Committee for Educational Equality v. State

In Lake Wobegon, “all the children are above average.”1 In Missouri, all the children in public schools will get an “adequate” education under the state’s revised school finance law. The children of the fictional Lake Wobegon all cannot be above average, as a matter of simple math, but one never should underestimate the power of belief.2 Adequacy, on the other hand, theoretically can be achieved for all, and the new school funding law sets a standard for adequacy of funding. Unfortunately, however, the school funding law’s math does not always work; even the modest goal of adequacy is beyond…