Missouri Taxpayers Defeat Billion-Dollar School Lawsuit

Three members of the board of directors of the Show-Me Institute, a free-market think tank, helped make Missouri the latest state to strike down a lawsuit claiming inadequate funding for education. The Committee for Educational Equity (CEE)--a group of 236 public school districts--had claimed in a lawsuit filed in January 2004 that the state's funding levels failed to meet the constitutional requirement for all students to receive an adequate education. The group's experts testified the state would need to spend an additional $1 billion annually to fulfill their interpretation of its constitutional spending requirements.

In August 2007, Cole County Circuit Judge Richard Callahan ruled the plaintiffs failed to prove the state's current funding formula was unconstitutional. He refused to impose on the legislature a funding formula higher than required by the state's constitution. Importantly, the judge ruled individual taxpayers could assist defendants in constitutional battles over school spending.

By the time Callahan rendered his decision, CEE had spent $3.2 million on the case and had forced defendants to spend $1 million. About $800,000 of the latter sum was contributed by Show-Me Institute President Rex Sinquefield, who--along with Institute Secretary Bevis Schock and Treasurer Menlo Smith--were allowed by Callahan to become "defendant intervenors." Sinquefield believes it's been worth the investment. "Judge Callahan's ruling saves Missouri taxpayers more than a billion dollars," Sinquefield said. "This proves that the plaintiffs tried to get something out of the state legislature, and when they failed they went to the courts. Hopefully, this ruling will discourage the use of taxpayer dollars to sue the state."

While it's not unusual for plaintiffs to include intervenors--in this case, CEE was joined by the St. Louis school board, which is performing so badly it has been taken over by the state--legal experts believe this is the first time individuals have been allowed to "intervene" to work with a state attorney general to defend a case. "We decided to try it in this case because we didn't think the attorney general was adequately representing the taxpayers of Missouri," said Joshua M. Schindler, lead attorney for Sinquefield and his colleagues.

Schindler said Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon took only two depositions since the lawsuit was filed almost four years ago. After Sinquefield got involved, 52 depositions were filed, including that of Michael Podgursky, an economics professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia and a member of the Show-Me Institute's board. Several calls to Nixon's office were unreturned.

Podgursky testified about the relationship between school funding and student performance. "We put on a very vigorous defense," Podgursky said. "Having these individual intervenors allowed us to bring up issues about a lack of competition and single-salary schedules for teachers, and to show the non-relationship between the spending and student achievement--to get a lot of information out in the open." Podgursky was able to counter claims that teachers are underpaid by noting Missouri has decided to lower its student-teacher ratio to 13.8:1. The national average is 15.8:1. He testified the state could give every teacher a 14 percent raise by moving to the national student-teacher ratio. "Many common misconceptions about school performance, accountability, and per-pupil spending were brought to light because of this case," Sinquefield said.

Even without individual intervenors, the Missouri decision is part of a national trend of school districts unsuccessfully suing based on claims current funding formulas don't produce enough revenue to ensure each student receives an "adequate" education. While adequacy lawsuits have been filed in 21 states, they are not having the success of those filed during the 1990s. Those earlier actions challenged the constitutionality of school funding systems relying primarily on property taxes, reasoning that districts with lower property values have less to spend on their students. Adequacy lawsuits also have failed in Alaska, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and South Carolina over the past five years, Podgursky said.

The Council for Better Education in Kentucky set the tone for the rest of the nation with its successful equity lawsuit in the early 1990s. But earlier this year, a Kentucky judge ruled--in a decision similar to Callahan's--that the legislature, not the courts, should decide how to dole out school funds, in a second case filed by the group, this one an adequacy lawsuit. Taxpayers were not involved in resolving either Kentucky case.

In Missouri the outcome would likely have been different without taxpayers' personal involvement, Schindler said. "The dynamics of the defense changed rather dramatically after the intervenors were allowed," Schindler noted. "When a taxpayer is involved at the table in the courtroom, they're more likely to see it as a defense of tax dollars."

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Australian conservatives slam Leftists for education buckpassing

The Opposition yesterday accused Education Minister Julia Gillard of taking the lazy option of blaming Howard government neglect for Australia's fall in international reading and maths tests, instead of holding state Labor governments accountable. Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop, the former education minister, said Ms Gillard had to recognise state governments ran schools and set curriculums and as a result were responsible for educational standards. "If Ms Gillard continues to refuse to recognise that state governments are responsible for standards in their schools, then standards will go backwards," she said. "If this is her best response, it's a warning sign that Ms Gillard is not up to the task of managing her own super portfolio."

Ms Gillard said on Tuesday that the decline in Australia's international standing in reading and maths tests reflected the decade of neglect by the Coalition government. Her comments were in response to the OECD's latest Program for International Student Assessment of 15-year-olds in 57 countries, which showed reading and maths skills among Australia's top students were falling.

Ms Bishop said the Coalition government had provided $1.8billion to the states and territories since 2005 to improve literacy and numeracy standards. "It's critical Ms Gillard ask state governments to account for how they have invested that $1.8 billion," she said. Ms Bishop said teacher unions and professional associations had some responsibility for falling educational standards. "Over the past 20 years, the influence of the education unions on school curriculum has led to the embrace of fads and political agendas rather than on the core skills of literacy and numeracy," she said.

But teachers' organisations blamed the falling standards on the Coalition government, accusing it of a decade of underfunding public schools compared with private schools. The Australian Association for the Teaching of English said the PISA results should be welcomed by parents and teachers because Australia's overall position remained high. AATE president Karren Philp said: "Care needs to be exercised in how the PISA test data is interpreted. It is wrong to immediately assert the results indicate declining standards of literacy in this country."

Ms Philp said the test results backed Australia's approach in the teaching of literacy rather than the "back to basics" initiatives adopted in Britain and the US, which rank well below Australia. She told The Australian the fall in performance among top students was of concern, but she was not sure if it represented a drop in standards. "I'm not sure yet. We're going to look very closely at the report," she said.

But the Australian Education Union, representing government school teachers, and the Independent Education Union, representing teachers in the private sector, agreed the results suggested a decline among top students. AEU acting federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said yesterday: "Based on the results released by the OECD, we have been overtaken, and we are at risk of seeing our international education ranking decline." Asked if he stood by earlier comments on standards made by AEU president Pat Byrne, Mr Gavrielatos said: "Teachers have always been and will always remain concerned about standards in our schools. We don't get into hysterical and deceitful debates advanced by the previous government wanting to divest its funding responsibilities."

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