Accelerated Education as a Remedy for High-Poverty Schools

High-poverty schools, and the students who attend them, have historically faced substantial challenges in providing and receiving, adequate education. Despite some relief from the courts, school finance remedies that require the redistribution of monetary aid to low-wealth districts have encountered strong political opposition. In this Article, Professor Clune makes a renewed claim for accelerated education as the primary focus of adequacy litigation in school reform cases. He describes the nation’s educational condition, in which there exists a disturbing correlation between poverty and low educational outcomes. He then drafts a vision of a comprehensive, school reform remedy, one that emphasizes institutional success over accountability, and discusses how this remedy compensates for the inadequacies of reforms suggested by other commentators. Finally, Professor Clune concludes that adequacy theory uniquely responds to the needs of high-poverty schools and provides the guidance necessary to achieving better education.