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Florida,
a state with one of the lowest graduation rates in the nation, is also a state
with one of the strongest constitutional provisions for protecting the right to
education.
In
1998, voters demonstrated their commitment to Florida public schools by
approving an amendment to the state’s constitution that established a uniquely
high standard for public education in Florida. The amendment to Article IX Section 1 holds that the state has a
“paramount duty” to adequately provide a “uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and
high quality system of free public schools."
While
this amendment may stand in stark contrast to the realities of public education
in Florida, it has created a potential avenue for citizens to hold their state
accountable in honoring the human right to education.
The Realities of Public Education in Florida
More than
a decade after the 1998 amendment, the Florida public school system is still
far from meeting the uniform, high quality standards set forth by the state
constitution. According to the state’s standardized testing scores from 2012, almost half of the students enrolled in public schools are not performing
at grade level or higher in either reading or math, suggesting a serious lack
of quality education. The test scores further suggest highly unequal education
levels and achievement gaps between different income and racial groups: white
students performed significantly better than black students, and students not
qualifying for free or reduced lunch performed considerably better than those
that did qualify (i.e. students from families with higher incomes performed
better than those from lower income families).
Demographic
|
Reading
Scores at Grade Level or Higher
|
Math
Scores at Grade Level or Higher
|
Total
|
55%
|
57%
|
Black Students
|
37%
|
39%
|
White Students
|
66%
|
66%
|
Qualifying for Free or Reduced
Lunch
|
44%
|
46%
|
Not Qualifying for Free or
Reduced Lunch
|
71%
|
72%
|
When
compared to the rest of the nation, Florida’s education standards are even more
dismal. According to the Lawton Chiles Foundation, Florida is ranked 43rd in the
nation for high school graduation rates, 48th in ACT standardized test scores,
and 42nd in state spending on education. Only 3.1 percent of the state’s
resources are spent on education.
A New Hope for Public Education
While
Florida education and achievement levels continue to flounder, concerned
citizens and activists are pushing new methods to hold the state accountable
for improving education. According to hopeful advocates like Neil Chonin, an
attorney for the Southern Legal
Counsel, the 1998 amendment has opened a unique gateway for activism
through litigation.
“Each
state has different constitutional provisions regarding education,” said Chonin,
“and ours is one of the very few in the country that contain the language to
allow for legal action.”
In November
2009, a group of private citizens along with two education-focused nonprofits
decided to take advantage of the strong language found in the 1998 amendment
and moved to demand their right to quality public education once and for all.
With the help of Southern Legal Counsel, a nonprofit public interest firm,
these concerned parents, students, and general community members filed a formal
lawsuit against the State Board of Education for failing to provide students
with a uniform, high-quality public school system.
“Our goal
is to gather enough evidence and ask the court to declare that the current education
system in Florida is unconstitutional,” said Chonin. “Our markers and ranks are
horrible. The achievement gap is terrible. We want to win. We feel the state
should remedy the situation.”
The case,
known as Citizens for Strong Schools v.
Florida State Board of Education, is currently the only lawsuit in Florida
that makes a concerted effort to bring the right to quality education to the
forefront of state government concerns, while also demonstrating that citizens
can and should hold their governments accountable.
The
Florida Supreme Court finally authorized the case to proceed in December 2011, after
denying a number of attempts made by government agencies to dismiss the case. Other
cases that posed similar complaints against the State of Florida were
eventually dismissed, because of procedural loopholes and technicalities.
In light
of this history, the authorization of this case by the Florida Supreme Court
was seen as a huge step forward. As Mark McGriff, spokesman for Citizens
for Strong Schools,
stated in a press release: “We’re thrilled with the ruling.
It means state leaders can’t prevent us from having our day in court.”
Public Education as a Human Rights
Concern
While
Southern Legal Counsel will primarily center its arguments on the
constitutional language found in the 1998 amendment, the issue of public
education in Florida could also be examined using an international human rights
framework. The human right to education has been recognized by a number of
international human rights conventions such as the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, the Convention on Rights of the Child, and the International Covenant on
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
(ICESCR).
According
to the ICESCR’s Committee on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights,
nations have a fundamental duty to provide education that is available,
accessible, acceptable, and adaptable. Florida’s low-quality education and
unequal achievement scores across different race and income groups indicate a
potential breach in these requirements, especially the stipulations that
education is acceptable in terms of quality and without discrimination.
The
ICESCR also requires that education be acceptable in terms of cultural
appropriateness. This requirement is especially relevant in examining the
status of public education in Florida because of the state’s cultural
diversity. According to these human rights standards, the state should be particularly
sensitive and accommodating to ensure that the education available to Florida’s
diverse immigrant populations is acceptable. However, according to standardized testing scores from 2012, only 10 percent of the
eighth grade students enrolled in ELL curriculum (Curriculum for English
Language Learners) can read at grade level or higher, and only 23 percent can
do math at grade level or higher.
These
incredibly low percentages suggest that the specialized curriculum aimed at
instructing nonnative speakers may not be meeting the educational needs of
these children.
If
successful, Citizens for Strong Schools
v. Florida State Board of Education could be a major step forward in the
fight for high quality education in Florida. In the Southern Legal Counsel’s formal complaint they noted that the state has
responsibilities in educational policymaking, budgeting, operation, and
supervision that it has not fulfilled to meet the education amendment
standards. By explicitly identifying these responsibilities and holding the
state accountable through the tool of litigation, this case has the opportunity
to strengthen and legitimize the fight for better education policies in the
future.
In other
words, if the case is successful in officially declaring Florida’s school
system as “unconstitutional,” it will provide a firmer ground for advocates to
demand real changes that will improve the education system, and transform it into
a constitutional one. And by achieving this uniquely high constitutional
standard for public education, Florida will also be well on its way to meeting
international human rights standards for public education.
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