================================================================================ A BILL FOR THE GENERAL DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE (2026) Extending Compulsory Free Schooling Through the Baccalaureate, and Joining the Public Colleges of the State to the Districts Model State Instrument, Legislative Path. Any State may adopt. Cluster instrument one of two. Companion: A Bill for the General Diffusion of Required Human Labor (2026). Prepared by Imran Stanton Cooper, The Amanuensis. Version 1, working draft. ================================================================================ [STATE] LEGISLATURE Insert the enacting chamber and session ================================================================================ HOUSE BILL ____ / SENATE BILL ____ BY __________ A BILL FOR AN ACT to extend the compulsory and free schooling of this State through the completion of a baccalaureate course of study; to join the public colleges and universities of this State to the local school districts as the upper years of one continuous system of public instruction; to abolish tuition, fees, and the debt attending them for every resident so enrolled; to extend the free transportation of pupils to those upper years on the same terms as the lower; to provide the fiscal transition by which the money already spent shall follow the pupil into the joined system; to state plainly which powers belong to this State and which remain with the United States; and to declare that the knowledge so diffused is held by the citizen as a right of life and not as a privilege of purchase. ================================================================================ SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. ================================================================================ This Act may be cited as A Bill for the General Diffusion of Knowledge (2026). ================================================================================ SECTION 2. PURPOSE AND SCOPE. ================================================================================ The purpose of this Act is to end the division between the schooling a citizen receives by right and the schooling a citizen receives by purchase, and to move the line that separates them from the twelfth year to the sixteenth. The schooling that this State already compels and already furnishes without charge shall continue, without break in law, in funding, or in transportation, through a baccalaureate course of study at a public institution of this State. This Act reaches the public schools and the public institutions of higher learning of this State. It does not reach any private or religious institution except by that institution's own election under Section 12, and it compels no such institution to alter its admissions, its charter, or its faith. ================================================================================ SECTION 3. DEFINITIONS. ================================================================================ As used in this Act: (1) CONTINUATION YEARS means the four years of instruction following the twelfth year, culminating in a baccalaureate or an equivalent terminal credential of a vocational or technical course of study. (2) DISTRICT means a local school district of this State. (3) JOINED INSTITUTION means a public college, university, community college, technical college, or other public post-secondary institution of this State that has been joined to the public school system under Title II. (4) STATUTORY INSTITUTION means a joined institution whose governing board is created, empowered, and alterable by act of the Legislature. (5) CONSTITUTIONAL INSTITUTION means a joined institution whose governing board holds powers granted directly by the Constitution of this State and not alterable by ordinary act of the Legislature. (6) RESIDENT PUPIL means a person domiciled in this State who has completed the twelfth year or its equivalent and has not completed the continuation years. ================================================================================ SECTION 4. FINDINGS AND RECOGNITIONS. ================================================================================ (1) THE LINE HAS MOVED BEFORE. Compulsory free schooling in the several States did not begin at twelve years. It began at a few years of common instruction and was extended upward, repeatedly, as the work of the age came to require it. The twelfth year is not a natural boundary. It is the boundary the last extension happened to reach. (2) THE PROPOSITION IS NOT NEW IN THIS COUNTRY. In 1779 Thomas Jefferson laid before the Virginia legislature A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, which proposed instruction furnished at common expense and advancement carried by merit rather than by the estate of a parent. That bill did not pass. The principle in it has governed every extension of public schooling since, and this Act carries the same principle to the level of learning that the present age requires. (3) AN INFORMED PEOPLE IS THE ONLY SECURITY. Jefferson wrote to Richard Price in 1789 that whenever the people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government, and that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice they may be relied on to set them to rights. That security is not furnished by twelve years of instruction in an age whose instruments of governance, of production, and of persuasion are built on knowledge that twelve years does not reach. (4) THE DEBT IS THE TOLL ON THE LINE. The present arrangement does not withhold the continuation years from the citizen. It sells them, and it lends the citizen the purchase price. The result is a generation admitted to knowledge on condition