Opinion ID: 2254540
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 12

Heading: Sound Basic Education

Text: The New York Constitution does not mandate an educational system of a certain quality in express terms. The relevant constitutional text simply reads: The legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free common schools, wherein all the children of this state may be educated (NY Const, art XI, § 1). [1] The words sound basic education, which have become the catchphrase for an inferred constitutional guarantee of an education of a certain quality, first appeared in our decision in Board of Educ., Levittown Union Free School Dist. v Nyquist (57 NY2d 27, 48 [1982] [ Levittown ]). The plaintiffs and intervenors in Levittown sought a declaration that the State's school financing system, then as now comprised of local taxation and state aid, violated the Equal Protection Clauses of the State and US Constitutions and the State Constitution's Education Article because of the funding disparities between wealthier and poorer school districts. We rejected the equal protection claims on the ground that the State had demonstrated a rational basis for its school financing system: the preservation and promotion of local control of education ( id. at 44). We further observed that the Education Article focuses on a State-wide system assuring minimal acceptable facilities and services, not a system assuring equal educational facilities and services throughout the State ( id. at 47). We recognized that the State undeniably had in place a system of free schools and a statutory framework requiring minimum days of school attendance, specific courses, textbooks and qualifications for teaching and nonteaching staff. Accordingly, [i]f what is made available by this system (which is what is to be maintained and supported) may properly be said to constitute an education, the constitutional mandate is satisfied. Interpreting the term education, as we do, to connote a sound basic education, we have no difficulty in determining that the constitutional requirement is being met in this State, in which it is said without contradiction that the average per pupil expenditure exceeds that in all other States but two ( id. at 48 [emphasis added]). We were careful to register our reluctance to interfere with the Legislature's funding allocations among competing imperatives by mandating an even higher priority for education funding in the absence, possibly, of gross and glaring inadequacy ( id. ). The suggestion in Levittown of a possibly justiciable claim became a reality in Campaign for Fiscal Equity v State of New York (86 NY2d 307 [1995] [ CFE I ]). Because the case came to us in the procedural posture of a motion to dismiss, all the complaint's averments were deemed true ( see CFE I, 86 NY2d at 318). We did not, however, measure the allegations of gross and glaring inadequacy against the constitutional standard to determine if the complaint stated a cause of action under the Education Article. In fact, we refused to attempt to definitively specify what the constitutional concept and mandate of a sound basic education entails ( id. at 317). Instead, we crafted a template (the basic literacy, calculating and verbal skills necessary to enable [children] to function as civic participants capable of voting and serving as jurors) for the trial court to utilize to establish the meaning of a sound basic education after discovery and trial ( id. at 317-318). Thus was a constitutional standard transformed into the end product of a trial at which experts aired differing views [2] of what is required for minimal educational proficiency and employment success in a competitive urban society. The trial court would be left with policy choices to make, not factual contentions to resolve. The trial court would have to fashion the constitutional concept and mandate of [what] a sound basic education entails on the testimony of competing experts ( id. at 317). [3] The risks inherent in this novel approach to constitutional adjudication have now been realized. [4] The trial court modified the template to reflect a dynamic understanding of the constitutional imperative that must evolve with the changing demands of a modern world (187 Misc 2d 1, 16 [2001]). A sound basic education was expanded to require an engaged, capable voter who has the intellectual tools to evaluate complex issues, such as campaign finance reform, tax policy, and global warming ( id. at 14). Furthermore, the trial court understood our template to encompass the opportunity to obtain productive employment or pursue higher education ( id. at 15). The template was transmuted from a constitutional minimum into the aspirational, largely subjective standards expressed by the lower courts and the dissent in Levittown, representing what typically one would desire as the outcome of an entire public education processto produce useful, functioning citizens in a modern society ( CFE I, 86 NY2d at 329 [Levine, J., concurring]). Today the majority defines a sound basic education as a meaningful high school education, one which prepares [young people] to function productively as civic participants (majority op at 908). While unimpeachable, what exactly does this supposed refinement of a sound basic education mean? Does a meaningful high school education entail a high school diploma, requiring completion of the 12th grade? Evidently not, because the majority notes that a sound basic education should not be pegged to the eighth or ninth grade, or indeed to any particular grade level (majority op at 906). This begs the question of how the courts (or the other branches) are expected to figure out whether the majority's constitutional minimum (i.e., a sound basic education defined as a meaningful high school education that prepares students to function productively as civic participants) has been met if completion of the 12th grade and graduation are irrelevant. Similarly, the majority observes that a high school level education is now all but indispensable for employment (majority op at 906), without suggesting how a job applicant establishes that level of competence absent a