Years after the civil rights movement, educational challenges in public schools have continued to plague classrooms and fill courtrooms. During the 1970s, litigation examined the equitability of financing in public education systems. Equity challenges later progressed into challenging academics, resources, and opportunities. By 1989, the Kentucky Supreme Court found that the Kentucky public education system failed to provide its students with an “adequate education.” In the years that followed, an “adequacy movement” across the nation began—its purpose was to address whether state constitutions were providing students with the opportunity to “achieve certain desired educational outcomes.” These challenges have collectively been referred to as “educational adequacy.”
As challenges to finances and school resources have evolved, one emerging factor has been adequacy in segregated environments. After the civil rights movement, racial segregation in public schools initially improved but has since continued to increase. Desegregation orders from federal courts were initially prevalent, but their use has since been reduced. Desegregation orders also varied but included the racial integration of students in educational environments and addressed local policies and practices. For years, states and local districts have struggled to find racial balance within the public education system. Some Supreme Court decisions have left states to deal with segregation issues that could not be remedied through purposeful racial balance or quotas.
Projected to transform public education in the country, charter schools began opening in the early 1990s, beginning in Minnesota. Minnesota is now facing challenges on educational adequacy amid concern that segregation has once again crept into the public education system. The ongoing Minnesota case Cruz-Guzman has challenged the adequacy of public education and renewed concern over the role charter schools play in segregation. As such challenges emerge in courtrooms, the judicial treatment of educational adequacy may present legal and policy implications for Minnesota and for the future of its charter schools. This article will explore the educational adequacy movement and the challenges arising for charter schools based on the outcome of Cruz-Guzman.
First, this article discusses the history of federal education adequacy challenges stemming from segregation, fundamental rights, and economic disparities. Historically significant and current educational adequacy challenges in Minnesota are discussed. Educational adequacy challenges in Minnesota have ranged from complaints of unequal funding and resources to the segregation of public schools. However, relief for adequacy advocates has been met with judicial barriers. Most notable, Skeen v. State and Cruz-Guzman v. State confronted the justiciability of the plaintiffs’ right to seek relief in court for lack of educational adequacy.
Second, this article discusses the history of charter schools, the rise of charter schools in Minnesota, and issues surrounding charter schools’ racial isolation. To reformers, the opening of charter schools was a “market-based” model poised to give parents more choice in where their children receive educational services. The model was expected to drive out poor-performing traditional schools by offering an alternative to the underserved traditional schools.
According to a Century Foundation fellow, student-integration was also an initial charter school goal. However, the introduction of charter schools into the public education arena has contributed to the resegregation of American public schools. The issue of resegregation seems to have strengthened challenges to educational adequacy.
Finally, this article discusses the legal and policy implications of a still undecided legal challenge seeking desegregation as a remedy to ensure educational adequacy in Minnesota public schools. This article evaluates options for charter schools concerned that the Minnesota judiciary could declare voluntarily-segregated schools unconstitutional. Charter schools’ options likely include altering their business models and also the use of mediation to resolve adequacy challenges. Additionally, this article explores steps the Minnesota legislature could take to clarify the standard of adequacy students are entitled to.