Horton’s Odyssey: The Politics of School Finance Reform in Connecticut

School finance reform has been one of the most controversial and contentious issues in public policy over the last thirty years. Public schools have served as battlegrounds over fundamental questions of equality, liberty, and access to social and economic opportunities. Since the historic decision rendered by the California Supreme Court in Serrano v. Priest (1971) equated public education with a fundamental right, a wave of legal and legislative reforms swept the nation including the state of Connecticut. Following the lead of California, plaintiffs in the Horton v.Meskill (1977) case argued that the Connecticut’s heavy reliance on the property tax to finance public schools was unconstitutional. Finding in favor of the plaintiffs, the Connecticut Supreme Court directed the General Assembly to fashion a plan to equalize spending between school districts. Thirty years and numerous attempts later, the goal of school finance reform to equalize spending across school districts has not produced the intended effects of reducing funding disparities. In fact, some would argue that despite modest strides in equalizing spending, the gap between rich and poor districts has widened. To account for this apparent policy failure, tentative explanations will entail a thorough examination of the key institutional actors involved in educational policy making as well as the following factors: political ideology, financial resource constraints, legal complexity and the political economy of school funding. By capturing the legal and legislative dynamics behind the school finance reform movement, a more nuanced and contextualized account emer

Electoral Competition in Connecticut\u27s State House Races: The Trial Run of the Citizens\u27 Election Program

The Citizens Election Fund, Connecticut\u27s version of a clean elections law, was established in 2005 in the wake of the corruption scandal during the administration of Governor John Rowland. Modeled after the public financing systems of Maine and Arizona, Connecticut\u27s law has been touted as the most comprehensive in the nation. This paper will address whether the introduction of the Citizens\u27 Election Program has increased the level of electoral competition by specifically focusing on state house seats in Connecticut during the 2008 and 2010 election cycles. Contestation for seats in the Connecticut General Assembly is a particularly salient issue due to the fact that many seats typically go unchallenged and as scholars observed a seat in the Connecticut House or Senate had become one of the safest offices anywhere, approaching if not exceeding the security of membership in the US Congress

From Equity to Adequacy: Evolving Legal Theories in School Finance Litigation: The Case of Connecticut

Since the landmark school finance decision Serrano v. Priest (1971) ruled that California’s reliance on the property tax to finance public schools violated equal protection provisions in state and federal constitutions, a wave of school finance litigation swept the United States. Connecticut followed with Horton v. Meskill (1977) and most recently with CCJEF v. Rell (2005). The Connecticut State Supreme Court has been a key actor in the policy making process concerning school finance reform in Connecticut. This study will trace the history of school finance litigation in Connecticut and the evolving legal theories used to undergird major court cases. The legal theories that have been developed in Connecticut school finance litigation cases over a thirty year time period have mirrored national trends evolving from the utilization of equity claims then turning to adequacy provisions based on state constitutions in an attempt to redress spending inequities. This study will argue that despite the increasing sophistication of legal strategies as well as a broadening coalition of participants and earlier favorable court rulings in sister states, the plaintiffs now face a less hospitable environment towards school finance reform making the outcome of this latest case uncertain. This study will examine the major legal theories advanced in Horton I (1977), Horton III (1985) and CCJEF v. Rell (2008) and conclude by offering some tentative explanations of the jurisprudence of school finance litigation by providing a closer examination of judicial-legislative dynamics and the prospects for reform in Connecticut

Confronting Pedagogy in “Confronting Globalization”: The Use of Role-Play Simulations to Foster Interdisciplinary/Global Learning

With the increasing emphasis on global learning as part of the redesigned institutional mission of American higher education, there will arguably be a need for a variety of global learning experiences across the undergraduate curriculum. Efforts to incorporate global learning in course content at home by globalizing or internationalizing the curricula are already underway at many institutions of higher education. This article offers a set of recommendations for educators wishing to globalize their courses by adopting an interdisciplinary approach to global learning specifically through the use of role-play simulations. As a problem-based pedagogy, role-play simulations are uniquely equipped to deliver interdisciplinary and global learning outcomes since both fields are explicitly geared towards practical problem-solving. It will be argued that an interdisciplinary approach to global learning through the use of role-play simulations offers a number of pedagogical advantages to traditional teaching techniques

The Politics of Reorganizing Connecticut State Government: Altering Administrative Structures in the Land of Steady Habits

Despite numerous attempts to reorganize state government aimed at streamlining, reducing, and creating greater efficiencies, the size and scope of Connecticut’s administrative apparatus has grown considerably over a fifty year period. This study will trace the political history of previous reorganization efforts with a particular emphasis on more recent attempts such as the Gengras (1970), Filer (1976), Thomas (1991), and Hull and Harper Commissions (1992). Observed trends follow national patterns: 1) reorganization commissions are cyclical in nature more likely to be undertaken in the wake of similar efforts at the federal level and 2) they are more likely to be undertaken during periods of state fiscal retrenchment. A movement away from comprehensive reform efforts to incremental approaches is another cross-national pattern that has been detected in recent reform efforts. A review of Connecticut’s experience with state reorganization demonstrates that despite the concerted effort by both the executive and legislative branches to alter administrative structures, reorganization recommendations are seldom implemented due to the opposition of the state legislature and interest groups

Assessing Competition Policy Performance Metrics: Concerns About Cross-Country Generalisability

