Posted on July 20, 2003

Education

With only two hundred students, one school, and a meager budget, the Lake View School District in eastern Arkansas sued the state in 1992, claiming that its education funding formula was unfairly biased in favor of larger school districts. After a decade of legal battles, the district triumphed last fall when the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that the state's school system was both inequitable and inadequate and ordered policy makers to bring schools in the state up to constitutionally mandate standards by 2004. According to Tax Options for Arkansas: Funding Education After the Lake View Case (66 pages, PDF), a report from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, new taxes will be necessary to meet the mandate, even if the state consolidates school administrative costs and cuts spending in other areas. Created to inform policy makers and the public, the report examines possible changes in tax policy that would increase revenue for education reform as well as the implications of those changes for taxpayers in different income brackets.