Counterpoint
Katherine Kersten writes ominously about a nefarious group of conspirators who allegedly have begun to lay the groundwork for a school finance lawsuit ("State poised to enter a legal danger zone," June 10). She warns that it will somehow destroy public education and bankrupt the state.
The sad reality is that Minnesota's school finance system clearly violates our state Constitution's education clause. However, compliance with the Constitution would neither bankrupt state government nor stifle needed education reform.
Under Minnesota's Constitution, the primary responsibility for determining the education that school districts must deliver rests with the Legislature. In recent decades, legislators, not the courts, have dramatically expanded what must be delivered by public schools.
Public educators are not demanding that courts increase state standards for an adequate education -- they are pleading that the state pay for the mandates already in place.
It is becoming clearer that the state Constitution requires the Legislature to match mandated expenses with funding. Courts in Colorado, Washington and elsewhere are increasingly recognizing that legislatures violate their state constitutions when they base school funding formulas on political whim rather than on the actual cost of mandated services.
The special-education mandate illustrates the problem. In the 1950s, about a million disabled students nationally were excluded from public schools completely, and about another 3.5 million received inappropriate services.
Minnesota's Legislature responded by mandating delivery of an adequate education to students with disabilities. The cost of delivering the required education has increased dramatically, but the Legislature has made no attempt to correlate costs and revenues.
