Review: Flunking Democracy - Schools, Courts, and Civic Participation

by Shawn P. Healy, PhD, Democracy Program Director

I was contacted last year by Michael Rebell, Executive Director of the Center for Educational Equity, based at Columbia University in New York, in an inquiry about the McCormick Foundation’s support for school-based civic learning in Illinois.


Rebell has led and been involved in a number of state-based educational equity legal challenges, all of them centered in discriminatory funding practices that too often discriminate against students of color and those of lower socio-economic standing. Some of these challenges resulted in court-ordered funding increases, but the judicial decisions were mostly agnostic as to what educational equity looks like in practice.


While writing Flunking Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2018), he came across compelling research demonstrating a “civic empowerment gap” partly rooted in disparate school-based civic learning opportunities. Most state constitutions make passing reference to educational equality, and some even underline schools’ civic mission. Illinois suggests that “A fundamental goal of the People of the State is the educational development of all persons to the limits of their capacities.”


Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, dissenting in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriquez (1973), an educational equity case, considered education a “…fundamental personal right because it is essential to the effective exercise of First Amendment freedoms and to intelligent utilization of the right to vote…” The 5-4 majority disagreed with the notion of a fundamental right and deferred to local control and the funding disparities it may invite as a rational state policy.


Nearly a half century later, educational inequity remains stark, and civic learning has been marginalized. Civic participation and public trust have waned and our democratic institutions have atrophied as a result. We have repeatedly made the case here that high-quality, school-based civic learning offers a promising long-term solution to this democratic crisis, and Rebell comes armed with a powerful legal case in our favor. He offers both state and federal litigation strategies, and salutes the work of our Illinois Civic Mission Coalition and Democracy Schools Initiative as channels by which a favorable court decision can be implemented at the state and district levels, respectively.


Illinois is among a handful of states where educational equity cases have failed to date. Recent state legislation intended to address some of the largest local school funding disparities in the country is being implemented, but the state’s fiscal crisis may undermine its admirable intent.


The state has made progress on the civic learning front with a new high school civics course requirement and K-12 social studies standards that require students to take informed action, yet the state has not appropriated any funding for their implementation. And civic learning remains severely marginalized in grades K-8. Illinois thus emerges as a candidate for a civic learning equity challenge.


The U.S. Supreme Court may be a heavier lift in light of Neil Gorsuch’s appointment to the Supreme Court, restoring a 5-4 conservative majority. However, civic learning has attracted bipartisan support (retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and current Justice Sonia Sotomayor and among its most prominent champions), and the Court occasionally produces unlikely ideological alignments.


Regardless, the civic learning community welcomes Rebell’s contribution to our cause as we build the field nationally and mobilize for state-based campaigns mirroring the successes of Florida and our own in Illinois. His book is well worth the read as he carefully summarizes prevailing literature and adds a legal strategy to our collective toolbox to ensure that schools live up to their founding civic creed.

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