Determining Adequacy: How Courts Are Redefining State Responsibility for Educational Finance, Goals, and Accountability

This article examines the educational adequacy state court decisions, highlighting the similarities and differences among them in order to provide more clarity to the meaning of the term educational "adequacy." The article goes beyond the common conception of adequacy as an education finance movement, wherein state courts order their legislatures to provide sufficient funds to offer the opportunity for a basic quality education to all students in the state, by identifying three main components in adequacy decisions: funding, goals, and accountability. Although education finance is clearly the primary focus of the adequacy decisions, the educational goals and accountability requirements that are included in several of the decisions provide a more complete picture of the elements necessary for a state to provide an adequate education to its children. Therefore, this article addresses all three components and identifies the factors the courts have found to be important in deciding these cases.