Court Opinion

ID: 9683631
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:33:49.140571+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:49.201699
License: Public Domain

MICHAEL A. WOLFF, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
In Lake Wobegon, “all the children are above average.”1 In Missouri, all the children in public schools will get an “adequate” education under the state’s revised school finance law. The children of the fictional Lake Wobegon all cannot be above average, as a matter of simple math, but one never should underestimate the power of belief.2 Adequacy, on the other hand, theoretically can be achieved for all, and the new school funding law sets a standard for adequacy of funding. Unfortunately, however, the school funding law’s math does not always work; even the modest goal of adequacy is beyond the reach of many school districts. Moreover, the quest of some local school districts to exceed adequacy is made more difficult because of the constitutional violations in the property tax system on which the school funding law relies. Adequacy, as defined in the law, is a fiction for many of Missouri’s districts.
I agree with the majority that the Court’s inquiry here should be limited to specific constitutional provisions. But the majority should adhere to that principle. I concur in the principal opinion’s conclusions that the Missouri Constitution does not mandate equality among school districts and that the school funding law meets the constitutional requirement that the state spend no less than 25 percent of its revenue on public education. But I respectfully dissent from the majority’s refusal to provide a remedy for the violation of specific constitutional requirements as to property tax assessments.
The General Assembly, in its revision of the school funding system in Senate Bill No. 287 (2005), is phasing in a new system on the foundation of a property tax system that violates specific provisions of the Missouri Constitution. When legislation perpetuates a constitutional violation, the Court has a duty to say so and to grant relief, just as it does when legislation directly violates the constitution.
*496Because education is a fundamental purpose of state government, I will elaborate on the practical context and meaning of the influencing forces, the constitutional provisions and the laws affecting the funding of public education to show the importance of enforcing the Missouri Constitution’s strictures.
Education as a Fundamental Purpose of Government
The majority opinion seems to reject the notion that education is a fundamental right, citing San Antonio Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Rodriguez3 and this Court’s supposed practice of following the federal approach to defining fundamental rights.4 The practice of following the federal approach to individual rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights may make sense because of the parallel provision of both constitutions but on the subject of education this approach makes no sense. The federal constitution says nothing about education. The Missouri Constitution, on the other hand, has many provisions for education, a traditional role of the state government.
The proper approach to these questions — as a matter of state, not federal law — is to inquire whether education of the children of Missouri is a fundamental purpose of state government. The Missouri Constitution makes education more than simply a major activity of government; education of children is one of the government’s central purposes prescribed at length in our constitution.
The fundamental purpose of government in American society, well understood by the founders and inherent in our souls, is to enhance and protect the opportunity of individuals to accrue wealth as their abilities and energies allow.5 There is a fundamental belief that we Americans are guaranteed equality of opportunity, not equality of result, especially when it comes to the distribution of the government’s benefits. Because of this belief, we are repulsed by governmental actions and policies that rig the distribution of government favors so that some citizens cannot access the advantages the government offers to others.
Not every inequality of distribution is a denial of equal protection of the law. Some inequalities can be labeled as simply unfair. Unfairness can be addressed through the political process; it need not always be a concern of the courts to rectify *497by constitutional adjudication. Put another way, not every political problem needs to be expressed and solved as a legal problem.6
Inequality is assured by the means the Missouri Constitution authorizes for the delivery of education — that is, local school districts to set tax rates and provide education. This system by its local orientation produces inequalities of results in the money various districts spend on education.
The disparities are stunning. The highest spending district spends $15,251 per pupil and the lowest-spending district spends $4,704 per pupil.7 The Missouri Constitution is not blind to these inequalities. If anything, its structure produces them. The constitution authorizes the use of taxation of local property to produce money for schools, as well as for local governments.8 This system produces unequal results and leaves it to the political process in the legislature to remedy or to mitigate the inequalities. These unequal results show the unfairness of the system established under the state constitution and set up by legislation.
These unequal results pose a simple question that is hard to avoid and even harder to answer: What makes the children of one school district deserving of only about one-third of the education money available for the schools of the children in the highest-spending district?
Because the state constitution seems to authorize this absurdly unequal structure, the question is one of policy, not law.9 The gross disparities created or tolerated in the system, however, ought to make courts especially attentive to particular constitu*498tional requirements such as taxation of property tax wealth.
As to taxation, the constitution has specific requirements that are judicially enforceable. It requires the equalization of assessed valuations so that individual districts are not unduly disadvantaged in the ability to raise money, a disadvantage that results from unequalized and low assessments of the properties on which the taxes are imposed.
Within the constitutional framework of local school districts supported by local property taxes, the people of this state in the years since statehood in 1821 — through constitutions adopted and through legislatures elected — have made education a fundamental purpose of their government. The specificity of the state constitution’s provisions for education and taxation requires that the Court apply those provisions faithfully.10
This appeal deals with two specific constitutional provisions — the requirement that no less than 25 percent of state revenues be devoted to education and the requirement that the taxation of property wealth necessary to support education be equalized among counties. Mo. Const, art. IX, sec. 3(b);11 Mo. Const, art. X, sec. 1412 . The majority opinion seems faithful to the 25 percent requirement for education but fails in its application of the taxation provisions that are a necessary part of the government’s ability to perform this fundamental purpose.
The Court’s failure to enforce the specific provisions of the constitution rigs the system of education so that opportunities it provides are distributed inequitably and contrary to the manner and purposes set forth by the people who enacted the constitution.
From Equity to Adequacy
Education in Missouri is a state function. Mo. Const, art. IX, sec. 1(a); see also Bd. of Educ. of City of St Louis v. Missouri State Bd. of Educ., 271 S.W.3d 1 (Mo. banc 2008). Funding of that function is a combination of local, state and federal sources. All such funding follows prescriptions in the state constitution and laws. Id.
Changes in the system of school finance are the province of the state legislature so long as they adhere to the constitution. The legislative process by its nature creates winners and losers, relatively speaking. The legislature has wide latitude to make these choices. Constitutional limits exist to keep the choices within certain prescribed bounds, which in this case would keep the system from being unduly *499rigged to favor winners who can muster legislative majorities.
With the help of various state courts and school finance experts, the focus of litigation and legislative efforts has shifted from concerns about “equity” to “adequacy.”13 This shift is evident in the recent changes that have occurred in the funding formula that is challenged in this lawsuit, which started mainly as a challenge on equity grounds to the state’s 1993 school funding formula. The 1993 law, in turn, was enacted in part as a response to a court judgment that held the state’s school financing was so inequitable as to be constitutionally deficient.14
As in other states, experience has shown that it has not been economically and politically feasible to provide equal resources to every school district within a state. Nor, as noted, can it be said that a constitution that relies on local school districts and local taxation to support education is a constitution that demands equality between and among those districts. Accordingly, litigation and legislative “reforms” have focused on the more modest goal of providing a so-called “adequate” education to children in every district, regardless of a district’s property wealth.15