of debt. A right conditioned on debt is not a right. (5) THE MONEY IS ALREADY BEING SPENT. This State already appropriates public money to its public institutions of higher learning, and already collects tuition from residents to make up the difference. This Act does not invent a new expenditure. It converts a purchase into an appropriation and applies the sum already flowing. (6) OWNERSHIP IS NOT UNIFORM, AND THE ACT SHALL NOT PRETEND IT IS. In several States the governing board of a public university holds its authority directly from the Constitution of that State, and the Legislature may not by ordinary statute direct its internal governance. In most States the governing board is a creature of statute and may be reorganized by statute. This Act therefore proceeds on two tracks, and does not purport to accomplish by statute what a State Constitution reserves. (7) THE FEDERAL SHARE IS SMALL BUT REAL. Federal sources supply roughly one dollar in nine of public elementary and secondary school revenue, with State sources supplying close to half and local sources the remainder. In higher learning the principal federal instrument is student financial aid, which is paid on account of the student and not to the State. This Act does not command the United States, and Title VI states what is reserved. (8) THE LAST DOLLAR DESIGN IS REGRESSIVE AND IS REJECTED. The tuition-free programs now operating in the several States divide into two designs. A last dollar program pays only the tuition remaining after federal student aid has been applied, with the result that the federal grant is consumed by tuition and the poorest student receives no benefit from the program at all, while a student whose family income disqualifies them from federal aid receives the whole of it. A first dollar program pays the tuition first and leaves the federal grant available to the student for the costs of attendance that are not instruction. The Legislature finds the last dollar design regressive in operation, adopts the first dollar design, and states the rule in Section 602 rather than leaving it to administrative practice. (9) DEVELOPMENT REQUIRES A TRIAL, AND THE TRIAL HAS BEEN REMOVED. The developmental literature associates the passage into adult capability with a structure that recurs across societies: separation from the familiar, a period of genuine difficulty met by the person alone, and return. The Legislature is concerned here with the middle term. Where the difficulty is removed, the passage does not occur on schedule, and the condition is described in the clinical literature as arrested development. It is associated with material comfort rather than with deprivation, and Luthar's work, published under the auspices of the American Psychological Association, locates the onset of measurable effects at household incomes near seventy thousand dollars, which is to say well within the ordinary range and not at the extremes of wealth. (10) THE STATE CANNOT LAWFULLY RESTORE THE ANCESTRAL TRIAL, AND SHALL NOT CLAIM TO. The trials by which earlier societies marked this passage involved real exposure and real danger, and no State may lawfully impose them upon a child. The Legislature states this limit plainly rather than implying an equivalence it cannot deliver. What Title I-A establishes is the lawful maximum: contest that is genuine, opposed by a real adversary, consequential in its result, and prepared for over years, conducted without any design upon the life or the permanent health of a participant. It is not the ancestral trial. It is the most of that structure a lawful education system can supply, and the Legislature finds that supplying it is materially better than supplying none. (11) THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WHOLE HUMAN IS THE POINT. The extension of schooling in this Act is not undertaken to produce credentials, to sort pupils, or to supply labor. It is undertaken because a person developed across the whole of their capability, the cognitive, the physical, the expressive, the social, and the practical alike, is the object of public instruction, and because everything else this State intends to build rests on citizens who have actually been developed rather than merely provided for. (12) THE RIGHT ASSERTED IS A RIGHT OF LIFE. The Legislature finds that the capacity to understand the world one is governed in, and to labor in it with knowledge rather than by permission, is an incident of the unalienable right to life with which every person is endowed by their Creator, and is not a commodity of the State to be sold to its own citizens. This Act secures that right within the years and the borders it governs, and claims no power to grant what was not the State's to withhold. ================================================================================ TITLE I. EXTENSION OF COMPULSORY AND FREE SCHOOLING. ================================================================================ SEC. 101. EXTENSION OF THE COMPULSORY TERM. The compulsory school age of this State is extended through the completion of the continuation years or the attainment of the age of twenty-two, whichever occurs first. SEC. 102. NO TUITION AND NO FEE. No resident pupil shall be charged tuition, registration fee, laboratory fee, course fee, technology fee, activity fee, or any other charge as a condition of enrollment, instruction, examination, or credential in the continuation years at a joined institution. SEC. 103. NO DEBT INSTRUMENT. No joined institution shall originate, require, arrange, or condition enrollment upon any loan for the continuation years for a resident pupil. SEC. 104. THE CREDENTIAL IS ONE CREDENTIAL. The diploma of the twelfth year and the baccalaureate of the sixteenth are stages