Fundamental Right to an Adequately Funded Education: The Role of State Standards (Part 2)

This is the second in a series on the Fundamental Right to an Adequately Funded Education in Minnesota as contemplated by the Skeen decision.   Understanding the Minnesota Supreme Court's vision of an adequate education that meets all state standards is critically important, because unfortunately, there have been, and continue to be, nefarious efforts to characterize the Supreme Court's vision of those standards as mediocre and undemanding.   Nothing could be further from the truth. 

In the 1980's advocates for education in a number of states launched suits demanding that their state legislatures reform their public education systems so that they delivered a constitutionally adequate education.   And, in many states, Supreme Courts developed court fashioned guidance on what an adequate education would entail.  In a pivotal case --Rose v. Council for Better Education (Kentucky, 1989) -- the Kentucky Supreme Court struck down the state’s entire education system as unconstitutional,  articulating a set of seven guiding “Rose standards”  including for example communication skills, knowledge of government, and vocational preparation.  The Rose court ordered the legislature to implement legislation consistent with the seven Rose Standards, and then to distribute the necessary funding.  As we shall see, the Skeen Court approached this differently because of what the Skeen parties conveyed to the Supreme Court. 

In the important McCleary decisions (Washington, 2012 and subsequent enforcement rulings) the Washington Supreme Court explicitly based its adequacy analysis on the already existing Washington Basic Education Act of 1977, as later amended (notably in 2009 and 2010) and adopted it as the framework for an adequate education.  In a series of enforcement actions, the Washington Supreme Court ordered the legislature to determine the revenues required to deliver the education required by the Basic Education Act.  (The 1977 Act was in part the product of prior litigation in Washington.)   The McCleary court accepted the 1977 Act as consistent with minimum constitutional standards, but found that that the Washington constitution demanded that the legislature must provide enough funding to meet those existing standards. 

In the New York case -- Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) v. State (2003)-- the appellate Court defined adequacy as the resources necessary for a “sound basic education.”which was operationalized as basic literacy, numeracy, and verbal skills,s kills necessary for civic participation (jury service, voting) and ability to obtain employment and compete in a global economy. The Court ordered the legislature to commission a cost-study to estimate the amount of funding required to deliver that sound basic education. In all of these cases, and in virtually every other case, the plaintiffs in state constitutional cases were representing students and schools serving disadvantaged students who were clearly receiving an inadequate education. That study was completed by Management Analysis and Planning (MAP). 

The Skeen case arrived at the Minnesota Supreme Court in a different posture.  Importantly, the Minnesota Skeen case was brought by districts serving comparatively advantaged students with above average performance statistics.  Let's take a look at what actually happened in the Skeen case, and how the "all state standards" came into existence. 

Minnesota's Historically Weak State Standards 

When Skeen was decided in 1983, a standards movement was sweeping national public education to redress what was widely regarded as a "rising tide of mediocrity" in public education.    As of 1983, Minnesota was stila radical local option state, with very weak state standards allowing local districts flexibility to set their own standards. Minnesota had no state proficiency requirements, no minimum rigor requirements.  Graduation standard were largely determined by the school districts themselves.  For example,  Minnesota’s state requirement for elementary education merely included a minimum length of school day, a minimum number of school days per year, and certain licensing  and staff ratio requirements.  State standards did not require all students to be able to read by third grade, nor was there a state math, science or reading literacy requirement for elementary students.  As a practical matter, the level of rigor was almost entirely delegated to each school district.

For middle and junior high schools, the state simply established a chart prescribing the minimum number of hours required for each subject, along with certain staffing requirements. The state thus allowed local school boards to set their graduation requirements, and that meant that by local option, students could graduate without adequate reading, math, science or other skills.  There was no LEAPs Act; there were no proficiency requirements for math and reading, no World’s Best Workforce law, and no state requirement for rigorous standards and rigorous curriculum. 

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the Skeen Court accepted Minnesota's minimal standards as constitutionally adequate.  We shall shortly see that the Supreme Court did not approve Minnesota's 1983 standards as constitutional.  On the contrary, none of the Skeen party participants even challenged the constitutionality of those standards: instead, they stipulated that those standards should govern Skeen's case, and they agreed that all of the school districts were meeting those state standards.  Implicitly recognizing the weakness of those state standards, the Attorney General actually represented tto the Supreme Court that the legislature was replacing them with rigorous outcome based standards that would measure what students learned. 

Skeen Plaintiffs Stipulate that Their Districts Meet All State Standards

The Skeen case was brought by the Association of Stable and Growing Districts. These were largely outer-ring suburban districts characterized by rapid growth on the suburban/rural fringe, relatively stronger household wealth but weaker tax base per pupil.  Their membership excluded  the big urban districts and  also excluded some of the more wealthy inner ring suburbs.  Skeen was thus an exceptionally unusual educational rights litigation, because all other state suits were brought by  districts with high poverty and minority populations.   