The stumbling block to equality — and the barrier to some districts that may wish to aim for something more than “adequacy” — is the fundamental premise that schools are mainly a matter of local concern, to be financed principally at the local level and controlled by local citizenry. Financial reality reinforces this premise, because the school finance system is built on a property tax system that is the main support of local school districts.
From its humblest agrarian roots, public education has maintained its distinctly local flavor,16 despite the infusion of money *500from the state, which comes with state standards related to quality, and the infusion of federal requirements that in recent years have been accompanied by some modest financial support.17 State funding became imperative once it became clear that local sources were inadequate to meet the challenge of making students competitive in a regional economy. Federal support has increased with the realization that our children are competing in a global marketplace, though the federal govern-menN-which in recent years has provided about eight percent of Missouri’s school funding — thus far seems more adept at imposing requirements than in providing money. Perhaps some federal “stimulus” money will help.18
The perception of the local character of public education serves two purposes in the modern era. First, the funding of public education is heavily dependent on local property taxes. In Missouri, local property taxes provide more than 40 percent — or about $3 billion annually — for the support of public schools.19 Sixty percent of all property taxes go to funding local schools. It is important, therefore, to maintain the support of the local voters who must approve property tax rates and who vote on bond issues for school construction and other capital needs. Over the long run, local efforts to fund public education have been the most effective means of raising money for schools, perhaps because of a strong motivation to gain an advantage for our own children.
Second, the view of school funding as “local” mitigates the shame that otherwise might be felt when one compares the disparities of resources available across the state. These disparities — where the lowest spending districts have only one-third of the money of the highest-spending districts — persist despite the fact that the entire scheme of funding public education is dictated by state law under the authority of the state constitution.20 For instance, the property tax wealth per pupil in the wealthiest districts is 15 to 20 times that of the property tax wealth per pupil in the poorest districts.21
*501Because different districts end up with different monetary results, a racecourse analogy may be used, because the word “curriculum” is derived from the early Latin word for racecourse.22 It may be said that the “good” districts are winning a race, but one should acknowledge that the state has given each district a different starting point or that the state has made the racecourse uphill for some districts and downhill for others. The least we can do is to avoid adding to their humiliation by saying that poor districts are losing because they are bad districts ... they do not try hard enough to support local schools, the neighborhoods are less supportive and the parents ... well, you see my point. This system — statewide in design but local in its effects — is rigged.
Those of us who live in urban areas are aware that residential real estate prices are affected by the perceptions about the quality of the schools in a district. The rich districts get richer because desirable schools help to raise property values, and higher property values make it easier for the schools to get more property tax revenue. One can imagine that, given a choice of parents, a child might choose wealthier parents than he or she was given. One might also imagine that a child would choose a school district with greater resources than the one that serves his or her family. While it is absurd to suggest that a child could choose his or her parents, it is not at all absurd to suggest that the state should mitigate the effects of the choice that the child was not given as to his or her school district. Establishing a standard of adequacy may seem to be a step toward mitigating the effects of the child’s family circumstances, but the current effort seems paltry in light of the stakes involved.
Despite the establishment of an adequacy standard, the short-run advantage gained by wealthier districts may not be for the common good in the long run. We act locally in the belief that we are doing the best for our own children, but in today’s highly mobile society, in our local areas we really are educating the future citizens of other communities. The child growing up today in Hannibal, Nevada, or Tarkio (to pick a few towns more or less at random) may be the citizen of Cape Girar-deau, Kansas City, or Springfield tomorrow. The advantage that we seek for our child of today is not just with others in his or her community but those in the child’s future community. Because the marketplace within which the child must compete now is recognized as global, the provision of education — always a fundamental purpose of Missouri’s government — takes on profound importance in an increasingly education-driven marketplace.
Public School Funding Lawsuits
The local nature of public schools has been at the heart of three waves of litigation that have occurred in the past 60 years. The first was racial desegregation, which included claims that education resources were distributed discriminatorily; the second wave was school-finance lawsuits aimed at achieving equity in financing between and among local districts; and the third, and current, wave expresses a “right” to an “adequate” education.
To the extent gains have occurred in public education as a result of these waves of litigation, they are largely the result of legislative efforts, sometimes grudging, to do what seems needed to avoid constitu*502tional conflicts between courts and legislatures, especially in the area of school finance. Such legislative action illustrates the importance of school finance challenges brought in state courts.23
Since 1974, litigants have challenged the school finance structures in over 40 states, and nearly 20 state supreme courts have declared their states’ funding schemes unconstitutional.24 Successful challenges, however, have not resulted in equal funding in states where school funding schemes have been declared unconstitutional.25 This is not surprising. To ensure that all school districts within a particular state have equal resources, the state’s legislature would have to do one of two things: raise all district funding to the level of the district in the state with the greatest funding or reduce the funding of wealthier districts to a designated level by placing a cap on the funding local districts can raise.26 Neither of these scenarios is realistic or attractive: Budgetary limitations make the first measure financially impossible,27 and popular reaction to mandated school funding caps makes the second solution politically infeasible.28
Without a workable way to equalize district funding, the disparities caused by differing property values seem inevitable.29 Life, it often has been said, is unfair.
Shifting away from an equality-based argument, litigants in more recent school funding cases have based their constitutional challenges on principles of adequacy.30 Rather than arguing that states must provide equal resources to all districts, recent litigants, like the appellants in this case, argue that all students should receive the benefit of funds necessary to finance an adequate education.31 Unlike an equality-based argument, an argument based on adequacy of school funding does not interfere very much with the perception that school resources are a local mat*503ter.32
School Funding Choices
Ultimately, school funding choices — including, especially, the laws that treat schools as “local” — are policy decisions that will be decided by legislatures. The two recent changes in Missouri’s school funding formula, in 1998 and 2005, show two different approaches to the state’s efforts to support local schools. With the transition from the 1993 to the 2005 version, the system currently has some of each.
Disparities or inequities prompted the change in the state’s foundation formula in 1993, as I have noted. The 1993 school foundation formula addressed the disparity question without, of course, actually eliminating disparities. The 1993 formula was designed to give school districts some “equal access” to funding — that is, a certain amount of “local effort,” as measured by the district’s property tax rate, would yield a certain amount of money per-pupil regardless of a district’s property wealth. Theoretically, two school districts with the same property tax rate — i.e., the same “local effort” — should have the same amount to spend per pupil, even though one district may have more property tax wealth per pupil. The formula would equalize the two districts by giving more aid per-pupil to the less wealthy district. The 1993 law did raise substantially more money for property-tax-poor districts, but large disparities with wealthy districts remained. Rather than eliminate disparities, the 1993 law attempted to shift the cause of disparities from lack of wealth to lack of local effort.33
Substantial disparities remained because of the great disparities in the ability of districts to raise money through property taxes. But at least one could say, if inaccurately, that the reason for the disparities was that the poorer districts were not trying hard enough. Prudently, from a political standpoint, Missouri never made an effort to rob the rich school districts to give to the poor ones — a disaster in states that tried it.34 Nor did the state ever try to limit the ability of rich districts to raise more money through their property taxes over and above what is provided in the state’s formula.
