Anchor Lead:
A free public education - available to everyone - is something Americans take pretty much for granted. It began as the dream of 18th century social reformers and grew to become a universal right.

But historically there's been a gap between what the public wants their schools to do -- and what they're willing to pay for.

In the opening segment of our series "The Learning Curve," KPLU's Liam Moriarty takes a look back at the history that led up to the challenges faced by public schools today.

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The Jore (pronounced "jury") Schoolhouse in 1927. Today it stands refurbished on the campus of Eastern Washington University. Picture courtesy EWU .		SCHNEIDER: "OK, children. Come on in, Time for school." LM: Richard Schneider rings a hundred-year-old hand bell in front of a clapboard one-room schoolhouse. SCHNEIDER: "As you enter the schoolhouse, you come into the cloakroom." LM: Schneider is curator of the Crow Valley Schoolhouse Museum on Orcas Island. The simple wood building is restored to its original 18-88 condition, complete with wrought-iron desks and blackboards made of actual wooden boards painted black. Schneider reads from an interview with a former student who recalls walking miles to the school during the winter. SCHNEIDER: "Our feet would be wet so the teacher would take our shoes off and have us put our shoes around the stove to dry off. There was always a big fire in that big old stove. Chilblains? Oh, I used to get chilblains."

LM: The idea of free schooling for all citizens was discussed by early American thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Rush and vigorously pushed in the 18-20s and 30s by Massachussets lawmaker Horace Mann. Seattle attorney and education historian Hugh Spitzer says Mann won support by promoting universal public schooling as necessary for the young nation's political -- and economic - health.

SPITZER: "He said you can't have an effective industrial economy if you don't have people who can read instruction manuals. So in order to have a vibrant expanding economic system, you have to have a well educated workforce."

LM: Through the 18-hundreds, state after state set up publicly-financed systems of what were called "common schools" based on Horace Mann's model. When the Washington Territory became a state in 1889, it included in its constitution this remarkable language:

CERNA: "It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste or sex."

LM: Despite this boldly idealistic statement, paying for public schools was left almost totally in the hands of local school districts. With the passage of the Barefoot Schoolboy Act in 1895, the state legislature agreed to send local schools 6 dollars annually for each student enrolled. But the lion's share of the burden for funding public education remained on the shoulders of local taxpayers for most of the next century.

It all came to a head in the mid 1970s. Within just a few turbulent years, schools saw teacher's strikes, conflict over forced busing for de-segregation and a crippling budget crisis.

In 1975, taxpayer resentment boiled over as voters in more than 60 Washington school districts refused to pass local school levies. Suddenly, hundreds of the state's schools lost as much as half their funding. A desperate Seattle school board filed a lawsuit against the state.

HALL: "The board decided it didn't have a choice."

LM: Camden Hall was the school district's attorney in the case. The suit charged that the Legislature had failed to fulfill its obligation under the "paramount duty" clause of the state constitution.

HALL: "Y'know, if support for the public schools is the paramount duty of the state, what does that mean? Paramount means paramount, it's primary, it's first and fore most duty and the state isn't following that."

LM: There was a dramatic three-month-long trial in Thurston County Superior Court. The judge's sweeping decision made front page headlines around the state.

(FX) NEWSCAST SOUND: "Dateline, Olympia. In a suit filed against the state by the Seattle School District, Judge Robert Doran ruled that the use of special levies to finance any part of basic education was unconstitutional."

Former Seattle School Superintendent (1976-81) David L. Moberly, circa 1976. Picture courtesy Seattle Public Schools Archives, #008-028.

LM: Although the state appealed the Doran decision, it was later upheld by the Washington Supreme Court. But even before that, the legislature saw the writing on the wall. Lawmakers overhauled the state's education funding formula and allocated hundreds of millions more to support public schools. Soon, the portion of local school budgets that was funded by the state rose from an average of two-thirds to nearly 90 percent. But while Olympia began to send more money to school districts, lawmakers also put a ceiling on how much local voters could tax themselves to supplement the state money. This limited the ability of Seattle and other more affluent districts to pay for programs that weren't part of the state's "basic education" package. MOBERLY: "I think that the people that suffered under it was the King County wealth..." LM: David Moberly was Seattle school superintendent from 1976 to 1981. MOBERLY: "You don't have the disparities between the wealthy districts and the poorer districts. So if I was looking at it from a statewide level, I'd say, yeah, we came out of it pretty well because more kids got basic funding."

LM: Educators and legislators continued their perennial tug-of-war over money. But by the early 1980s a growing chorus of critics was saying the quality of the education many children were getting was deteriorating.

A spate of alarming reports detailed a nationwide drop in standardized test scores. And public attention began to turn toward how well schools were doing the job of preparing the next generation for taking its place in society.

Liam Moriarty, K-P-L-U News