Twenty-four intervenor districts joined the Skeen case to oppose the Skeen plaintiffs position. These 24 included property tax rich inner-ring suburbs and Iron Range schools with stronger tax bases.   The opponents to the Skeen Plaintiffs pointed out that despite their financial challenges, all of the plaintiff districts were able to meet Minnesota's very modest state educational standards, standards which had little to do with students proficiency, or lack thereof.  The Skeen plaintiffs signed an agreement, (a legal stipulation), which became central to the Skeen Court's decision and fostered Court's adoption of the "all state standards" requirement.  The Skeen plaintiff districts stipulation agreed that all Skeen districts'  students were receiving an education that met all state standards, which the stipulation defined as:

“all educational requirements for themselves and their students established by the Minnesota Legislature, the State Board of Education, and the Commissioner and the Department of Education”  (Skeen Parties Stipulation in Skeen v State.) 

All state standards, thus included statutes (that is "established by the legislature"), regulations and policy (that is established by the Commissioner and the Board of Education)  Although Minnesota's state standard were so weak,   had they been challenged, surely they could not have passed constitutional muster as conferring an adequate education, but nobody in the Skeen case challenged the legitimacy of those standards, because the legislature had already abandoned the old standards and was in the process of replacing them with new ones.  The Skeen plaintiffs did not even bring an educational adequacy case; they demanded instead that every school district was entitled to equal access to the same revenue per student. 

 State Relies on Admission that  Plaintiff Districts Were Meeting All State Standards

Based on this stipulation, the state and the advantaged intervenor districts argued to the Supreme Court that: 

1) At most, the state’s constitutional obligation was to provide enough funding so that students in the Skeen districts were receiving an education that meets all state standards.   

 (2)  The legislature, not the courts, must decide what an adequate education by establishing standards for the districts and their students.    

(3)  The legislature was in the process of mandating new outcome based proficiency standards which would measure what students learned, rather than what courses they took, or what they were taught.  State standards were being reworked to measure learning, not teaching.  This last representation led the Supreme Court to conclude that the legislature's constitutional funding obligation required appropriation of enough funding to districts to afford each student with an adequate education meeting all state standards.  

Attorney General Commits to the Supreme Court that New State Standards 
Will be Rigorous and Require Student Proficiency

To recap, by the time the Skeen case reached the Supremen Court, under the influence of the national standards movement, and Nation at Risk, the legislature had ordered the Minnesota Department of Education to implement a new set of proficiency-based outcome-based state learning standards.  The State of Minnesota’s Skeen brief told the Supreme Court that the state standards that would govern districts in future years would be proficiency-based, outcome based, rather than based on the amount of time students spent in class.  The State’s brief emphasize that state standards were about to become rigorous: The State’s brief explained: 

The trial court erroneously decided to base its decision on inputs rather than upon analysis of whether students are learning what they should be learning because it believed that outcomes are not as easily measured as inputs are.  What is easiest almost always is not what is right. In fact, some important outcome-type measures are already easily quantifiable: graduation rates, post-high school success in education and employment, and achievement of some learner goals. Moreover, there is uncontroverted testimony in the record that the state is moving rapidly toward being better able to use outcome-based standards to compare districts and students, much the same as inputs measures were used to do such comparisons in the past.”  State of Minnesota Skeen Reply Brief. P 6-7.  

Under this new approach, that is requiring all students to learn at high levels regardless of demographics and student need, different districts would need different funding levels.   Hence, the Skeen plaintiffs' demand for funding equality would not deliver funding necessary to deliver an adequate education to each student. The State’s Skeen brief accordingly argued that the measure of constitutional adequacy should be based on the new proficiency standards under current development, because the State should be striving for 

adequacy of education defined in outcome-based terms as "that educational opportunity needed. in contemporary setting to equip a child for his role as a citizen and as a competitor in the labor market.  Reply brief Note 10.  

Since 1983, the legislature has implemented its commitment in Skeen, to implement rigorous standards based on what students actually learn.  But it has utterly failed to correlate its funding to those new standards. In fact, forty plus years after the Supreme Court required the legislature to provide districts with enough funding to afford each student with an adequate education that meets all state standards, the legislature has never undertaken to collect data on the amount of revenue required to deliver those standards.

There can be no question that the Supreme Court rested its decision to adopt a constitutional adequacy standard based upon the Attorney General's representation that the new state standards would be predicated on what students actually learned.   The brief explained:

 Minnesota is also a national leader in the implementation of outcome based education programs and learning methods. Outcome based education, which focuses on what students need to know to function in society, is regarded by state and national educators as being essential to the success of students in the next century.  

In summary, the Supreme Court adopted the "all state standards" test to set the constitutional standard based on new outcome based proficiency standards.  The fundamental right was based on the funding needed to provide each student with an adequate education that would meet those standards.  In subsequent posts we will argue the state legislature, the Governor, the Attorney General, and even constitutional plaintiffslost sight of the importance of the rigorous all state standards requirement.