Within about 10 years, legislators determined that the 1993 formula was in need of revision. The amount of state money required each year to keep full funding of the 1993 formula continued to grow, in part because the formula gave local districts an incentive — in the form of more state aid — to raise their property tax rates, and most districts did.
Changing the Subject
Because equity could not be achieved in school funding, perhaps it was best to change the subject when revising the formula. In the years since the 1993 school funding revision, the question of “adequacy” has become increasingly the focus of school finance litigation around the country.35 In Missouri, the 2005 school funding legislation accordingly changed the subject *504from the 1993 concern about disparities and access to resources to “adequacy” of resources.
This change of subject is supported in part by the observation that school districts with a great deal of money often do not produce the best results. The new law recognizes that a certain level of funding is needed for the district to provide an “adequate” education.36 The formula arrives at an “adequacy” amount — initially $6,117 per pupil — by ascertaining a number of districts that are performing well and averaging their per-pupil spending.37
What a school district has available to spend beyond the “adequate” threshold, of course, is influenced largely by its property tax wealth. So the question of disparity is supposedly of less concern because the new formula will assure that all students have what the legislature has determined is adequate. There is a catch, however, because the $6,117 legislatively determined to be “adequate” only counts a district’s operating costs, which by law include no spending for debt service or other capital needs. When it comes to spending adequacy-based local and state revenues, however, districts may spend up to 12 percent of these revenues for debt service and capital purposes.38 This means that districts that depend on the state funding formula (that is, they are not held harmless because of their per-pupil property wealth) always will be spending less for operating costs than the adequacy-based formula provides. The formula, therefore, always will be funded inadequately for operating costs when districts use some of their adequacy-based revenues for debt service and capital purposes. That is true for most of the state’s 500-plus school districts. Property-rich districts, by contrast, will not have to devote limited operating revenues to debt service and capital purposes as do property-poor districts, so their “adequacy” amounts will be greater than other districts’ adequacy amounts. Perhaps this inequity — and inadequacy— of “adequacy” was unintended, or perhaps the legislature deemed a difference of up to 12 percent to be close enough for government work.39
*505The constitutional language is in some parts poetic and in some parts specific. As to the poetic, the school districts and other plaintiffs suing the state have a difficult chore in making a constitutional funding standard out of article IX, section 1(a) of the Missouri Constitution language: “A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people. ...”40 On this point I agree with the principal opinion.
As to the specific, the constitution mandates that the state allocate no less than 25 percent of its revenue to school funding. Mo. Const, art. IX, sec. 3(b). While it might have been helpful if the constitution were to give a definition of the state’s “revenue,” state courts have accepted the legislature’s notion that “revenue” includes only those taxes and other receipts from state sources in the Missouri budget, ignoring, of course, the billions of dollars in “revenue” received from the federal government that also is appropriated in the state’s budget.41 The choice of using only state revenue is defensible because “revenue” includes only the revenues over which the legislature has complete control. By this definition, the money allocated by the General Assembly for schools exceeds the 25 percent requirement.
A Constitutionally Flawed Foundation
The principal opinion adopts a narrow view of the constitutional language. Unless the constitutional language is specific, there is nothing there to enforce.
Fair enough. But there is specific constitutional language about equalization of property tax rates. Mo. Const, art. X, sec. 14.42
The 2005 law builds the school funding system on a flawed foundation that operates contrary to the constitution and to the laws under which property tax assessments are to be equalized. More specifically, the 2005 school funding law adopts the 2004 valuations and freezes them until 2013. Section 163.031.4, RSMo Supp.2008.
What difference does this make?
If a county’s assessed valuations are below the legal requirement, a school district in the county would receive more state aid than it otherwise would be entitled to receive. There may be a problem granting standing to taxpayers and schoolchildren in other counties — with fairly correct assessments — thereby permitting them to *506complain that other districts are getting more than their fair share of state dollars.
The Court should focus instead on school districts in counties that have deficient assessments. What if a local school district aspires to be more than “adequate?” If the district with unlawfully low assessments wants to raise its tax rate to yield funds beyond the “adequate” level, the tax rate will not produce the property tax revenues that it should, and the children of the district will get less than they would otherwise be entitled to. The districts, their taxpayers and their children surely have standing to raise this point.
Of course, if valuations are low, the district’s voters could approve higher rates to compensate for the low property valuations. But this assumes that the property valuations in a county are uniformly low, which they may not be. For instance, a property owner might acknowledge that property valuations are low in his or her county, but the property owner would be reluctant to say that his or her own property is undervalued for tax purposes. The argument that voters can raise the rates to compensate for low valuations also assumes that voters are informed sufficiently to understand the relationship between tax rates and valuations. In a world where, typically, a minority of households in a district have children in the schools, that would be expecting a district’s voters also to be particularly generous and communitarian. But even assuming that the district’s voters were unusually generous with their own tax money, the constitution places limits on their ambitions.43 In other words, the property tax system is especially rigged against school districts in counties where the valuations are not assessed properly. Moreover, there are school districts that never may get even to “adequacy” — those whose voters will not approve a tax rate of $3.43 — which is the amount section 163.011 sets as the “performance levy” needed to qualify for funding to the “adequacy” level.44
School district plaintiffs have a further point that should be addressed: Even if the assessments eventually are equalized as required by the constitution and statutes,45 the 2005 education law freezes the levels at the 2004 level for purposes of state funding. Even if the state tax commission corrects the constitutional and statutory defects, the defects will continue to deny various districts and schoolchildren of the revenues they should receive because state funding is dependent on the 2004 assessments, not on current valuations.
Section 163.031, RSMo Supp.2008, sets forth the calculation for determining the *507amount of funding each district will receive from the state. A district’s “local effort”— the amount of school funding the district receives from property taxes — is deducted from the amount of state aid.46 For purposes of the state funding formula, the amount of such local funding is determined based on property tax assessments from 2004-2005. Section 163.01 l(10)(a), RSMo Supp.2008.
There are, unquestionably, substantial disparities in the way individual counties assess property tax under the state’s current property tax assessment system. According to the state tax commission, the assessed valuation of property for property tax purposes should be not less than 95 percent of its market value.47 In many counties, however, property assessment data reveal that property tax valuations fall significantly below the 95 percent level. One major reason for the discrepancy in market value as compared to assessed valuation is that, in certain counties, assessments are based on a property’s appraisal value as reported by the county assessor, rather than on the “true,” or market, value of the property based on comparable sales. In counties that base tax assessments on appraisal rather than market or sales value, the reliability of property tax assessment data depends on the accuracy of the appraisal values reported by the individual county assessors. Due to the lack of uniformity in the assessment system, the assessed valuation of property in certain counties is disproportionately low. The 2004-2005 property tax assessment data reflect these disproportionate assessment values.
Because section 163.011(10)(a) bases the proportion of school funding a county receives from “local effort” on the 2004-2005 property tax assessment data, the inequities of the current property tax assessment system affect the amount of school funding each school district receives from the state. The result under the current school funding formula is that school districts in counties with more accurate assessments receive less state funding for public schools. Put another way, counties where property assessments fall well below market value are rewarded with increased state funding for schools.

