Judicial Resolutions to State School Financing Case Study

Judicial Resolutions to State School Financing - Case Study Example In its ruling, the Court found that poor communities had to have a high tax rates to generate relatively low per-pupil revenue whereas wealthy communities could have low tax rates and yet still generate relatively high per-pupil revenue (Merrow, 2004). The Court opined that "affluent districts can have their cake and eat it too; they can provide a high quality education for their children while paying lower taxes. Poor districts, by contrast, have no cake at all" (Coon, 1999, citing Serrano). In an attempt to address such a complex social issue, the Court applied the equal-protection analysis of wealth as a suspect classification by extending it for the first time to school districts and ultimately ordered the state legislature to change school financing laws (Coon, 1999). Subsequent legislation was passed that was designed to equalize school funding by increasing state funds for poor communities while putting a cap on per-pupil revenues in wealthy districts and redistributing some of their local property taxes to poor districts (Merrow, 2004). However, the Court had failed to consider that 75% of poor children lived in high spending districts, and it effectively led to low school spending for most poor children (Merrow, 2004). In addition, the public was disconcerted in paying property taxes and in supporting any increase in property taxes that were not helping their local schools (Merrow, 2004). Judicial Resolutions 4 Because of the existing and continuing disparities in school funding and educational disparities, it is doubtful that the Serrano decision can be credited with defining and bringing about the educational equality that its original supporters were hoping for in their praise following the Court's ruling. However, the case can concretely be credited with bringing about massive revision in school financing in California and it spurred an immediate wave of similar rulings and legislative action in other states (Brimley, 2003). The effects of those revisions, even in light of subsequent cases that seemed to rule to the contrary, have lasted through the last several decades and continue to impact education today. San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973) In San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973), issues very similar to those in Serrano were before the Supreme Court of the United States. The San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD), acting on behalf of students whose families resided in poor districts, challenged the Texas state funding scheme by arguing that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause by underprivileging such students because their schools lacked the vast property

Application of conflict management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Application of conflict management - Essay Example In the instance of two individuals disagreeing on the proper way to carry out a project, the main recognition is that the conflict manager identifies the disagreement as substantive. They would then aid the conflicting parties in developing a democratic and functional solution to the task problem. Another notable conflict management technique is the implementation of a model. Kuhn and Poole (2000, p. 558) indicate that an effective model is the integrative model. The integrative model views conflict resolution as not necessarily involving winners and losers, but rather the distribution of concessions in an integrative way. Following the above example where team members are disagreeing about the proper way forward for a team project an integrative solution would be most effective. In this way certain group members would be allowed to decide specific aspects of the group’s progress, while other group members would have different responsibilities. This way there would be no winne r or loser, but rather an integrative solution to the