Canadian humorist Steven Leacock once told a story about a jockey who became so upset over bad news that he leaped on his horse and rode off in all directions. According to this author, that action well summarizes the condition of the State of Arkansas after receiving a Supreme Court order to provide an equal and adequate education to the children of the state. The first direction was taken by the governor, who claimed that the court decision demanded large-scale consolidation. A legislative committee took the second direction. It employed two out-of-state consultants who did not mention the matter of consolidation and were far from the governor's position, recommending $847 million in added expenditures, which did not include facilities. A group of larger district superintendents accounted for the third direction. They based their proposal for consolidation on what they called efficiency. The rural schools took a fourth direction. They opposed consolidation but demanded the equal and adequate funding ordered by the state. The plaintiff in the finance suit, Lake View, a tiny African American district, went in a fifth direction. It noted that it had brought the suit not to be consolidated or called inefficient but to end the savage inequalities in Arkansas education still being ignored by others. The new law passed following this lawsuit, the author contends, repeats the same error as its predecessors: It retains the idea that equity means an equal per student state aid distribution. Making variations in the aid per pupil on the basis of their percentage in a school district rather than an individual school disadvantages poor children in a largely poor school in a large district.