Appraisals v. Sales

Article X, section 14 of the Missouri Constitution, which mandates creation of a *508commission “to equalize assessments as between counties,” is intended to prevent the kind of disparity that the current property tax assessment system and, by extension, the school funding formula, creates. Section 138.390, RSMo Supp.2008, describes the manner in which the state tax commission must equalize the assessment values. If the tax commission believes that the assessed valuation of a certain class of property in a county is “below its real value in money,” section 138.390.2(1) directs the commission to equalize the assessed valuation of the class by adding “such amount or percent as will increase the same in each case to its true value.” (Emphasis added).
With its express requirement that the commission use the “real value in money,” the law states that the commission must base its equalization on the market value of a particular class of property. Rather than equalizing the 2004-2005 assessments based on market value based on comparable sales, however, the state tax commission used appraisal ratios to equalize assessments between counties. An appraisal ratio compares the assessed valuation of a home to the assessed valuation of a comparable property, rather than to the market or sales price of a comparable property. Because the tax commission’s adjusted property assessments among counties is based on appraisal rather than market values based on sales data, the 2004-2005 property tax assessment valuations are not truly equalized as required by article X, section 14 of the Missouri Constitution. As such, it is constitutionally impermissible for the state to rely on these values in allocating state funding for public schools.
By disproportionately taxing some Missourians but not others, the current property tax assessment system also violates the constitutional requirement that taxes “be uniform upon the same class or subclass of subjects within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax.” Mo. Const, art. X, sec. 3.48 A school funding system based on unconstitutionally disparate taxation cannot be upheld. State ex rel. Sch. Dist. of City of Independence v. Jones, 653 S.W.2d 178 (Mo. banc 1983).
That the current funding formula is time-limited does not lessen the need to remedy its unlawful unfairness. The formula locks in the 2004-2005 assessments as the basis for determining the amount of state aid a county will receive until 2013. This is not a case of making the best of a bad situation; it is perpetuating a bad situation. Many of the children disparately impacted by the funding formula will have graduated by 2013; locking in the formula’s inequalities for so long is constitutionally unacceptable.
Who Benefits?
One may ask why these valuations are locked in for so long. Perhaps the explanation may be found by answering the age-old question: Who benefits? Are they mostly the fast-growing suburbs? School districts in rapidly growing areas of the state would seem to do well because they would continue to get state aid based on their 2004 valuations even though newly built properties are coming onto the tax *509rolls and producing local revenue without having that revenue deducted from their state aid entitlements. Are the losers, relatively speaking, the slow-growing or declining areas that are mostly rural school districts?
These are questions to be answered in the legislative process, not in the courts. If school finance legislation follows the golden rule of “he who has the gold makes the rules,” it is of little or no concern to the courts.
But the rules — regardless of the gold of those who make them-must conform to constitutional requirements. That is the courts’ concern. It is not my purpose to revive old resentments that pit urban or suburban areas against rural interests but simply to point out that when the system is rigged unconstitutionally, the losers should have a judicial remedy.
This is not the first time this Court has been called upon to evaluate the state’s property tax system for funding public schools. In Jones, this Court considered the equalized assessed valuation system employed under the state’s school funding formula. The Court held that equalization of a district’s assessments required that the state consider real and tangible personal property separately in determining the true value of property in a district. 653 S.W.2d at 191. The Court in Jones also noted the long history of judicial review of the state’s school funding procedures, explaining that “similar statutory procedures for apportioning state school funds have been in effect for more than 100 years during which time numerous legal challenges to school fund apportion-ments have been instigated by school districts and determined on the merits.” Id. at 187.49
Jones, decided only 26 years ago, may be a relic of an era when this Court played its proper role in our system of checks and balances. I hope it is not a relic. I recognize that plaintiffs in this case abandoned a direct attack on the question of equalization of the assessments. Though I make the argument that this Court should address the equalization issue in evaluating the constitutional validity of the school finance law, as the Coalition to Fund Excellent Schools urges, I read today’s principal opinion as keeping the door open to a direct challenge to the state’s failure to equalize property assessments properly.
*510I agree with the principal opinion that the Court should look to specific provisions of the constitution. Article X, section 14 explicitly mandates creation of a commission “to equalize assessments as between counties.” Pursuant to this constitutional mandate, section 138.010 et seq., RSMo Supp.2008, establish and set forth rules of operation for county boards of equalization. The requirement of using equalized assessed valuations is specific. It requires no interpretation but simply is to be applied. Because the state’s school funding formula is built upon a foundation that violates article X, section 14 of the state constitution, I believe the state school funding formula presently before the Court is unconstitutional. The Court should require the General Assembly to use another basis for funding Missouri’s schools if the present property tax structure is not brought up to constitutional standards and unlocked to allow distribution of state funds to be affected by equalized valuations, not unequal valuations that are locked in for eight years.
Why Does This Constitutional Defect Matter?
The property tax-based system, as noted, confines many local districts to an amount that the law has deemed to be adequate and, as a practical or legal matter, does not allow for a district to get more money than the adequacy amount. If you, the reader, have read every word of this opinion so far, struggling through the tedious parts and enjoying the wit and wisdom of the rest, chances are you have spent countless hours educating yourself beyond the minimum that schooling has had to offer.
After all, our schools are still following the 19th century agricultural calendar that allows the children to be available to toil in the fields during the growing season. Schooling occurs in fewer than half the days in a calendar year. The school day itself begins around 8 a.m., when many adolescent brains are not fully awake, and extends to mid-afternoon. This allows ample time for participation in sports or other extra-curricular activities or — in the absence of parental or other adult supervision or perhaps in spite of it — for channel-surfing, Internet-surfing, criminal mischief or sex. Extracurricular time may be productive and may count as socialization, but one would be hard-pressed to find more than a few hours of each school day devoted to time on task for mastery of academic subjects or vocational skills needed for a productive life.50 This is not exactly the *511kind of education designed to prepare our children for competition in the global marketplace.
What would a school district need to engage its pupils and students in full days of learning and useful activity in a school year that stretches through the growing season? Money. The amount of money currently available to many districts may be “adequate” only to ensure mediocrity. Having more money, of course, does not ensure that a school district will produce a world-class education. But not having enough money nearly always dooms a district to mediocrity.
Legislators are in charge of the funding system; they can congratulate themselves when the funding for schools exceeds funding provided in the past. But the fact that past funding may have been inadequate is no guide to what is needed now and in the future. It is little comfort to those who-seek education for their children to be assured that the resources available are adequate according to 20th century standards. The real question is whether the resources will be adequate for our children to receive an education that will help make them competitive in a world marketplace in the 21st century.
The United States in the past has made up for some of its deficits in education by allowing immigration of highly educated persons from other countries to fill gaps in our needs for scientific, medical and other specialized professionals. This has allowed the country to stay at or near the top of scientific achievement for many decades. This attention to the top perhaps has distracted from the need to develop a maximally educated and trained human workforce in all sectors of society. States compete with each other and with other countries in attracting companies with jobs by offering tax breaks and other “economic development” incentives with scant attention to the attractiveness of a well-educated workforce. The nature of such global competition increases the anxiety that many in this country feel that their own children will not achieve the same standard of living that they have had. One of our country’s great attributes is that it is easy — relative to much of the rest of the world — to be well off. But often overlooked is how difficult it is to be poor in America.51 Education is the difference for most of us who did not inherit wealth.
*512Schools ideally are helpmates to parents in the education of children. But they have taken on greater roles as the demographics of families have changed with increases in single-parent households and households where both parents work outside the home. Many children have opportunities for educational enrichment that are available outside of schools. For others, schools are the only chance. The resources that the General Assembly can command make the difference. Thus far, I fear, we and our legislators have failed to do the right thing for many of our state’s children.
We can believe that all our children are above average. Belief is a powerful part of encouraging children to succeed. But belief, without sufficient resources, is not enough.52
Conclusion
The General Assembly’s revision of the school funding formula was accompanied by expressions of the best of intentions in improving the education of the state’s schoolchildren by establishing a standard of adequacy. The Court’s role is not to join the applause by brushing lightly over some serious-sounding but shop-worn constitutional doctrines and pronouncing the legislative efforts good enough. The Court’s role, rather, is to judge the constitutional validity of what the legislature has done, not what it has said. As a citizen I do applaud the General Assembly’s attempt to express adequacy in monetary terms. As a judge, on the other hand, the 2005 law’s constitutional flaw causes me to conclude that the work of the General Assembly regarding adequacy of funding is constitutionally inadequate. My applause, as a result, is the sound of one hand clapping.
The 2005 law ensures that a majority of the state’s students will receive an inadequately funded education based on the General Assembly’s own definition of adequate funding.
Moreover, if there are districts that want to go beyond adequacy, they will not be able to do so. If there is an upside to our system of local districts, surely it must be that individual school districts can aspire to fund something better than adequacy. But the system is rigged so that the best that some districts can get is funding the legislature says is good enough. For some districts, the 2005 law will not provide adequacy, only delusions of adequacy.
While there is not a direct relation between a school district’s money and its performance, money is not irrelevant. Good educational outcomes are achieved in districts with modest resources. But money is needed to buy the academic leadership, the teaching staff, the time on task for mastery of basic subjects and other resources needed for educational enrich*513ment that can produce optimal outcomes. Plainly and simply, the money needed is beyond the reach of many Missouri school districts.
The racecourse for some districts and their children is uphill; for others it is downhill. To the extent that this situation is the product of constitutional violations, it calls for judicial remedies. Courts cannot solve the deficiencies in our public schools, nor can courts produce the money school districts need. But courts should not perpetuate the harm that may be done by failing in its role of enforcing specific constitutional provisions.
Fixing the piece of this property-tax-based system that has a specific constitutional problem may address only a relatively small part of the resource deprivations that many public schools suffer. But court decisions about particular legal points such as the one presented here— but not decided — sometimes break the inertia that sets in, spurring changes in the policy-making branches of government.53 This case calls on the Court to choose whether to be an enabler of the General Assembly’s disregard of constitutional standards. The Court today has not made the right choice. Perhaps some day it will.

