More on School Funding

Earlier this week, the justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court heard oral arguments in Hancock v. Driscoll, a case in which students from several urban school districts sued the state department of education, alleging that the existing state funding formula deprives students in those schools of a full and equal education in violation of the state constitution. The court will probably issue its opinion in January. With this case pending, it was ironic to read in today’s Boston Globe that a national research group, The Education Trust found that Massachusetts was providing “substantially more resources to their highest-poverty districts” than most other states. But this report did not address the adequacy of the funding, it just compared it to similar funding in other states. If this is the best in the country, no wonder our education system is in such tough shape.