of one course of public instruction. The Board shall issue the credentials accordingly. SEC. 105. PATHS OF EQUAL STANDING. A vocational, technical, or apprenticeship course of study within the continuation years is of equal standing with an academic course of study, carries the same freedom from charge, and satisfies the compulsory term. ================================================================================ TITLE I-A. THE SENIOR TRIALS. ================================================================================ SEC. 121. THE TRIALS ESTABLISHED. There are established the Senior Trials of this State, a public and contested examination of the whole capability of a citizen, held at the close of the continuation years, and required of every pupil. SEC. 122. THE TRIALS ARE REAL CONTESTS. (a) The Trials are contested against other citizens and are judged on performance. They are not an examination on paper, a portfolio review, or a ceremony. (b) A contest may be physical, and may include full contact and the use of tactics and strategy against a live opposing party. (c) The Legislature intends that a pupil be tested under genuine pressure, against a real opponent, with a real outcome, because capability that has never been contested has never been measured. SEC. 123. THE FULL SPECTRUM OF CONTEST. The Trials shall be held across the whole spectrum of human capability, and shall include, without limitation, the following forms. (1) Athletic contest, individual and team. (2) Field and tactical contest, including military games, navigation, small-unit maneuver, logistics under constraint, and problems of strategy against an opposing side. (3) Instrumental and vocal performance. (4) The arts, including composition, design, and making. (5) Oratory, debate, negotiation, and advocacy. (6) Student government, including the holding of office, the drafting of measures, and answering to an electorate of peers. (7) Enterprise and corporate training, including operations under a budget, a deadline, and an adversary. (8) Trades, fabrication, and repair. (9) Science, mathematics, and research defended before examiners. (10) Care, medicine, and emergency response under simulated conditions. SEC. 124. NO CONTEST SHALL CARRY A THREAT OF DEATH. (a) No contest shall be designed, judged, or conducted in a manner that contemplates the death, maiming, or permanent injury of a participant. (b) No weapon or implement capable of inflicting lethal force shall be used against a person in any contest. (c) Every contest involving contact shall be conducted with protective equipment appropriate to the form, under a judge empowered to halt it, with medical personnel present, and under a written standard of stoppage. (d) A judge shall halt a contest upon any indication of serious injury, and no participant shall suffer any penalty in standing or in record by reason of a stoppage. (e) The purpose of the contest is the demonstration of capability under pressure. Any practice that converts it into a spectacle of harm is prohibited, and the designation of a contest shall state how this section is satisfied. SEC. 125. YEARS OF PREPARATION. (a) Preparation for the Trials is instruction, is part of the course of the continuation years, and is furnished without charge. (b) A pupil shall be given not fewer than the final two years of the continuation years to prepare, and may begin earlier. (c) Coaching, facilities, equipment, instruments, and travel required for preparation and for the Trials shall be furnished by the State, so that no result turns on what a pupil's family could purchase. SEC. 126. EVERY PUPIL ENTERS, AND THE FORM IS THE PUPIL'S OWN. (a) Every pupil enters the Trials in at least one form, and may enter more. (b) The pupil elects the form or forms. (c) No pupil shall be compelled into a form of contact contest, and a pupil declining a form of contact contest shall be entered in a non-contact form of equal standing. SEC. 127. ACCOMMODATION AND ADAPTED CONTEST. (a) A pupil with a disability competes with accommodation, in an adapted form of the contest, or in a parallel contest of equal standing, at the pupil's election. (b) No pupil shall be excluded from the Trials, and where no form of contest is possible for a pupil, the requirement is satisfied by an alternative demonstration of capability and is recorded as satisfied. (c) A low placement is a result and is not a penalty. No pupil shall be denied the credential of the continuation years, denied progression, or denied any guarantee by reason of placement in the Trials. SEC. 128. THE RECORD OF THE TRIALS. (a) The Trials produce a record of demonstrated capability across the forms entered. (b) That record is a public examination result of the citizen and belongs to the citizen. (c) The record of the Trials is the principal evidence of suitability used in the selection of citizens for stations under A Bill for the General Diffusion of Required Human Labor (2026), and is available to a graduate or professional faculty considering the citizen for admission. SEC. 129. THE TRIALS PRECEDE WHAT FOLLOWS. The Trials are held before a citizen enters graduate or professional study or is called to citizen service, and completion of the Trials is a condition of both. ================================================================================ TITLE II. JOINING THE PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS TO THE DISTRICTS. ================================================================================ SEC. 201. THE JOINED SYSTEM. Every public institution of higher learning of this State is joined to the public school system of this State as the continuation years of that system. SEC. 202. TRACK ONE, STATUTORY INSTITUTIONS. A statutory