Three essays on education law and policy: State court definitions of educational adequacy; The No Child Left Behind Act unfunded mandate debate; and conceptions of equal educational opportunity for students with disabilities under the Individuals with Dis

My dissertation consists of three essays on education law and policy. The first essay addresses the issue of how state courts define educational adequacy by analyzing court opinions from twenty-six states. The second essay answers the question of whether the No Child Left Behind Act is an unfunded mandate by evaluating the arguments made in the two federal lawsuits that make this claim. The third essay investigates the tensions in federal special education policy under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the No Child Left Behind Act by focusing on their assessment policy and conceptions of equal educational opportunity.;Chapter 1: Determining adequacy: How courts are redefining state responsibility for educational finance, goals, and accountability. This essay compiles information from twenty-six states with educational adequacy court decisions. In these decisions, courts are asked to declare their state's finance system unconstitutional because it is inadequate to provide a basic quality education to all students. Although educational funding is the major component of the adequacy court decisions, this work also identifies educational goals and accountability as important elements of a state's duty to supply an adequate education to all students.;Chapter 2: The No Child Left Behind Act: Is it an unfunded mandate or a promotion of federal educational ideals? This essay analyzes the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) unfunded mandate debate using the two federal court cases on the topic, School District of Pontiac v. Spellings and Connecticut v. Spellings. The plaintiffs in these lawsuits allege that NCLB's unfunded mandate provision should be interpreted to not require states or local educational agencies (LEA) to spend any of their own funds complying with the law. The article concludes that NCLB is not an unfunded mandate. Its unfunded mandate provision is only intended to limit federal officials from adding requirements that were not originally contemplated in the law. States and LEAs must perform the obligations they assumed under NCLB, regardless of how much federal funding they actually receive.;Chapter 3: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and The No Child Left Behind Act - Convergence and dissonance in special education policy - The growing alignment between these laws and the continuing differences in their conceptions of equal educational opportunity. This essay examines federal policy for students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). It outlines the federal government's response to the differences in these laws' assessment policy, a process that offered more flexibility under NCLB through alternate assessments and greater alignment in IDEA with NCLB's accountability requirements. It also categorizes the laws' conceptions of equal educational opportunity and explains why advocates for students with disabilities prefer IDEA's vision of equal educational opportunity over NCLB's arguably higher, but potentially unreachable, vision.