PROVIDENCE — Rhode Island Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green said last week that she believes voters should be asked to give students a constitutional right to a fair and equitable education during the November election.
Infante-Green expressed support for amending the state constitution during a press conference Wednesday to announce that the state is creating a civic readiness task force to consider ways to strengthen civics education in the state.
A group of students filed a federal lawsuit in 2018, arguing that their school systems had failed to prepare them to participate in civic life. The lawsuit was dismissed, and the decision was upheld by the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit earlier this year. The plaintiffs were considering appealing their case to the US Supreme Court, but instead reached an agreement with the state to bolster civics education.
Infante-Green said the state plans to establish a diploma seal of civic readiness for graduating seniors who have completed a capstone project on civics, and a civics award program for middle schoolers.
Infante-Green’s support for a constitutional right to a fair and equitable education is not part of the agreement, but she said it’s about time that the question is put to voters.
“We should have a legal right to an education,” Infante-Green said. “It’s what this nation is built on.”
The Rhode Island Senate approved the ballot question on March 15, but it hasn’t come up for a vote in the House.
It’s unclear exactly what a constitutional right to a fair and equitable education would mean for the state, but Infante-Green acknowledged that it would likely allow families to file lawsuits challenging the quality of schooling their children have received. That could lead to funding formula or curriculum changes.
The students who sued the state were seeking to have the courts decide that they have a constitutional right to an adequate civics education, a concept that state leaders say they support even though they successfully argued for the lawsuit to be dismissed.
In dismissing the lawsuit, US District Judge William E. Smith wrote that the plaintiffs were asking the court to “declare rights that have not been recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States, or, with a single exception, any other federal court in recent history.”
But Smith also made it clear that he agreed with the students. “This case does not represent a wild-eyed effort to expand the reach of substantive due process,” he wrote, “but rather a cry for help from a generation of young people who are destined to inherit a country which we — the generation currently in charge — are not stewarding well.”
Michael Rebell, the executive director of the Center for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University, said he and Infante-Green were discussing a resolution to the lawsuit even before she officially started her job as education commissioner. She previously worked for the New York State Education Department.
“They were very good partners in the negotiation,” Rebell said.
Rebell praised Jennifer Wood, executive director of the Rhode Island Center for Justice, for her work on the lawsuit, and said he hopes Rhode Island will be an example for the rest of the country.
“The essence of a Democracy is being able to have respectful conversations with people with whom you disagree,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about, and that’s what we don’t have in Washington. I hope we can get it in Providence and throughout Rhode Island, and I hope this is going to spread throughout the country.”
Dan McGowan can be reached at dan.mcgowan@globe.com. Follow him @danmcgowan.