To Address Education Inequality, Fix Barriers to Income Integration

In Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding v. Rell, the Connecticut Superior Court cast a spotlight on education inequality in Connecticut. The current funding system is irrational and must be changed. But without changing the laws and policies that concentrate poverty and disadvantage in some districts and wealth and opportunity in others, funding fixes alone won’t work.

The superior court recognized that courts cannot dictate school finance. All they can do is demand that funding be “rationally, sensibly, and verifiably connected to teaching children.” Irrationality, moreover, must be “proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” But Connecticut did not pass even this generous test. The state adopted a funding formula after the Connecticut Supreme Court declared education a fundamental right in Horton v. Meskill, but “has never gotten near” meeting what the formula demands. And beginning in 2013, the legislature tossed out the formula altogether, just giving districts what it somehow deemed appropriate.