. The Public Radio International program, "A Prairie Home Companion,” features the news from Lake Wobegon whose creator, Garrison Keillor, describes the inhabitants: "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” See generally, Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days (1985).

. It is mathematically impossible for all the children to be above average if one includes only the children of Lake Wobegon. If one wishes to compare the children of the United States with schoolchildren of some other countries, the American children might be below average. See Gladwell, infra note 50, at 259-60.

. 411 U.S. 1, 93 S.Ct. 1278, 36 L.Ed.2d 16 (1973).

. The question of whether something is a "right” or a "fundamental right” in our jurisprudence is the starting point of familiar legal analysis as to whether the government has violated someone’s "right.” A similar function is assigned to the notion of equality as embodied in the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution and a corresponding provision of the Missouri Constitution. U.S. Const, amend. XIV; Mo. Const, art. I, sec. 2. If something is a "fundamental” right, an unequal availability of that “right” must be justified by a compelling governmental interest. If a government's classification of its citizens is based on some suspect criterion— race being the major example — then the classification must be justified by a compelling governmental interest. Some classifications, e.g., gender, are measured by intermediate scrutiny. Other classifications are tested by whether they are rational, a test that governmental actions usually pass. See, e.g., Kimel v. Florida Bd. of Regents, 528 U.S. 62, 84, 120 S.Ct. 631, 145 L.Ed.2d 522 (2000); State Bd. of Registration for the Healing Arts v. Giffen, 651 S.W.2d 475, 479 (Mo. banc 1983). These familiar lines of analysis seem shop-worn, and their use often seems rote. Their use in this case, moreover, seems strangely beside the point.

