Courting Failure: How School Finance Lawsuits Exploit Judges' Good Intentions and Harm our Children
By Eric Hanushek

This book was added to the web site on October 9, 2006.

Courting Failure examines the issues involved in school funding adequacy in light of recent court cases and shows that judicial actions regarding school finance—related to either equity or adequacy—have not had a beneficial effect on student performance. The expert contributors explain why low achievement is not inevitable for disadvantaged students and why school resources are not the dominant factor in whether students “beat the odds.” They show that cost studies on the price of an adequate education turn out to be more politics than science. And they tell how many districts often do not spend the funds they have in the manner need.

Please visit the Hoover Press web site for more information on this book or to place an order:
http://www.hooverpress.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=1237

Full-text PDF versions of each chapter can be accessed below by clicking on the desired chapter title. (PDF files require Adobe Reader. If you do not already have this software installed, click here to download it for free from the Adobe web site.)

Copyright © 2006 the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction
• 1. Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. New York: The March of Folly
• 2. The Legal Backdrop to Adequacy
• 3. High-Poverty, High-Performance Schools, Districts, and States
• 4. High-Spending, Low-Performing School Districts
• 5. Thorough and Efficient Private and Public Schools
• 6. How Can Anyone Say What’s Adequate If Nobody Knows How Money Is Spent Now?
• 7. Science Violated: Spending Projections and the “Costing Out” of an Adequate Education
• 8. Adequacy beyond Dollars: The Productive Use of School Time
• 9. Funding for Performance
• Index