The legal cash machine: a New York adequacy case tests the limits of fiscal coherence

Education Next, Summer, 2005 by Joe Williams

Equally, if not more important, the court emphasized the state's non-monetary reforms. Marshall singled out the state's "world class" curriculum frameworks, graduation exams in core subjects, and "accountability measures for every public school student, teacher, administrator, school, and district in Massachusetts."

After reviewing the state's "impressive" improvement, including state and national test scores, Marshall concluded: "A system mired in failure has given way to one that, although far from perfect, shows a steady trajectory of progress."

Much remains to be done, but the court had no appetite for usurping "policy choices that are properly the Legislature's domain," including decisions on "scarce public money." Shying away from the "quagmire" of intervention in states like New Jersey (noted from the bench during oral arguments), and citing its earlier rejection of a challenge to the state's graduation exams, the court pointedly observed that "protracted litigation" delays the progress of education reform.

And so the court disposed of the case "in its entirety." Thus ended 27 years of litigation and 12 years of court jurisdiction over education funding in Massachusetts.

--Robert M. Costrell, chief economist for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, provided extensive expert testimony in the Hancock case.