. See James Madison, Federalist Paper No 10; "The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.”

. This seems at odds with the familiar observation of Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America written in the 1830’s, that "scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.” 1 Democracy in America 280 (1945). There is, however, De Tocqueville's further observation quoted in the majority opinion in Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 740 n. 16, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972) (citing 1 Democracy in America at 102) on when such judicial questions need to be decided: “It will be seen, also, that by leaving it to private interest to censure the law, and by intimately uniting the trial of the law with the trial of an individual, legislation is protected from wanton assaults and from the daily aggressions of party spirit. The errors of the legislator are exposed only to meet a real want; and it is always a positive and appreciable fact that must serve as the basis of a prosecution." De Tocqueville in the familiar quotation may have been on to something when one considers the contemporary conflicts over whether judicial nominees will be "activist” judges, a term whose meaning differs depending on where on the contemporary political spectrum one places oneself.

. The record includes the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education report "Current Expenditures per Eligible Pupil Data (Low to High Order)” for the Fiscal year 2004-2005 which shows that the expenditure per eligible pupil ranged from $4,704.11 in the Diamond R-IV School District (Newton County) to $15,251.28 in the Gorin R-III School District (Scotland County). The three highest districts, Gorin R-III, Clayton, and Climax Springs R-IV, spent greater than $ 13,000 per pupil. The three lowest-spending districts, Diamond R-IV, Willard, R-II, and Clever R-V, spent less than $4,900 per pupil.

. If one is disturbed by the inequalities of property taxes, one simply should imagine local taxation based, instead, on local incomes or on local retail sales. Property wealth, it seems to me, is far more evenly distributed throughout the state than income or retail sales even though the property tax wealth per pupil of the wealthiest districts is 15 to 20 times that of poor districts. See n. 21.

. As noted, the United States Supreme Court refused to apply the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to inequalities in school funding. San Antonio Indep. Sch. Dist., 411 U.S. 1, 93 S.Ct. 1278.

. See Mallory v. Barrera, 544 S.W.2d 556 (Mo. banc 1976); State ex rel. Sikeston R-VI Sch. Dist. v. Ashcroft, 828 S.W.2d 372 (Mo. banc 1992); Comm. for Educ. Equal. v. State, 967 S.W.2d 62 (Mo. banc 1998).

. Mo. Const, art. IX, sec. 3(b) provides:
In event the public school fund provided and set apart by law for the support of free public schools, shall be insufficient to sustain free schools at least eight months in every year in each school district of the state, the general assembly may provide for such deficiency; but in no case shall there be set apart less than twenty-five percent of the state revenue, exclusive of interest and sinking fund, to be applied annually to the support of the free public schools.

.Mo. Const, art. X, sec. 14 provides:
The general assembly shall establish a commission, to be appointed by the governor by and with the advice and consent of the senate, to equalize assessments as between counties and, under such rules as may be prescribed by law, to hear appeals from local boards in individual cases and, upon such appeal, to correct any assessment which is shown to be unlawful, unfair, arbitrary or capricious. Such commission shall perform all other duties prescribed by law.

. The litigation of public school finance issues has spawned a class of experts who testify as to whether constitutional standards are met, as the record in this case shows. These experts, who have mastered the mind-numbing complexities of school finance, also consult in the legislative process to design financing schemes that can pass state constitutional muster. The principles involve matters of state constitutional law in the 40 or so states that have experienced school finance lawsuits since the United States Supreme Court declared in 1973 that the equal protection standards of the 14th Amendment do not apply. San Antonio Indep. Sch. Dist., 411 U.S. 1, 93 S.Ct. 1278.

. Comm. for Educ. Equal. v. State, Memorandum Opinion and Judgment of January 15, 1993, Case No. CV190-1371CC, Cole County Circuit Court, rev’d Comm. for Educ. Equal. v. State, 878 S.W.2d 446, 454 (Mo. banc 1994) on other grounds, was known popularly as the “Kinder decision,” one of those rare cases known by the name of the trial court judge rather than by a litigant's name.

. I put quotes on the word “reform” as this word is always a matter of opinion that is arguable at best. “Adequacy” is a term of art that now has a statutory definition — $6,117 per child in 2007 and 2008. The so-called "adequacy target” is determined according to the calculation set forth in section 163.011(18), RSMo Supp.2008. (The concept of adequacy does not seem to be applied uniformly, as I will discuss in this opinion).

.As a point of personal reference regarding the local flavor of public education, I use the example of my mother, who at age 17 was the sole teacher in a rural one-room school during the Great Depression. During my mother's tenure at this school, the school’s one room had pupils from first through sixth grades, ranging in age from 6 to 17 years old. School attendance during the year was confined to the months when the children were not needed to work the farms, and the advanced age of some of the students shows the precedence that agricultural work had to have for some families. The teacher boarded with the families of the children and was paid a small stipend each month. Apart from the diploma she received after graduating from a small rural high school, my mother’s only training for this weighty task was a several-month-long teacher certification program. My mother’s history as a student and teacher *500in the agrarian Midwest embodies the roots of our modern educational system — -built from the ground up at the local level, supported by local property taxpayers and controlled by local citizenry. While hardly anyone would consider this schooling adequate today, its rudimentary teaching of reading, writing and arithmetic probably was considered adequate to deal with the complexities of that era.

. See Outstanding Schools Act, section 160.500 et seq., RSMo Supp.2008; No Child Left Behind Act, 20 U.S.C. 3601 et seq. (2008).

. Federal "stimulus" money is coming with, of course, strings attached. David Hunn, Stimulus sends $114 million extra to area schools, but impact is unknown, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 31, 2009, at 1A, available at http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/ stories.nsf/education/story/4B5 9A1718E16991 D86257604000251C8?OpenDocument.

. For most recently reported school expenditures, local and county revenue, most of which is property tax, provide 44.1 percent; state appropriations provide 37.9 percent; Proposition C, the statewide sales tax, produces 9.9 percent; and federal funds provide 8.1 percent of receipts for Missouri's school districts, according to the 2005-2006 Report of the Public Schools of Missouri issued by the state board of education as required by section 161.092, RSMo Supp.2008.

. Article IX, section 3(b) of the Missouri Constitution requires that the state contribute no less than 25 percent of state revenue to the funding of public schools. To administer state aid pursuant to this mandate, the legislature enacted section 163.011(10)(a) et seq., RSMo Supp. 2008.

. This number, which varies a bit from year to year, is derived from dividing the property valuation of a district by the number of pupils, as set forth in the annual Report of the Public Schools of Missouri issued by the state board of education.

