Misc 2d at 16-17), and service sector jobs require a higher level
of knowledge, skill in communication and the use of information,
and the capacity to continue to learn over a lifetime. The record
showed that employers who offer entry-level jobs that do not
require college increasingly expect applicants to have had
instruction that imparts these abilities, if not a specific credential.
Second, as to other aspects of civic participation, the difference
between the trial court and the Appellate Division centers on our
statement in CFE that a sound basic education should leave
students "capable of voting and serving on a jury" (86 2 at 316).
The State's expert on educational psychology, Dr. Herbert
Walberg, testified that pattern jury instructions and newspaper
articles typically feature vocabulary and sentence length
comparable to those of texts eighth-graders are expected to be
able to read. Based on this testimony, the Appellate Division
concluded that the skills necessary for civic participation are
imparted between eighth and ninth grades (295 2 at 8). The trial
court, by contrast, concluded that productive citizenship "means
more than just being qualified to vote or serve as a juror, but to
do so capably and knowledgeably" (187 Misc 2d at 14 [emphasis
in original]) -- to have skills appropriate to the task.
We agree with the trial court that students require more than an
eighth-grade education to function productively as citizens, and
that the mandate of the Education Article for a sound basic
education should not be pegged to the eighth or ninth grade, or
indeed to any particular grade level. In CFE we pointed to voting
and jury service because they are the civic responsibilities par
excellence. For reasons founded in the American historical
experience, the statutory requirements for participation in those
activities are aimed at being inclusive. Indeed, the latest
amendment of Judiciary Law § 510 (/nyctap-cgi/ez-nylaw?
JUD+510) -- the juror qualification statute -- removed
requirements based on jurors' literacy ( see L 1995, ch 86, § 3).
Yet it cannot reasonably be supposed that the demands of juror
service, and any related demands on the City schools, have
become less rigorous, or that the concept of a sound basic
education would not include literacy.
Finally, with these goals in mind, we come to the dispute over the
kind and amount of schooling children need in order to be
assured of the constitutional minimum of educational opportunity.
In CFE we refrained from addressing this problem in detail,
simply setting forth the "essentials":