Education Law

Gigs Up Anti-Bullying Laws

The AP is calling them out:

Forty-four states expressly ban bullying, a legislative legacy of a rash of school shootings in the late '90s, yet few if any of those measures have identified children who excessively pick on their peers, an Associated Press review has found. And few offer any method for ensuring the policies are enforced, according to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Anti-bullying laws have long been sort of a running joke amongst ed. law types who knew the laws had no teeth. They are a good political measure, and they may even be an adequate policy measure, but as a legal concept they are sort of like one of those "study groups" that gets formed in Washington ... pure window dressing.

It will be interesting to see if now that the secret is out these laws begin to toughen up. Legally it is a hard sell, which is why they were not tough in the first place, but I don't think we've really seen a super-creative anti-bullying law yet. I for one really hope we don't see them get tougher. We toughened up zero-tolerance policies only to loosen them later and I would expect a similar pattern here if these laws begin to have real penalties. The bottom line is that school officials just need the flexibility in this area and the weak anti-bullying laws keep that in place.

h/t Alexander Russo

Full post as published by Edjurist on September 15, 2009 (boomark / email).