Recent interest in competition policy performance has typically relied on subjective performance metrics that have undergone little direct scrutiny by users. We examine the quality of the popular World Economic Forum\u27s antitrust performance metric and assess whether it is immune from perception-bias. A bias-free metric is required to ensure cross-country consistency in its intended performance assessment. We note various instances where the WEF\u27s competition policy performance survey was completed but where there existed neither competition legislation nor an associated enforcement agency at the time. This seeming inconsistency is neither amenable to traditional econometric heterogeneity treatment nor instrumentable; importantly, it is likely to embed non-random error onto the WEF antitrust survey. We test and discuss some possible explanations for the observed bias: we find that both halo effects and a nation\u27s modest experience with market institutions may be responsible for the bias. Underscoring these results may be the fact that survey respondents may not share a common understanding of competition policy. We offer some discussion supporting this latter point. The presence of these biases may invalidate the usefulness of cross-nationally valid rankings of competition policy performance. On the bright side, however, the results suggest that efforts aimed at enhancing stakeholders\u27 understanding of the objectives and limitations of competition policy might in turn enhance competition policy\u27s impact as well as perceptions of performance

Can Allocation by Sortition Resolve the Connecticut Education-Financing Impasse?

It has been over 40 years since Connecticut amended its Constitution to ensure citizens a right to a free public education. Despite the constitutionally prescribed right, dramatic inequities in educational conditions continued to characterize the state\u27s K-12 educational system, especially between suburban/rural white and urban minority school districts. In the 1970s plaintiffs challenged the prevailing mechanism for allocating education funds with a host of court cases that tackled the thorny question of how much financial responsibility the state should assume to equalize the spending disparities between school districts. Prodded by court decisions, many formulas and approaches have been proposed by the Connecticut General Assembly in response to the various legal challenges yet the state has never fully funded the cost sharing formula nor lived up to the 50-50 cost sharing arrangement envisaged by some policymakers. The situation remains at an impasse with the latest court action, CCJEF v. Rell (2005), to be resolved no sooner than 2014 by most accounts. Our aim here is to offer an analysis of the decision-making environment that explains the current impasse. We contend that by applying the dual-error framework popular in other social policy settings, it is possible to understand the competing views and beliefs of those groups arrayed in opposition. We claim that the individual and political understanding and policy responses are prone to cognitive heuristics in the manner popularized by Sunstein, Schadke and Kahneman, and Kuran and Sunstein (Kuran & Sunstein, 1999; Sunstein C. , Cognition and Cost-Benefit Analysis, 2000; Schkade & Kahneman, 1998). This analytical approach entails a recognition that many policy makers fail to make decisions via the normative model of rational decision-making but rather rely subjectively on emotion, intuitions, biases, character traits, and social and cultural norms in a manner that diverges systematically from the rational model. We argue that differing subjective appraisals of the role of individual agency in the observed achievement gap is at the core of the debate. There are, of course, other inputs into the educational process. But it is this perception of agency that heavily influences the general population\u27s political choices. The existing institutional framework appears to have cemented this worldview in a situation that has little chance of a meaningful resolution. We note the perplexing conundrum in which Connecticut finds itself and conclude that the problem is a social dilemma in which the parties involved are individually powerless to resolve. Sortition mechanisms - allocation by lottery - have been known to effectively resolve social dilemmas in other domains. We examine the possibility of relying on lots to resolve the allocation of educational monies

Can Allocation by Sortition Resolve the Connecticut Education-Financing Impasse?

It has been over 40 years since Connecticut amended its Constitution to ensure citizens a right to a free public education. Despite the constitutionally prescribed right, dramatic inequities in educational conditions continued to characterize the state\u27s K-12 educational system, especially between suburban/rural white and urban minority school districts. In the 1970s plaintiffs challenged the prevailing mechanism for allocating education funds with a host of court cases that tackled the thorny question of how much financial responsibility the state should assume to equalize the spending disparities between school districts. Prodded by court decisions, many formulas and approaches have been proposed by the Connecticut General Assembly in response to the various legal challenges yet the state has never fully funded the cost sharing formula nor lived up to the 50-50 cost sharing arrangement envisaged by some policymakers. The situation remains at an impasse with the latest court action, CCJEF v. Rell (2005), to be resolved no sooner than 2014 by most accounts. Our aim here is to offer an analysis of the decision-making environment that explains the current impasse. We contend that by applying the dual-error framework popular in other social policy settings, it is possible to understand the competing views and beliefs of those groups arrayed in opposition. We claim that the individual and political understanding and policy responses are prone to cognitive heuristics in the manner popularized by Sunstein, Schadke and Kahneman, and Kuran and Sunstein (Kuran & Sunstein, 1999; Sunstein C. , Cognition and Cost-Benefit Analysis, 2000; Schkade & Kahneman, 1998). This analytical approach entails a recognition that many policy makers fail to make decisions via the normative model of rational decision-making but rather rely subjectively on emotion, intuitions, biases, character traits, and social and cultural norms in a manner that diverges systematically from the rational model. We argue that differing subjective appraisals of the role of individual agency in the observed achievement gap is at the core of the debate. There are, of course, other inputs into the educational process. But it is this perception of agency that heavily influences the general population\u27s political choices. The existing institutional framework appears to have cemented this worldview in a situation that has little chance of a meaningful resolution. We note the perplexing conundrum in which Connecticut finds itself and conclude that the problem is a social dilemma in which the parties involved are individually powerless to resolve. Sortition mechanisms - allocation by lottery - have been known to effectively resolve social dilemmas in other domains. We examine the possibility of relying on lots to resolve the allocation of educational monies

Financial Performance in Connecticut’s Municipalities: A Comparison of Manager, Mayor-Council and Selectman Forms of Government

This paper assesses the relative performance of the council-manager versus the two predominant political models of government in Connecticut: Mayor-Council and Selectman forms of government. All three will be assessed in terms of their capability to provide for greater efficiency in Connecticut’s municipalities. Published in New England Journal of Political Science, Volume 2, Number 2, Spring 2007