institution is placed within the public school system by operation of this Act. Its governing board is continued as a division board reporting to the State Board of Education for matters of instruction, credential, attendance, transportation, and the free character of the continuation years, and retains its existing authority in all other matters not inconsistent with this Act. SEC. 203. TRACK TWO, CONSTITUTIONAL INSTITUTIONS. The Legislature does not by this Act direct the internal governance of a constitutional institution. As to each such institution, this Act operates by compact and by appropriation as follows. (a) The State offers a compact under which the institution admits every resident pupil of the continuation years without tuition or fee and accepts the attendance, credential, and transportation provisions of this Act. (b) The appropriation provided in Title III is conditioned on execution of the compact. (c) An institution declining the compact retains its constitutional autonomy in full and receives no appropriation under Title III. (d) The Legislature shall submit to the electors, at the next general election, an amendment to the Constitution of this State placing the continuation years of the constitutional institutions within this Act, and until that amendment is adopted this section is the whole of the State's authority over them. SEC. 204. GEOGRAPHIC ASSIGNMENT. The State Board shall assign every joined institution to one or more districts by proximity and capacity, so that every resident pupil has an assigned seat in the continuation years within a reasonable distance of the pupil's domicile. SEC. 205. ADMISSION. Admission to the continuation years at the assigned joined institution is by right of residence and completion of the twelfth year. Selective admission is preserved only for a course of study whose capacity is limited by physical plant, clinical placement, accreditation, or licensure, and in that case a place shall be offered in another course of study or at another joined institution. SEC. 206. FACULTY AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM PRESERVED. Nothing in this Act alters the academic freedom of the faculty of any joined institution, the content of instruction, the standards of the credential, the tenure of any person, or the research function of any institution. Nothing in this Act authorizes any officer of a district to direct the content of instruction at a joined institution. SEC. 207. NON-RESIDENT AND GRADUATE INSTRUCTION UNAFFECTED. This Act does not apply to non-resident students or to graduate, professional, or post-baccalaureate instruction, and a joined institution may continue to charge for them. ================================================================================ TITLE III. THE MONEY. ================================================================================ SEC. 301. THE PUPIL CARRIES THE MONEY. Beginning with the first fiscal year after the effective date, the per-pupil funding formula of this State is extended to the continuation years, and each resident pupil enrolled at a joined institution generates the same categories of State aid as a pupil of the twelfth year, adjusted for the actual cost of instruction in the course of study. SEC. 302. CONVERSION OF THE APPROPRIATION. The existing appropriation to each joined institution is continued and is redesignated as the continuation-years appropriation, and is paid through the school funding formula rather than as a separate institutional appropriation. SEC. 303. REPLACEMENT OF RESIDENT TUITION REVENUE. The State shall appropriate to each joined institution a sum equal to the resident undergraduate tuition and fee revenue collected by that institution in the base year, adjusted annually. This sum replaces the abolished charges and is not an addition to the institution's prior total revenue. SEC. 304. THE LOCAL SHARE. No district shall be required to raise its local levy on account of the continuation years. The continuation years are funded from State sources and from the converted institutional appropriations, and the local share of the funding formula is computed on the twelfth year and below. SEC. 305. HOLD HARMLESS. No joined institution shall receive less total operating revenue in the first four fiscal years after the effective date than it received in the base year. SEC. 306. NO SUPPLANTING. Money appropriated under this Title shall not supplant money otherwise appropriated for elementary and secondary instruction. ================================================================================ TITLE IV. TRANSPORTATION. ================================================================================ SEC. 401. FREE TRANSPORTATION EXTENDED. The free transportation of pupils furnished by the districts is extended to every resident pupil of the continuation years, on the same terms, at no charge, and without separate application. SEC. 402. ONE SYSTEM OF CONVEYANCE. The districts and the joined institutions shall operate transportation as one system, and the State Board shall provide for joint routing, shared fleets, and reciprocal service between districts and joined institutions. SEC. 403. PUBLIC TRANSIT. Where a public transit authority serves a joined institution, the State Board may provide for a fare-free pupil pass in lieu of a dedicated vehicle, at the State's expense. SEC. 404. DISTANCE AND RESIDENCE. Where the assigned joined institution lies beyond a reasonable daily conveyance, the State shall furnish either residence at the institution without charge or conveyance of a frequency sufficient to the course of study. ================================================================================ TITLE