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D.C. State Board of Education (SBOE) Vice President Jacque Patterson, fresh off the campaign trail, said he will soon recommend a resolution aimed at holding the D.C. government legally accountable for providing every public school student with a high-quality education.
If the state board follows Patterson’s recommendation during a working meeting scheduled for this week, then representatives will be able to vote on a resolution, titled The Civil Right to a High-Quality Education Resolution of 2024, as early as Dec. 11.
“This was a working proof for open dialogue about education as a civil right,” Patterson, a member of the state board’s Education as a Civil Right working group, told The Informer.
Patterson told The Informer that he and his fellow working group members — SBOE Representatives Allister Chang (Ward 2), Eric Goulet (Ward 3) and Brandon Best (Ward 6) — spent time between May and the Nov. 20 public meeting preparing to provide recommendations to the entire state board.
The actual language will be developed between Dec. 4 and Dec. 11, Patterson said. He expressed a desire for the passage of a resolution in support of an amendment to the D.C. Home Rule charter that codifies the District’s obligation to provide a high-quality education to all public school students.
Much of the testimony from panelists, and later public witnesses, centered on the language for the resolution that Patterson spent a year developing in consultation with local and out-of-state legal scholars. Although he acknowledged concerns about amending the Home Rule Charter while the District government is in the cross hairs of a Republican-controlled Congress and, soon, a second Trump White House, he said time is of the essence in improving academic outcomes.
“Everyone agrees we need to do something about proficiency, especially east of the Anacostia River, but there’s no consensus on how we achieve that,” Patterson, an at-large member of the SBOE, told The Informer. “We’re making efforts [in education] but we haven’t put in place the types of resources that make big impacts. We have to focus and get people accountable for getting there.”
State Board Members Debate a Small, But Impactful, Change to the Home Rule Charter
Patterson said he wants to add a critical caveat to the Home Rule Charter.
“The District and its public schools shall provide all public school students with high quality public schools, defined as schools that equip students with the tools necessary to participate meaningfully in our economy, our society, and our democracy. Legal action to enforce this fundamental right shall be limited to equitable relief,” Patterson contends, is language that should be added to the charter.
If the resolution passes, the D.C. Council has the option of introducing it as legislation that can be passed and sent to Congress for approval.
In 1973 — less than 20 years after Brown v. Board of Education deemed segregation illegal — the Supreme Court ruled, in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee a right to education.
Though most states have statements that, to some degree, obligate the state government to provide public school education, at least a dozen states deem education necessary to preserve rights and liberties. Only Florida, Illinois and Virginia have clauses in their state constitution mandating high-quality education.
To this day, the fight for equal access to high-quality education continues throughout the United States. The local discussion about education as a civil right comes one year after advocates in California failed to get a similarly worded ballot measure on the 2024 general election ballot.
Patterson said that, after his successful re-election bid, he stands prepared to advance this cause, even as some community members, including those representing Parents Amplifying Voices in Education DC (PAVE), are raising questions about D.C.’s precarious political status and parent engagement in shaping the resolution.
“I’ve attended PAVE meetings and we always talked about proficiency and under resourced schools,” said Patterson. “And I’ve talked to people while campaigning. We’ve engaged parents throughout this whole process. I would say over the time I was campaigning and talking to people about proficiency in every quadrant of this city.”
During SBOE’s Nov. 20 public meeting, representatives raised points about the metrics of quality education, beyond test scores, that parents wanted to see. There was also some dialogue about the “unintended consequences” of the resolution if it were to become law.
While Goulet expressed support for the resolution, he stopped short of calling for its introduction as council legislation.
“I want to make sure we’re not creating the perception that we’re inviting lawsuits on the city,” Goulet told The Informer. “I’m sure it won’t.”
Goulet highlighted inclusive education as a metric of a high-quality education that local officials should be able to fulfill without any prodding from the courts. He said it would benefit families who enroll their students in out-of-boundary schools or jump between the public and public charter sectors in search of a high-quality education.
“We have a process to use but we need internal processes to make that better and make sure there is equitable access to out-of-school time and also safe schools,” Goulet said. “The schools in my neighborhood have students still coming over to Ward 3. I support the lottery system but you shouldn’t feel like you have to do that.”
A Goal that Continues to Evade Education Advocates
Shortly before the Nov. 20 SBOE public meeting, where representatives discussed the Right to High Quality Public Schools Measure, Paul Kihn, D.C.’s deputy mayor for education, said the resolution “appears redundant for the District.”
Since entering his role in 2018, Kihn has served as the key developer and implementer of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s vision for the District’s birth-to-24 education continuum.
“Our strong system is already designed to provide high-quality schools — and we have seen dramatic improvements across the board over the past two decades, including graduating students prepared to become our next generation of business leaders, teachers, health care workers, lawmakers, and so much more,” Kihn said in a statement.
