Rose v. Council for Better Education, Inc.

In 1985, the Council for Better Education, a Kentucky nonprofit whose membership included 66 property-poor rural school districts, along with individual school districts and students, sued state officials seeking a declaration that Kentucky's system of financing public education violated the state constitution. The complaint alleged that the school-finance laws adopted by the General Assembly provided inadequate overall funding, relied excessively on local school boards' own resources, and produced unequal educational opportunities across districts. Evidence and expert testimony at trial showed that children in wealthier districts with higher property values had access to a broader curriculum and higher-quality instruction than children in poorer, low-property-value districts, and that Kentucky ranked in the lowest 20 to 25 percent nationally across most measures of educational performance.