Research On The Educational Equity Promoted By The Finance Litigation Of Compulsory Education In The US

Equity of education is the universal problem that the whole world must face. The United States’lawsuits, which presented by each state in addressing equity issues on the resource allocation of compulsory education has formed a relatively mature approach, and has achieved great results. For education finance reform aimed at achieving fairness in education, the judicial intervention may provide a new perspective to review the finance reform of compulsory education which occurred in the United States, and then perceive the development path of the equity of education in the United States.The motivation of US’compulsory financial litigation, including the plight of educational finance under the decentralized system, financial dependence on the property tax and the game of stakeholders in the educational finance system, which indeed are intertwined. In the sort out process of the development of compulsory education litigation, it can be classified into the embryonic period of questioning the allocation of educational funding (early the 1900s-1960s), the development period of achieving educational funding equality for per student(the 1970s), the climax period of appealing to the equity of education (the 1980s), the backtracking period of "adequate" and the emerging period of the focus of litigation (since the 1990s). We select some representative cases as arguments to demonstrate, and sum up the theme of educational finance that experienced the evolution of equity, adequacy, efficiency and choice. Each stage of development is a higher level of equity, which is the public’s reflection of educational demands with social progress.Throughout the compulsory financial litigation in the United States, the outstanding performance of its development on the equity of education lies in the following areas:first of all, it adjust the value of equity connotation, secondly, it promote the standardization of education reform, particularly the students’learning outcomes, thirdly, it promote the transformation of educational expenditure management system, including the shifting of main investment focus and the establishment of transfer payment system, finally, educational choices play an active role, which consider the performance factors into investment funds. Overall, the US’s financial policy of basic education, which triggered by the litigation, will give us an enlightenment on reforming the gather way of funding sources, allocating funds adequately, fully using of funds and implementing the right to educational choice, etc.