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..."the legislature "shall provide for intellectual, educational, vocational and scientific improvement by establishing and maintaining public schools..." and "shall make suitable provision for the finance of the educational interests of the state."
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All, Another example of a "judge" that should be impeached for not knowing the meaning of words. The words "the finance of the educational interests of the state" in no way, shape, or form mention anything about "equal" education. Nor, for that matter, even equal opportunity for students. But, this allpowerful judge has taken the law into his own hands rather than upholding the law as written. Rule by one man rather than the rule of law. Peace and love, George.

Rather than have politicians or judges make a decision that, by its scope, has to be one-size-fits-all, let parents make the decision for their own children - implement a school choice program.
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Guys, This is, as of now, the best solution to a problem created by educrats over the last few years. Barring home school anyway. But, I imagine that vouchers from federal godgov will come with the same strings attached as are attached to government schools anyway. Peace and love, George.

If the Ark. Leg. forces Arkansans to "open their wallets" for education, they will be performing another of the many exposed tricks of politics; throwing money at a problem - ANY problem - has not necessarily proven to be the answer in all cases; especially education.

There are myriad stories of children being educated beyond the level of their peers in one-room schools with few books or other resources. What it takes is a staff of teachers who want to teach and will do whatever it takes to educate the kids. Money isn't necessarily the problem and, quite frankly, I would love to know just how much money is being thrown at the education system. So much money is being thrown at the system that all of our kids should be Rhodes scholars, not just barely scraping the bottom.

The Arkansas Legislature is the most incompetent of all the legislatures in the 50 states. Traditionally, the vast herd of legislators are incompetent buffoons who end up being controlled by a few intelligent criminals amongst their number. The legislature has been completely and overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats for 150 years. Originally the party in power were former Confederates, which was then followed by a corrupt political machine, which was then followed by cults of personality, which was followed by bureaucratic raiders, which is now an anarchy of incompetence. The office of Governor in this state has about as much power as the Governor of Texas but where Texas has a powerful Lt. Governor Arkansas has none.

The legislature this time around raised our taxes through the roof and STILL did not manage to keep the courts out of our wallet. Go figure.

Now that they have raised our state taxes skyhigh they will say that the Bush federal tax cuts did no good in spurring our economy here. Imagine that.

This never-ending Democratic monopoly government here has no idea why we cannot attract business or industry. Businesses always look at Arkansas and Texas and end up going to Texas. Wonder why? Could it have something to do with Arkansas having an income tax and Texas having none? Duh!

The legislature has had to give Texarkana a special "border city" tax break on the income tax because the Arkansas side was DRYING UP AND BLOWING AWAY. Nobody would build anything on the Arkansas side because THEY WOULD HAVE TO PAY THE INCOME TAX. The legislature is too dumb to understand that the pain of income tax IS SCALABLE TO THE WHOLE STATE. The effect occurs ALL OVER THE STATE....IT IS JUST MORE VISIBLY OBVIOUS in Texarkana since you can look at both sides of Stateline Avenue and SEE.

Thank you for listening, I'll go screaming into the night now.

I hate to bust bubbles here, but the No Child Left Behind federal law also allows the state takeover of public schools deemed "failing" by its standards. (For starters, all 20+ suburban school districts in the St. Louis area were recently declared "failing" by NCLB - which is ridiculous.)

NCLB also mandates payment of private tutorial services to bring students in "failing" districts up to par (after the districts have been deemed "failing" for a certain number of years.) What will happen when there's simply no more money in the state to do that?

You guessed it - the feds will force the raising of taxes, even when state constitutions (like MO's) say that taxes may *only* be raised when the people vote to do so.