and economically better-off families are more likely to hire tutors, meet with teachers, use
“proper” English in the household, and create educationally meaningful leisure time for their
children (Ibid, p. 2122). Further, lower-income students suffer from a wide range of health-
related problems compared to economically better-off students, including poorer vision and oral
hygiene, more asthma and lead poisoning, poorer nutrition, less adequate pediatric care, and
more exposure to smoke (Rothstein, 2004, p. 3). The combined influence of all of these
obstacles faced by students in poverty is, according to Richard Rothstein, “probably huge”
(Rothstein, 2004, p. 3).
Further, contextual variables such as peer influences and classroom environment have
measurable impacts on educational achievement levels (Kahlenberg, 2001; Rothstein, 2004).
Students who attend schools with higher poverty rates are exposed to more lower-performing
students. Teachers also face more discipline-related problems in high-poverty schools, which
present a major obstacle to academic achievement. Consequently, high-poverty schools are an
extremely complex, multi-dimensional problem.
Context of the Minneapolis NAACP Case
In many respects, the citizens and institutions of Minneapolis demonstrate a significant level of
concern for the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS). For example, city voters have consistently
shown a willingness to support increasing funds for the city’s schools by supporting excess
school levies earmarked for additional spending in the MPS in each of the three instances since
the levy was first created in 1990. In the most recent of these in November 2000, voters
overwhelmingly supported a $42 million school levy increase to keep classes small and pay for
early childhood education programs. Seventy-three percent of voters supported the levy
increase, which carried every precinct in the city, and received nearly 80 percent support in some
precincts (Shah, 2000). In fact, because of state educational funding policies and the tax
3