ABSTRACT
Kentucky stagnated in the backwater of public education until a maelstrom of judicial, executive, and legislative forces propelled the state into the vanguard of reform. In 1989, the Kentucky Supreme Court’s findings in Rose v. Council for Better Education, Inc. struck down the existing system of public school funding as violative of a state constitutional mandate that all students be provided with adequate educations. This unprecedented ruling ushered in needed changes in public education. With the General Assembly acting as architect, the Governor signed into law the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), perhaps the most comprehensive structural reform in the last decade (Walker 1990:1).
