Read the whole thing, but this is where Carney gets his ass beaten raw by Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster:
State officials have moved to dismiss the complaint. In a striking concession, they do not argue the complaint’s allegations fail to plead that Delaware’s public schools are failing to educate Disadvantaged Students. They agree that “not all of Delaware’s public schools are serving Delaware students the way they need to.
Instead, they take the bold position that the Education Clause requires that the State provide students with a meaningful education. They say that the Education Clause only requires that the system be “general,” in the sense of generally encompassing all of Delaware’s students, and “efficient,” in the sense of using centralization to reduce administrative costs and yield economic efficiencies. Under this interpretation, as long as the State established a state-wide program and labeled it “a system of public schools,” then the State would satisfy the Education Clause. At the extreme, the State could corral Disadvantaged Students into warehouses, hand out one book for every fifty students, assign some adults to maintain discipline, and tell the students to take turns reading to themselves. Because the State does not think the Education Clause says anything about the quality of education, even this dystopian hypothetical would satisfy their version of the constitutional standard.
Indeed, under a strict interpretation of the State’s argument, this nightmare scenario would be constitutionally preferable to the current system, because it would be equally general (it would cover all students) and much more efficient (it would generate additional cost savings). In my view, the plain language of the Education Clause mandates that the State establish a system of free public schools, and it uses the term “schools” in accordance with its ordinary and commonly understood meaning as a place where students obtain an education.
