Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher has ordered the state legislature to fix everything he has concluded is wrong with the state’s public education system. It has 180 days. And if the judge is not satisfied, lawmakers will have to get back to work to fix it right.

That is the essence of the decision Judge Moukawsher issued Wednesday.

Whether the voters who elect those legislators agree with the judge’s assessment of the problems or with his verdict on the eventual solutions is apparently irrelevant. The order takes no account of the political realities of passing legislation, such as the compromises necessary to round up votes and the pragmatic acceptance of the possible when the desirable is out of reach.

The case leading to the extremely broad ruling by Moukawsher dates back 11 years, brought by a coalition of parents and educators called the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding. The coalition contended the state was failing to meet its obligation to provide a public education, particularly when it came to the needs of inner city students.

“There shall always be free public elementary and secondary schools in the state. The General Assembly shall implement this principle by appropriate legislation,” the Connecticut Constitution simply states.

Connecticut does provide a free education, paying for it with a mix of state money raised through the income, sales and other state taxes and local funds raised through property taxation. After a Superior Court judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2007, concluding how the state funds and manages education should be addressed through the political process and not the courts, the Supreme Court in March 2010 revived it in a 4-3 ruling.

The slim majority concluded that the constitutional language implied an “adequate” free education for all. Deciding adequacy fell to Moukawsher, who presided over a trial that stretched more than six months, with 50 witnesses and 826 full exhibits, leading to the 254-page decision.

In large part, Moukawsher’s conclusions of what ails Connecticut schools are on target. It is the scope of the order, and whether this should be the responsibility of the court, that is cause for concern.

Beyond a bare minimum, a threshold Moukawsher concluded Connecticut well surpasses, it is beyond the scope of the court to determine how much money government should spend on education, he ruled. With that we agree.

However, to assure constitutional adequacy, the system of funding must be rational and verifiable. Connecticut’s current system for funding education is anything but, with no objective formula for where to direct money, producing allocations often dependent on political deal making.

Moukawsher pointed to a system in which $1 billion is spent annually on school construction and renovation, with no state assessment whether the projects make sense in the context of educational needs, while the state spends only $2 billion on direct aid to operate local schools. For example, the small town of North Stonington is preparing to spend $38.5 million on a school project, with about $17 million in state reimbursement. Meanwhile, neighboring Stonington has ample space and a relatively new high school to educate North Stonington students.

He cites a “dysfunctional” teacher evaluation system “that has left virtually every teacher in the state — 98 percent — being marked as proficient and even exemplary.” Moukawsher concludes, “A virtually useless evaluation system is constitutionally inadequate.”

Also inadequate and so unconstitutional, Moukawsher found, is the “lack of a substantial and rational high-school-graduation standard.” High percentages of students, particularly in inner cities, are presented with diplomas even though they lack “basic literacy and numeracy skills.”

Moukawsher points to a 71.5 percent graduation rate in Bridgeport, but 61.5 percent of those graduates are not college or career ready; in New Haven 75.5 percent graduate, but 64.5 percent are not academically prepared; and in New London the numbers are 71.1 percent graduate, with only 55 percent career ready.

The ruling finds special education spending is irrational, crowding out funds available for general education, but with no consistent standards for which students get special help.

“In 2013-14 federal, state, and local spending on special education in Connecticut reached $1.82 billion when annual basic state school aid was roughly $2 billion. Almost all of that $1.82 billion comes from local government …,” he writes.

Judge Moukawsher wants a rational state educational aid formula; a standard for getting a high school diploma; cogent standards for hiring, firing, evaluating and paying teachers; and educational services standards for special education.

Reaching this point shows the failure of the political system, yet trying to impose such broad change smacks of judicial overreach. Eleven years in, this decision could well produce more litigation, delays and a constitutional standoff between the judicial and legislative branches.