CHALLENGES RAISE POSSIBILITY OF REDEFINING EDUCATION FOR
ALL STUDENTS, FINANCE EXPERT SAYS


     CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., June 3 -- The public, educators,
legislators and attorneys are increasingly engaging in heated
debate over two central questions:  Does money make a difference
in education?  And is there a relationship between student
achievement test scores and the money districts invest in their
schools?
     Recent research, including that of noted school finance
expert Deborah A. Verstegen, indicates that the answer to both
questions is "yes."  Richer school districts provide a different
education than poorer ones.  
     "The notion of equal opportunity for students in all school
districts, rich and poor, has prompted a raft of school finance
litigation across the nation.  The drive for equal educational
opportunities has made school finance a pressing civil rights
issue facing school systems today," says Verstegen, a University
of Virginia educator and author of several recently published
articles on the topic, including "The New Wave of School Finance
Litigation" in the November, 1994 Phi Delta Kappan.
     Since 1989, supreme courts in 12 states have issued rulings
on the constitutionality of their educational finance systems,
and more than 25 states are currently involved in litigation over
the issue, according to Verstegen.  
     Of central importance to Verstegen, an associate professor
of education policy and finance in U.Va.'s Curry School of
Education, is the adequacy of school finance systems generally. 
She says most schools are relying on finance systems designed
about 70 years ago to prepare students for an industrial economy. 

     "Schools and their finance structures are ill-equipped to
handle an economy that is information- and technology-based.  Our
finance systems don't support our goals.  They need to be
upgraded for the 21st century," said Verstegen.
     She noted that recent supreme court rulings in Montana,
Kentucky, New Jersey, Texas, Tennessee, Massachusetts and Arizona
have found that the state systems for financing education failed
to provide constitutionally mandated levels of educational
quality for all students.  
     "Given these decisions, it is inevitable that the flurry of
court challenges will continue to reverberate across the country.
Since 1989 there has been a groundswell of litigation that is
changing the very nature and substance of educational opportunity
as we know it," Verstegen said.
     Her research indicates that recent court rulings are
establishing new guidelines in finance equity by redefining the
constitutionally required level of education a state must provide
and using new criteria to measure compliance.  
     Leading court rulings have also called for major reform in
the way states disburse funds to schools, Verstegen noted.  For
example, in the 1989 Rose v. The Council for Better Schools case
in Kentucky the court extended the reach of school finance
litigation to the state's entire system of education.  The court
found unconstitutional Kentucky's method of financing as well as
its regulations governing the creation of school districts,
school boards and the department of education. 
     On the other hand, a 1990 New Jersey ruling held that the
state finance system was unconstitutional only for a specific
class of districts, the poorer urban ones.  "The decision is
historic because the court called for more than equity between
rich and poor districts.  It said that poor urban children need
more programs and services so that the state's funding imbalances
must favor the least advantaged," Verstegen said.
     "Overall, the courts call for closing the gap between best-
and worst-financed school systems," she noted.  
     Courts have also begun to examine what districts' dollars
are buying, Verstegen has found.  Recent decisions have
considered teachers, materials, curriculum and facilities.  A New
Jersey court, for example, focused on whether the state was
providing a level of education that all students need to be
competitors in the labor market.  
     In states where decisions have recently been rendered,
education clauses in their constitutions such as a "thorough and
efficient system" have been at issue.  The courts have
interpreted such standards to include education programs,
services, opportunities and outcomes, and have attempted to
measure how diverse such factors are across the states, Verstegen
has found.  
     In seven other states, including Virginia, plaintiffs have
not prevailed in recent supreme court actions.  In the 1994 Reid
Scott v. Virginia case the supreme court upheld the
Commonwealth's inequitable finance plan by noting that "the
Constitution guarantees only that the [state minimum] Standards
of Quality be met."  
     A central problem in using current school finance systems to
improve education is that they are based in large part on minimum
education standards unlike outcomes described in the Goals 2000,
the finance expert noted.  "School finance systems need to be
radically redesigned to rest on a concept of high quality
education for all children--not the idea of a basic or minimum
education," Verstegen said. 
     "Whether plaintiffs have won or lost in supreme courts, they
have brought the issue of equity and opportunity in American
schooling to the foreground," Verstegen said.

     FOR MORE INFORMATION, contact Verstegen at (804) 924-0745 or
924-3880.


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                                                     June 2, 1995