V. TRANSITION. ================================================================================ SEC. 501. SCHEDULE. Year one, the base year is fixed, the assignments under Section 204 are made, and the compacts under Section 203 are offered. Year two, tuition and fees are abolished for the first continuation year. Year three, for the second. Year four, for the third. Year five, for the fourth, and the compulsory term of Section 101 takes effect for the cohort entering that year. SEC. 502. EXISTING DEBT NOT DISTURBED. This Act does not cancel, assume, or alter any debt existing on the effective date. It prevents the creation of new debt for the continuation years. SEC. 503. STUDENTS IN PROGRESS. A resident student enrolled on the effective date shall be transferred to the free schedule for all remaining continuation years. ================================================================================ TITLE VI. MATTERS RESERVED TO THE UNITED STATES. ================================================================================ SEC. 601. NO COMMAND UPON THE UNITED STATES. Nothing in this Act directs, conditions, or purports to alter any program of the United States. SEC. 602. FEDERAL STUDENT AID, AND THE FIRST DOLLAR RULE. (a) Federal student financial aid is paid on account of the student and not on account of this State or of any institution. (b) THE FIRST DOLLAR RULE. The freedom from charge secured by Title I is applied first, before any federal student aid is considered. Federal student aid is thereafter available to the student for the costs of attendance that are not instruction, including transportation, residence, subsistence, materials, dependent care, and health. (c) NO LAST DOLLAR ADMINISTRATION. No joined institution and no officer of this State shall administer Title I as a last dollar program, shall reduce, offset, or condition any benefit of this Act by reason of a pupil's eligibility for or receipt of federal student aid, shall require a pupil to apply for federal student aid as a condition of the freedom from charge, or shall capture federal student aid against the abolished charges. (d) The rule stated in this section is a condition of the appropriation under Title III, and an institution administering the continuation years contrary to it forfeits that appropriation for the year in which it does so. SEC. 603. FEDERAL ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY PROGRAMS. Federal funds received on account of elementary and secondary instruction remain governed by the terms on which they are received, and this Act shall be construed to preserve eligibility for them. SEC. 604. LAND-GRANT AND RESEARCH OBLIGATIONS. Nothing in this Act alters the land-grant obligations of any institution or its capacity to receive and administer federal research funds. SEC. 605. CONGRESSIONAL COMPANION CONTEMPLATED. The Legislature requests of Congress a companion instrument treating the continuation years as compulsory schooling for purposes of federal education programs, and the Governor shall transmit this Act to the congressional delegation of this State. ================================================================================ SECTION 7. THE TEACHER AND THE PROFESSOR AT THE CENTER. ================================================================================ Instruction in the continuation years is delivered by a human instructor. No provision of this Act shall be construed to authorize the replacement of instruction by an automated system, and the professor of a joined institution holds the same place in the continuation years that the teacher holds in the years below. ================================================================================ SECTION 8. RIGHTS RESERVED TO THE PERSON. ================================================================================ (a) The right secured by this Act is held by the person and not by the institution. (b) The Legislature declares that this right is an incident of the unalienable right to life, is endowed by the Creator and not by this State, is held for the whole of the person's life, and may not be sold, waived, forfeited by poverty, or conditioned upon debt. (c) No pupil shall be denied the continuation years by reason of the estate, income, debt, immigration status, or prior academic record of a parent. (d) Nothing in this Act compels a person to a particular course of study. ================================================================================ SECTION 9. ELECTION BY PRIVATE AND CHARTERED INSTITUTIONS. ================================================================================ A private, religious, or chartered institution may elect to be treated as a joined institution for a course of study by filing an election with the State Board, and upon election receives the appropriation and accepts the free character and the attendance provisions of this Act as to that course of study only. ================================================================================ SECTION 10. SEVERABILITY. ================================================================================ If any provision of this Act or its application is held invalid, the remainder and its other applications are not affected. In particular, the invalidity of Title II as to constitutional institutions shall not affect the operation of this Act as to statutory institutions. ================================================================================ SECTION 11. EFFECTIVE DATE. ================================================================================ This Act takes effect on the first day of the fiscal year following enactment, and operates on the schedule stated in Section 501. ================================================================================