Customer Reviews

Courting Failure: How School Finance Lawsuits Exploit Judges' Good Intentions and Harm our Children (HOOVER INST PRESS PUBLICATION)

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Let the reader judge for him or herself. The judgment in the North Carolina school finance case is revealing:

"To assist the Court in probing that question defendants called Dr. Eric Hanushek, a distinguished economist and expert on public school finance and school finance policy issues. He testified that based upon his knowledge of educational research literature and his own research, he has found little systematic evidence of a correlation between spending on schools and student achievement. While he does not discount the possibility that there are effective practices that enhance student achievement, he is convinced that merely spending more money on education is unlikely to result in improved student performance. Hanushek, Nov. 30, 1999, at 217-36.
This Court understood Dr. Hanushek quite clearly. Although plaintiff=s counsel described Dr. Hanushek as the witness who was going to testify that "money does not matter," the Court finds Dr. Hanushek to be very credible. His testimony was logical and full of common sense. Put in plain English, the thrust of Dr. Hanushek=s opinion is that throwing money at an educational problem without having goals in place for the spending and a system of accountability to measure the effectiveness of the spending is wasteful and not likely to result in improving student performance. The Court is of the same opinion. Dr. Hanushek believes that money matters provided the money is spent in a way that is logical and the results of the expenditures measured to see if the expected goals are achieved.
Dr. Hanushek's opinions are based on facts."

Judge Manning's full decision can be found at: [...]

One need only ask 'where is the hatchet job?'

Like so many other debates in education, the field of adequacy litigation has been dominated by protestations of good intentions and glib talk of "the children." The result has been to provide moral sanction to a growing industry of consultants, attorneys, and activists who have sought to improve schooling through new inputs, airy aspirations, and without ever making tough choices. This volume casts a badly needed, skeptical eye on this entire enterprise. In doing so, it is an important contribution and one of only a handful of books that can help policymakers, educators, or reformers understand what the courts can and cannot do when it comes to school reform. In a series of bracing chapters, the authors examine the assumptions and practices that constitute the adequacy movement. Reasonable readers might disagree with the volume's editorial stance (though this reader finds it compelling), but anyone who claims to have thought seriously about education and the courts should take the time to consider the arguments and analyses in this volume.

Beginning around 1990, a wave of school finance lawsuits swept the nation, based on the "adequacy" theory. Many constitutional and government scholars were critical of the legal theory, due to separation of powers. And many social scientists were highly dubious of the "costing-out" studies churned out by consultants for the teachers' unions and other parties to these cases. However, it proved difficult to convey the findings of social science in court without being misconstrued as saying "money doesn't matter" or, worse yet, as being hard-hearted toward the education of disadvantaged children.

More recently, the skeptics (of which I am one) have proven more successful in explaining to judges why most "costing-out" studies are "junk science," as Dr. Hanushek has put it, and why the remedies sought by plaintiffs have not been generally effective. Similarly, the constitutional arguments for separation of powers have also been more compelling, as earlier court interventions have bogged down. Consequently, the wave of court interventions seems to have peaked, followed by a series of decisions upholding state funding systems in MA, TX, KY and elsewhere.

Readers interested in understanding the intellectual basis for this turn of events should read Dr. Hanushek's volume, "Courting Failure," along with the recent Brookings volume, edited by Martin R. West and Paul E. Peterson, "The School Money Trials," based on conference papers at Harvard. Both volumes feature strong collections of essays and scientific and legal analyses by highly distinguished writers. These volumes should prove compelling to those readers with an open mind, who seek to move the nation forward with true education reform.

Courting Failure should be required reading for any serious student of education finance and policy. Court orders and fear of court orders have dramatically increased spending for public schools despite little evidence that student achievement has improved. As Hanushek points out, this is not because money can not make a difference. It is because the current system is so inefficient that merely adding resources is unlikely to improve student outcomes.

The editor of this book has a long and losing track record fighting adequacy cases in court. What he couldn't accomplish in the court of law, he's trying to accomplish in the court of public opinion with this unbalanced collection of essays mostly contributed by fellow travelers at the Hoover Institution. Hanushek is famous for producing research that "proves" that money does not matter in education. When he testified to that effect in an adequacy trial in North Carolina, the judge presiding over the case remarked that "only a fool would find that money does not matter in education." You'll find no mention of that in this book, nor of the repeated failure of these arguments inside the crucible of the courtroom where opinions are subject to cross-examination, transparent and public challenge and democratic testing. If you're really interested in exploring school finance lawsuits, one of the best books to read is Peter Schrag's Final Test. Schrag is a veteran journalist and he gives plenty of space to Hanushek in his pages as he explores all sides of the issues. You get Hanushek and more, not just Hanushek and a politically-motivated and one-sided pseudo-academic treatment of the subject.