The nation is watching to see what happens with New York City school finance. After a dozen years in the courts, the case of Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) v. New York is now back at the Court of Appeals for a final judgment about the added appropriations that the legislature must send to the city. This judgment is, however, unlikely to be the final statement. If the legislature must come up with an incredible sum of money close to the more than $5 billion currently on the table, it may well balk, precipitating a true constitutional crisis.

After the Kansas City experiment, I figured that nobody with a straight face would suggest "throwing money at schools."

“Arkansas Student Accountability and Educational Accountability Act of 2003,” Testimony before the Education Committee, House of Representatives, State of Arkansas, March 26, 2003. Arkansas is following some two dozen other states that have had to respond to a court finding that its current financing system is unconstitutional.

Between 1992 and 2011, the improvement in achievement by Wisconsin students was the fourth worst of the 41 states for which data are available. In that relatively short time, Wisconsin moved from sixth to 14th in the rankings. This signaled a fundamental set of problems ranging from the future earnings of Wisconsin students to the growth and prosperity of the entire state.

New York City's schools chancellor, with the support of Mayor Bloomberg, wants to release the value-added test score results for 12,000 teachers - revealing for parents and the public the student learning gains attributable to each instructor. News organizations have requested the data; the city is ready to comply. The city's United Federation of Teachers has challenged the release, and a judge will decide next month. I've spent many years looking carefully at such data. I know it can be incendiary; I know it has flaws.

LITTLE ROCK — Lawsuits aimed at compelling legislatures to increase school funding have been filed in some 42 states. Courts have found for the plaintiffs in more than half of the cases on the grounds that schools are not "adequately" funded. These decisions have, in effect, changed the way education appropriations are made, moving decision making from legislatures to the courts. Instead of flowing from the political process, determinations of adequate appropriations come from judgeswho are informed by paid consultants. Recently, adequacy plaintiffs have suffered some serious setbacks.

The PISA results came out recently, and they were greeted in the normal manner: The vast majority of U.S. citizens, both educators and populace, presumed that the discussion was about a bell tower in Italy and went on to something else. Germany was at the other extreme. Virtually every local newspaper covered the results on its front page.

Solution Two: Focus on School Incentives. Same Amount of Money Should Yield Better Results by Eric A.