Compared to the national average, California's public school spending per pupil fell by 23 percent from 1970 to 1990. Finds that about half of the decline can be attributed to Sererano v. Priest, the 1971 California Supreme Court ruling that required equal spending per pupil across school...

The 1971 ruling of the California Supreme Court in the case of Serrano v. Priest initiated a chain of events that abruptly ended local financing of public schools in California. In seven short years, California transformed its school finance system from a decentralized one in which local...