9 September 2016

Quartz: A US state’s school system is so bad, a judge has declared the whole thing unconstitutional

Connecticut got a weird shock this week. A judge, ruling on an 11-year-old lawsuit, declared the entire state’s public education system abysmal—enough so that it’s actually violating the US constitution.

In his decision, superior court judge Thomas Moukawsher agreed with the original argument made by the nonprofit organization Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding in 2005, which is that the state hasn’t been adequately distributing funds across the state to ensure every student’s success.

He pointed to data that showed while kids in the state’s richest towns are faring well, their counterparts in poorer areas are falling dramatically behind. Standardized tests show that roughly 70% of the state’s wealthiest students met third-grade reading goals; pretty much the same percentage of students in the state’s least wealthy areas did not.

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