Huckabee School Case Study

The Lake View v Huckabee school funding case was filed in August 1992 and was not closed till 2007. In 15 years there have been many alterations in how Arkansas funds their schools. After several years of litigation there have been numerous steps that guarantee the state delivers adequate and equitable education and has made the following changes to the court’s ruling of the Lake View case; The General Assembly led an adequacy study with a follow-up recalibration study by the same advisors to define adequacy, Arkansas has progressed in rankings with teacher salaries and received positive national attention of rankings that was published by Education Week where it ranked fifth in 2012 Quality Count ranking, Benchmark scores in numerous regions

These categories include; Alternative Learning Environment (ALE) students, National School Lunch Act (NSLA) students, English-language Learners (ELL), Professional Development (PD). Other funding includes Gains and Losses in students if a school district experiences declining enrollment they will receive the same foundation funding as for the previous year allowing them time to make adjustments in budgets. Isolated schools often have declining enrollment and face difficulties providing an adequate education with current funds and specialized funding is still available for them if they meet the eligibility requirement. Inflation adjustment measures the increased cost of maintaining an adequate education. The Educatonal Adequacy Fund was established through Act 108 in 2003 which is also known as the doomsday act and revenues for this fund were defined that if funding for the public school system was not sufficient then transfers will be made from remaining fund accounts to the Department of Education Public School Fund Account and accounts will be reduced

In some schools spending per student exceeds $10000 per year but the graduation rate is below 50 percent for example in Detroit. Detroit spends about 11100 per year on each student but only 25 percent of their student’s graduate high school. Policymakers should focus on reforming policies and resource allocations to improve student achievement. According to the National Center for Education Statistics 52 percent of public Education expenditures are spent on instruct and this percentage keeps decreasing overtime. Children who benefit from the school choice program usually have higher test scores than their peers. By giving parents the ability to use their children’s share of public Education funding to choose the right school for their children has also improved the schools performance in response to competition created by parents’ ability to choose alternative schools for their children.

Adequacy