school education" (majority opn at 28). But students who receive a local diploma have successfully completed the twelfth grade. They simply have not taken Regents exams in their courses. The indispensable nature of the "outputs" in determining whether the New York City public school system currently or prospectively provides the opportunity for a "meaningful high school education" can not be overstated. Here, the majority definitively specifies only what the acceptable educational "output" is not. It is definitely not the RCTs, which are being phased out in favor of the RLSs, because they are insufficiently ambitious to comport with modern-day understandings of what a sound basic education encompasses (and, if measured by the RCTs, the New York City public school system does not violate the quality standard of the Education Article). But the majority also balks at adopting the RLSs, which represent too ambitious a minimum at present for the ever-evolving constitutional principle at stake. In any event, the RLSs are not a proper constitutional standard because they may bend, grow or retreat at the will of a State agency. The majority's dilemma is easy to appreciate. Recognizing the judiciary's limitations as an education policymaker, my colleagues are reluctant to create a detailed quality standard by which to define the State's obligation under the Education Article. But they are also unwilling to cede to the Board of Regents and the State Education Department the power to define (and, in the future, redefine) what is claimed to be a constitutional principle (albeit a dynamic one), not an education policy decision. As a result, the standard that the majority has created -- a "meaningful high school education" that prepares students "to function productively as civic participants” -- is illusory. It surely is no more definite than the template enunciated for a "sound basic education" in CFE I, unless, of course, the majority, in fact, intends to equate a "meaningful high school education" with a high school diploma. In that event, my colleagues have, as a practical matter, adopted the RLSs and the Regents diploma as defining the constitutional minimum -- for the present. Causation In Levittown, we had "no difficulty in determining that the constitutional requirement [was] being met" by virtue of the State's substantial financial contribution to education alone, which placed New York third among the states in per-pupil expenditures ( see Levittown, 57 NY2d at 48).[36] New York still spends more on state aid for education than all but two states in the nation, although New York has lost its rank as the second most populous state in the 20 years since Levittown.