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The equity myth: how a $900 million increase in funding couldn't save the state's most famous poor school district.

Article Excerpt
Ramiro Nava has no memory of the first time he participated in the battle for the great ideal--equity in school finance--that has long define the Edgewood Independent School District. He was after all, still in his mother's womb. The year was 1973, and Nava's parents had joined several hundred other Edgewood families for a demonstration at the Capitol over the lack of state funding for poor school districts. But Nava, who at 31 is now president of the board of trustees of the Edgewood ISD, on San Antonio's West Side, dearly remembers the moment in 1987 when Edgewood got the news that it hoped would change the impoverished district for the better. He was in the sixth grade at Las Palmas Elementary School when the principal's voice crackled over the loudspeaker. An Austin trial judge had just ruled that the state's school finance system was unconstitutional, and his opinion in the landmark ease of Edgewood v. Kirby required the Legislature to reduce the disparity between rich and poor school districts. The room exploded with whoops and whistles.

Two years later the Texas Supreme Court ruled in favor of Edgewood. But it wasn't until Nava was a senior in high school that he began to understand the issue that had made his community famous in legal and political circles and continues to define his work as school board president. His government teacher held up a rickety old chair with broken legs, then a new, shiny chrome chair with sturdy legs, a comfortable cushion seat, and adjustable arms. "This is the basic difference between equality and equity," said the teacher. "They're both chairs--they serve the same function--but one of them is utterly useless, and the other is reliable and can be tailored to fit individual needs. Edgewood is fighting for the new chair."

Educational equity--the legal requirement that every school district and every student should have substantially equal access to educational funding--continues to be Edgewood's holy grail Although the district won the lawsuit,...