. Webster's Third New International Dictionary 557 (1993). The later Latin term refers te the "course of a year.” Id.

. In discussing the origins of school finance reform, it is important to acknowledge the connection between early school finance litigation and the civil rights movement. James E. Ryan & Michael Heise summarize this connection in The Political Economy of School Choice, 111 Yale L.J. 2043 (2002):
School finance litigation began at a time when many civil rights advocates were growing frustrated with the slow and uneven pace of school desegregation. Advocates hoped that by attacking funding inequalities, they would be able to improve the education available to poor and minority students. Like desegregation proponents, early school finance reformers essentially proposed a tying strategy. Whereas school desegregation would tie the fate of white and black students together by placing them in the same schools, school finance equalization would tie the fate of poor and wealthy schools together by ensuring equal access to resources.
Id. at 2058-59.

. Id. at 2059 (citing James E. Ryan, Schools, Race, and Money, 109 Yale L.J. 249, 266-69 & nn. 70-86 (1999)). See also Anna Williams Shavers, Rethinking the Equity vs. Adequacy Debate: Implications for Rural School Finance Reform Litigation, 82 Neb. L. Rev. 133 (2003); William S. Koski and Rob Reich, When "Adequate" Isn’t: The Retreat from Equity in Educational Law and Policy and Why It Matters, 56 Emory L.J. 545 (2006).

. Ryan & Heise, supra note 23, at 2059.

. Id. at 2060.

. Id. (citing U.S. Gen Accounting Office, School Finance: State Efforts To Equalize Funding Between Wealthy and Poor School Districts (1998); Peter Enrich, Leaving Equality Behind: New Directions in School Finance Reform, 48 Vand. L.Rev. 101, 104-05 (1995)).

. Id.

. Id.

. Id. at 2059.

. Id.

. Id. at 2062.

. Many wealthier districts received little or no money from the state under the 1993 formula because of the high yield of property tax revenues, and these districts were "held harmless” to receive the same state aid as they did under the pre 1993 state formula.

. See Ryan & Heise, supra note 23, at 2060 (noting that “in places like Texas, Kansas, and Vermont, recapture plans — dubbed 'Robin Hood’ schemes — have provoked continued and intense political squabbling, public protests, and litigation.”).

. Ryan & Heise, supra note 23, at 2059.

. Today’s contest between the state and these plaintiffs about “adequacy” is a great improvement over where we were just 30 years ago, when, for example, in the Kansas City school desegregation case, schools for black students were found to have received hand-me-down books from the schools for whites as recently as the late 1970s. Jenkins v. Missouri, 639 F.Supp. 19 (W.D.Mo.1985); 807 F.2d 657 (8th Cir.1986). The Jenkins litigation produced 75 published opinions and orders, including two decisions of the United States Supreme Court, Missouri v. Jenkins, 495 U.S. 33, 110 S.Ct. 1651, 109 L.Ed.2d 31 (1990) (Jenkins) and 515 U.S. 70, 115 S.Ct. 2038, 132 L.Ed.2d 63 (1995) (Jenkins II). See also Alison D. Morantz, "Money and Choice in Kansas City: Major Investments with Modest Returns,” in Dismantling Desegregation 241-43 (Gary Orfield & Susan E. Eaton eds., 1996).

. The adequacy amount is determined by taking the operating costs in the districts that perform well on the state’s performance standards, excluding five percent of the pupils in the highest and the lowest spending districts, and then calculating the per-pupil spending. Section 163.011(18), RSMo Supp.2008.

. The 12 percent difference is derived as follows: Under section 163.043, RSMo Supp. 2008, five percent of the adequacy amount, which comes from the classroom trust fund provided mostly by gaming revenue, can be used for any purpose, including capital. Under section 165.011.4(5)(b), RSMo Supp. 2008, up to seven percent of the adequacy amount can be shifted from operating expenses to capital purposes.

. The phrase "close enough for government work" entered the modern Missouri judicial vocabulary through a dissent by my predecessor, Judge Edward D. Robertson, Jr., in Associated Indus. of Missouri v. Director of Revenue, 857 S.W.2d 182, 195 (Mo. banc 1993). *505The phrase was quoted in the United States Supreme Court opinion in the same case, 511 U.S. 641, 646, 114 S.Ct. 1815, 128 L.Ed.2d 639 (1994).

. The provision reads in full:
A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people, the general assembly shall establish and maintain free public schools for the gratuitous instruction of all persons in this state within ages not in excess of twenty-one years as prescribed by law.
Mo. Const, art. IX, sec. 1(a).

. In Comm. for Educ. Equal., 967 S.W.2d 62, this Court held that funds the state receives from the federal government are not "state revenue” within the meaning of article IX, section 3(b).

.Mo. Const, art. X, sec. 14 provides:
The general assembly shall establish a commission, to be appointed by the governor by and with the advice and consent of the senate, to equalize assessments as between counties and, under such rules as may be prescribed by law, to hear appeals from local boards in individual cases and, upon such appeal, to correct any assessment which is shown to be unlawful, unfair, arbitrary or capricious. Such commission shall perform all other duties prescribed by law.
(Emphasis added).

.Missouri’s constitution places a limit on the amount voters in a particular district can increase taxes for the benefit of local schools. Art. X, sec. 11(c) provides:
In all municipalities, counties and school districts the rates of taxation as herein limited may be increased for their respective purposes when the rate and purpose of the increase are submitted to a vote and two-thirds of the qualified electors voting thereon shall vote therefor; provided in school districts the rate of taxation as herein limited may be increased for school purposes so that the total levy shall not exceed six dollars on the hundred dollars assessed valuation, except as herein provided, when the rate and the purpose of the increase are submitted to a vote and a majority of the qualified electors voting thereon shall vote therefore”
(Emphasis added).

. Section 163.011, RSMo Supp.2008. This seems at odds with the constitutional provision that authorizes a school district "formed of cities and towns" to impose a rate of $2.75 without a vote of the people; beyond $2.75, a vote of approval is needed. Mo. Const, art. X, sec. 11(b).

. Mo. Const, art. X, sec. 14; section 138.010 et seq., RSMo Supp. 2008.

