It was a 12-year legal battle that began as a challenge to Connecticut’s education funding system and came to touch on issues ranging from graduation requirements to teacher evaluations. On Wednesday, it reached its likely conclusion when the State Supreme Court said Connecticut was fulfilling its constitutional obligation to its public school students.
States across the country have faced legal challenges about how they spend money in schools and whether they spend enough on poor students, but this case, Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding v. Rell, took a remarkable turn in 2016 when a judge deemed the funding system irrational and ordered the state to reform nearly every pillar of its education policies. This week, the state’s highest court overturned that ruling, saying such reforms should be left to the political process.
“It is not the function of the courts, however, to create educational policy or to attempt by judicial fiat to eliminate all of the societal deficiencies that continue to frustrate the state’s educational efforts,” said the decision, written by Chase T. Rogers, the chief justice.
