Far too many states continue to deny public schools the essential resources they need to provide every child with a fair and substantive opportunity to learn. The Second Edition of Education Law Center's Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card rates the 50 states on the basis of four "fairness indicators" - funding level, funding distribution, state fiscal effort, and public school coverage - and provides the most in-depth analysis to date of state education finance systems.

Severing the link between school finance and local property taxes would help to eliminate the funding inequities that plague our schools and that deprive low-income students of the resources and opportunities they need to succeed. In the Sunday Dialogue section in the New York Times, Dr. John H. Jackson, President and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, argues for a more just method for funding our nation's schools.

Providing every child with a fair and substantive opportunity to learn is nothing less than a moral imperative. But as parent and student organizers across the country know all too well, today's education policies, which push competition and privatization, are not sufficient for "addressing the structural inequities that make separate and unequal education a persistent fact of life in America today," writes Rev. Jesse Jackson in a must-read column for CNN.

If it takes a village to raise a child, the same village must share accountability when many children are educationally abandoned. In New York City, the nation’s largest school system, on average student outcomes and their opportunity to learn are more determined by the neighborhood where a child lives, than his or her abilities.

New Study: It costs almost $11,000 more per year to live near high-quality schools than low-quality schools. This "housing cost gap," which is the result of exclusionary zoning policies, means that low-income students are less likely to attend good schools, thereby denying them access to the educational opportunities they need to succeed and escape poverty. 

The more we focus on testing and market-based reforms, the less we'll be able to learn and replicate from countries like Finland. Equity is a central component Finnish education policy. It isn't in the U.S. 

According to a new report, Pre-K enrollment has doubled in the U.S. over the past ten years. But because of budget cuts, state per-child spending for Pre-K programs has decreased dramatically.