In 2006, shortly before the era of mayoral control of public education, the D.C. Council struck down legislation to amend the D.C. Home Rule Act with a guarantee of high-quality education for every public school student. The 7-6 second reading council vote prevented the measure, titled D.C. Education Rights Charter Amendment Act, from appearing on the November ballot.
In the years leading up to that vote, a coalition that included the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, advocated for the enshrinement of a high quality education in the District’s Home Rule charter.
The coalition drafted and presented the D.C. Education Rights Charter Amendment Act to the council.
Despite a 12-1 vote in favor of the legislation on the first reading, the council ultimately gave way to concerns about lawsuits the District could face and how to define a high-quality education.
On Nov. 20, a SBOE public witness panel that included Washington Lawyers’ Committee legal and youth counsel Marja Plater said, despite the looming threat of a Republican-dominated Congress and White House, she supports the latest effort to codify a high-quality public school education.
“This is particularly important in light of the ever-growing threat to D.C.’s autonomy, the lack of federal right to education, and the weakening of federal civil rights protections,” Plater said, albeit with a word of advice for the state board. “We urge the state board to continue its research and reliance on experts to ensure that this right guarantees all students across the city access to public education opportunities, has an effective enforcement method, including a private right to action, and is done in a manner that embraces D.C.’s autonomy.”
As Plater pointed out, the District has used its powers under Home Rule to espouse, in its Student Bill of Rights, every students’ right to an adequate public education that meets their needs. She also said that the District, explicitly and through its funding, currently commits to providing a “viable system of public education” that provides “an equal education opportunity.”
For Plater, however, such moves don’t go far enough in explicitly guaranteeing access to a quality education as a civil right, for which the District can be held legally liable.
“At a fundamental level, codifying a right to an adequate education demonstrates the District’s commitment to equal educational opportunities for all D.C.’s public school students,” Plater said.
“It would expand the District policy goals of providing a high-quality education to D.C. students by making it a legal requirement and establishing standards to meet it. … This right would also establish a legally enforceable obligation, allowing students to seek legal remedies to ensure equal opportunity to an adequate education.”
For decades, legions of parents, including those representing PAVE, have fought for equitable access to a high-quality education, through various means, including the courts.
Maya Martin Cadogan, PAVE’s founder and executive director, expressed no qualms with the spirit of the Right to High Quality Public Schools Resolution of 2024. However, she peppered her testimony before SBOE with questions about the degree to which parents — with concerns about school-based mental health programs, out-of-school time programs, and school safety — were allowed to weigh in on the document.
“It’s incredibly important that we have parents at the table helping us to define the right that we want to enshrine,” Martin Cardogan said while exploring the implications of the measure for the District, a jurisdiction under threat of losing Home Rule. “How will [“high-quality”] be understood when we send this to Congress? How will it be interpreted by the courts?”
Last year, Martin Cardogan and PAVE parents met with House and Senate leadership who, as Martin Cardogan recounted, interpreted high-quality education differently from them.
She said that the encounter reaffirmed D.C.’s precarious position as a jurisdiction that, unlike each of the 50 states in the union, lacks a constitution and remains under the thumb of Congress.
“In our neighboring states [of] Maryland and Virginia, legislation gets sent to their state houses, but in D.C., it gets sent to Congress and we are subject to their interpretation — just as we have seen other federal-level legislation around access to high-quality schools in D.C. in years past,” Martin Cardogan said in reference to the creation of the District public charter sector and the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, both of which were created via federal legislation.
Other Experts Make Their Case
Minutes before Martin Cardogan spoke before SBOE, the other panelists sitting alongside Plater — Tanya M. Washington, a professor at Georgia State University and Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, a law professor at University of Virginia — said the high-quality education mandate wouldn’t leave the District vulnerable to legal challenges and further congressional infringement.
Washington, a children’s rights and education rights scholar, focused on the language in the resolution, saying that it’s been carefully tailored to place the onus exclusively on the government, in a manner that protects children and the District at large.
“The proposed measure, if codified, would empower local officials…to ensure every school-aged child in the District of Columbia can attend a high-quality school that is equipped to prepare them ‘to participate meaningfully in our economy, our society and our democracy,’” Washington said. “Adopting the local proposed measure would establish a high-quality education as a statutory right… rather than a political issue subject to electoral choices and personnel change.”
Jenkins Robinson, a D.C. metropolitan native, moved to Virginia as a youngster in search of high-quality educational opportunities. She said that the statement, crafted as part of the Right to High Quality Public Schools Measure, adequately defines a high-quality education in terms of what school districts are obligated to provide, and the desired outcome of a K-12 matriculation.
“High-quality schools deliver the well-qualified teachers, up-to-date and essential resources, a robust course of study, and facilities that enable students to center learning,” Jenkins Robinson said on Nov. 20. “A student who is ready for college and career can succeed in a job or the initial year of postsecondary education without remedial aid.”
