Under the Law: Weighing responsibility for providing equitable and adequate education

Questions of responsibility for school funding often hinge on our definitions of community. Historically, in the United States, the community that is responsible for education is the local one, but over time, states have taken more responsibility, particularly in the area of funding. In this column, Julie Underwood considers how questions of responsibility and control have played out in the courts at the federal and state levels. There is no federal right to education, and so much of the litigation related to questions of funding equity has occurred at the state level, with different results in different states. A recent federal case, Cook v. Raimondo, however, seeks to establish that students have a right to an education that provides them with certain civic skills needed to participate in the democratic process