diploma. Further, if the majority means to imply that some quantum of high school education short of graduation comprises a meaningful high school education, how is this measured other than by relating it to completion of some grade level lower than the 12th? The requirements for a high school diploma are defined by the State Education Department (8 NYCRR 100.5 [2003]). Students who entered ninth grade in 2001-2002 and those thereafter (except students with disabilities) will only be eligible for a high school diploma upon satisfactorily meeting Regents Learning Standards (RLSs) (8 NYCRR 100.5 [a] [3] [2003]). Thus, if a meaningful high school education does, in fact, mean a high school diploma, the majority's standard cede[s] to a state agency the power to define a constitutional right (majority op at 907)a result it emphatically rejects. Although the majority resists adopting the Regents Learning Standards to define a sound basic education or a meaningful high school education, the Board of Regents is, in fact, the constitutionally designated education policymaking body in our state. The adoption of regulations with respect to graduation requirements, including basic competency examinations, to establish a standard that would make a high school diploma in this State a meaningful credential of the graduate, is clearly within the authority and power of [the Board of Regents and Commissioner of Education] ( Matter of Board of Educ. of Northport-E. Northport Union Free School Dist. v Ambach, 90 AD2d 227, 231-232 [3d Dept 1982], affd 60 NY2d 758 [1983]). Further, the majority offers no objective reference point as an alternative to the Regents Learning Standards. In order to determine whether inputs are sufficient to avoid a constitutional violation, the majority must look to outputs correlated to an objective reference point. [5] All traditional education ends in assessment: an examination result, grade advancement, or graduation. In short, the majority has articulated a constitutional standard without any way to measure whether it has been (or may be) met. The outputs section of the majority opinion underscores the problematic nature of the constitutional standard of its devising. First, my colleagues presume[] that a dropout has not received a sound basic education and rely on evidence to support this presumption (majority op at 914). They then observe that between a quarter and half of all dropouts leave after completing four years of high school (majority op at 915 n 7). If dropouts by definition do not receive a meaningful high school education, then it logically follows that the recipient of a high school diploma is the only student who does. Students either graduate from high school or drop outthere is no middle ground where a meaningful high school education makes any sense. Next, the majority criticizes the probative value of test results offered by the State on an assortment of commercially-available nationally-normed reading and math tests administered to children in City elementary schools because the results were referenced to a norm rather than to achievement levels (majority op at 918). Even though New York City's elementary school students rank in the middle nationally in terms of the reading and mathematical skills of their peers, the majority views these tests results as irrelevant because [t]he State has not shown how to translate these results into proof that the schools are delivering a sound basic education, properly defined  (majority op at 918 [emphasis added]). I fail to grasp why scores reflecting a proficiency for New York City students which is equal to, or better than, that of half of their peers nationally still falls short of a constitutional minimum. Lastly, the majority discounts the Regents Competency Tests (RCTs), the state prerequisite for a local high school diploma, because the RCTs assess an eighth or ninth grade level in reading and a sixth-to-eighth grade level in math and thus do not prove that [students] have received a meaningful high school education (majority op at 917). But students who receive a local diploma have successfully completed the twelfth grade. They simply have not taken Regents exams in their courses. The indispensable nature of the outputs in determining whether the New York City public school system currently or prospectively provides the opportunity for a meaningful high school education cannot be overstated. Here, the majority definitively specifies only what the acceptable educational output is not. It is definitely not the RCTs, which are being phased out in favor of the RLSs, because they are insufficiently ambitious to comport with modern-day understandings of what a sound basic education encompasses (and, if measured by the RCTs, the New York City public school system does not violate the quality standard of the Education Article). But the majority also balks at adopting the RLSs, which represent too ambitious a minimum at present for the ever-evolving constitutional principle at stake. In any event, the RLSs are not a proper constitutional standard because they may bend, grow or retreat at the will of a state agency. The majority's dilemma is easy to appreciate. Recognizing the Judiciary's limitations as an education policymaker, my colleagues are reluctant to create a detailed quality standard by which to define the State's obligation under the Education Article. But they are also unwilling to cede to the Board of Regents and the State Education Department the power to define (and, in the future, redefine) what is claimed to be a constitutional principle (albeit a dynamic one), not an education policy decision. As a result, the standard that the majority has createda meaningful high school education that prepares students to function productively as civic participantsis illusory. It surely is no more definite than the template enunciated for a sound basic education in CFE I, unless, of course, the majority, in fact, intends to equate a meaningful high school education with a high school diploma. In that event, my colleagues have, as a practical matter, adopted the RLSs and the Regents diploma as defining the constitutional minimumfor the present. [6]