. Section 163.01 l(10)(a), RSMo Supp.2008 provides:
For the fiscal year 2007 calculation, 'local effort' shall be computed as the equalized assessed valuation of the property of a school district in calendar year 2004 divided by one hundred and multiplied by the performance levy less the percentage retained by the county assessor and collector plus one hundred percent of the amount received in fiscal year 2005 for school purposes from intangible taxes, fines, escheats, payments in lieu of taxes and receipts from state-assessed railroad and utility tax, one hundred percent of the amount received for school purposes pursuant to the merchants' and manufacturers’ taxes under sections 150.010 to 150.370, RSMo, one hundred percent of the amounts received for school purposes from federal properties under sections 12.070 and 12.080, RSMo, except when such amounts are used in the calculation of federal impact aid pursuant to P.L. 81-874, fifty percent of Proposition C revenues received for school purposes from the school district trust fund under section 163.087, and one hundred percent of any local earnings or income taxes received by the district for school purposes.

. Section 138.390, RSMo Supp.2008, requires the state tax commission to equalize property valuations by adding or subtracting from the incorrectly assessed valuation an amount necessary for the property valuation to reflect its “true” or market value. According to the state tax commission, property is reflective of true value if its assessed value is at least 95 percent of its market value.

. Art. X, sec. 3 of the Missouri Constitution provides:
Taxes may be levied and collected for public purposes only, and shall be uniform upon the same class or subclass of subjects within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax. All taxes shall be levied and collected by general laws and shall be payable during the fiscal or calendar year in which the property is assessed. Except as otherwise provided in this constitution, the methods of determining the value of property for taxation shall be fixed by law.

. The Court in Jones cites the following cases in which this Court reviewed the state’s school funding mechanism: State ex rel. School District of Kansas City v. Young, 519 S.W.2d 328 (Mo.App.1975) (mandamus compelling state board of education to exclude property in newly annexed area when calculating the assessed valuation of relator school district); State ex rel. School District of Pattonville v. Lee, 83 S.W.2d 87 (Mo. banc 1935); State ex rel. School District of Kansas City v. Lee, 66 S.W.2d 524 (Mo. banc 1933); State ex rel. School District of Kansas City v. Lee, 66 S.W.2d 523 (Mo. banc 1933); and State ex rel. School District of Kansas City v. Lee, 334 Mo. 513, 66 S.W.2d 521 (Mo. banc 1933) (mandamus compelling state superintendent of schools to set moneys aside for special purposes before apportioning state school funds); State ex rel. Robertson v. Lee, 315 Mo. 817, 287 S.W. 37 (Mo. banc 1926) (mandamus compelling distribution to school district of additional state school funds); State ex rel. Consolidated School District No. 9 v. Lee, 303 Mo. 641, 262 S.W. 344 (Mo. banc 1924) (mandamus compelling the state superintendent of schools to correct a mistake previously made in apportionment of state school funds); State ex rel. Consolidated School District No. 1 v. Hackmann, 302 Mo. 558, 258 S.W. 1011 (Mo. banc 1924) (mandamus compelling state auditor to draw warrants upon state treasurer for amounts due in payment of school aid the preceding year); State ex rel. School Directors of District 117 v. School Directors of District 15, 90 Mo. 395, 2 S.W. 420 (Mo.1886) (mandamus by school district compelling neighboring school district to pay $93 in allegedly misdirected state school funds).

. Educational success is based a great deal on how much time on task there is. In Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers The Story of Success 259-60 (2008), the author discusses a study of Baltimore public school children tilled Schools, Achievement and Inequality: A Seasonal Perspective, by Karl L. Alexander et ah, in 23 Educ. Evaluation & Pol’y Analysis 171 (2001), and concludes:
The only problem with school, for the kids who aren’t achieving, is that there isn’t enough of it. [The author of the study] has done a very simple calculation to demonstrate what would happen if the children of Baltimore went to school year-round. The answer is that poor kids and wealthy kids would, by the end of elementary school, be doing math and reading at almost the same level.
.... The school year in the United States is, on average, 180 days long. The South Korean school year is 220 days long. The Japanese school year is 243 days long.
One of the questions asked of test takers on a recent math test given to students around the world was how many of the algebra, calculus, and geometry questions covered subject matter they had previously learned in class. For Japanese twelfth graders, the answer was 92 percent. That’s the value of going to school 243 days a year. You have time to learn everything that needs to be learned — and you have less time to unlearn it. For American twelfth graders, the comparable figure was 54 per*511cent. For its poorest students, America doesn't have a school problem. It has a summer vacation problem....

. The difficulties of living in a society with great disparities in the distribution of wealth are well known and, one suspects, well accepted. Also well accepted is the link between financial well being and educational outcomes. What are not well appreciated are the deleterious effects experienced by those who are not poor but live in states with great inequalities of income distribution. In a nationwide study, it was reported that “those in the middle income groups in states with the greatest inequalities in income rated themselves as having poorer health than those in middle income groups in states with the smallest inequalities.” Bruce P. Kennedy et al., Income distribution, socioeconomic status, and self-rated health in the United States: multilevel analysis, 317 British Med J. 917 (Oct. 1998). See also Michael Wolfson et al., Relation between income inequality and mortality: empirical demonstration, 319 British Med. J. 953 (Oct. 1999) ("Evidence is accumulating that living in a society with higher inequality in income predisposes its members to higher mortality; at the same time, there is widespread evidence that, for individuals, higher income is protective.”). In a 20 year study of the relation between household income and risk of death in the United States, the negative effects of low income are partially offset by educational attainment. Michael Marmot, The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity 17 (2004).

. I attended grade schools and a high school with remarkably modest resources, but they were, in effect, heavily subsidized by their staffs of nuns who had taken a vow of poverty and, to a lesser extent, were subsidized by non-cleric teachers who made financial sacrifices to teach in religious schools. I came to appreciate in retrospect that tírese parochial schools also were aided immensely by a belief system that I would re-state as follows: Every child has a soul worth saving, and to save his or her soul we must make the child a productive member of society.
In recent decades, secular schools have sought belief systems that might have similar power, such as “all children can learn,” and “no child should be left behind,” though the latter phrase has been battered by controversy that may have diminished its power.
In today’s public schools, the education is subsidized by the best teachers who are underpaid relative to their talents and worth to society — not as great a subsidy as my teachers with a vow of poverty, but a subsidy nonetheless.

. With or without court decisions, perhaps the policy-making branches of government, with the encouragement of their constituents, will rethink the method and amounts of funding public education. Or, perhaps the people, either through the referendum or initiative process, will revisit the constitution’s 25 percent of state revenue adequacy standard in Article IX, section 3(b). The people first adopted the standard in the Constitution of 1875, and it was included in the Constitution of 1945 which is in effect today. The state's educational needs obviously are different today than in 1875 and 1945. But these needs — for the resources and for the restructuring that are needed to make all schools capable of providing graduates who can compete in the 21st century — can be met by the policy branches of government without changing the constitution.