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Post Frequency: 9/day Last Entry: November 19, 2009 at 16:24:28 Recent Entries: 504
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Case law and Article Searches on Google Scholar
Posted on November 19, 2009The good news of the week for my education school professor colleagues, and for practitioners in the field who do not have unlimited access to Westlaw or Lexis, is that Google Scholar now allows you to search for both case law (federal and state) and articles through the familiar Google interface...
University Presidents Should be Rock Stars
Posted on November 17, 2009Time this week compiled a list of the top 10 university presidents. Gordon Gee, an education law alum, was the feature story and the list also included another alum, Mark Yudof. I loved the story, I loved the list, and I hope they keep it up. Picking a top 10 of anything, of course, is going to be mostly arbitrary...
Edjurist TV: Episode 7 - Education Law in South Africa, A Conversation with Rika Jobert and Jean Van Rooyen
Posted on November 17, 2009Had the marvelous opportunity a couple weeks ago to sit down and chat with Professors Rika Jobert and Jean Van Rooyen, of the University of Pretoria's Department of Education Management and Policy Studies. We chatted about educational law, leadership issues, finance issues, preparation issues, etc...
School IT Departments ... Concerns
Posted on November 17, 2009As I am working here in KY to modify our schools for the information economy, increasingly I am becoming concerned that school IT departments might be more of the problem than the solution. I know that is heresy (especially given my large IT based readership), but I am starting to really have some concerns...
Teachers Selling Lesson Plans - What Legal Issues?
Posted on November 16, 2009The big story making rounds over the weekend was the N. Y. Times story on teachers across the country selling their lesson plans online to make themselves a profit. Lots of local papers ran it in their Sunday edition, including my local paper. So, why not? I've weighed it over the weekend and I can't come up with a really good reason to legally ban it, not to mention I don't think there is any existing legal issues...
Vamos a Cuba Case Denied Cert.
Posted on November 16, 2009Good, I think. It was too political and would have made for bad precedent. Plus, it is just not that complex of a case. A school board has the right to prohibit a book as long as they follow procedures and do not discriminate. In this case, the factual accuracy of the book was questioned and (rightly or wrongly) the school board decided to follow their procedures to prohibit it from their school...
The Future of Education Law Information
Posted on November 11, 2009Lots of current events have caused me to consider what the future of education law information will look like. I'm the new technology chair for ELA, Scott B. has been appointed to West's Education Law Reporter Board, Mark Walsh (who has a redesigned site) and I have been talking lately, and lots of other thought provokers...
21st Century Teachers are Those that Pass Tests?
Posted on November 09, 2009According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ... yes. In their latest education report card, what they deem a report card on educational effectiveness, they have 9 different subjects on which they are reporting. One of those subjects that the states are graded on is "21st Century Teaching Force...
School Technology Leadership and the P-20 Continuum - Paducah
Posted on November 09, 2009I was invited to speak at the SACS/AdvancedED Western Kentucky Conference this past Friday and I want to post the video and sources to that presentation. The presentation was an extension on the presentation I gave at the school law conference, with a vastly different theme at the end...
Where I am at...
Posted on November 02, 2009on Twitter. And so are lots of other people. Follow along.
The Colorado School Finance Decision
Posted on October 29, 2009As Justin mentioned last week, the Colorado Supreme Court recently issued its long-awaited school finance adequacy deicision--sort of. The court, in a 4-3 decision, issued three big rulings in the case--one retrospective and two prospective...
Catching Up
Posted on October 28, 2009Well, ELA was awesome, but I was mostly MIA on the Net. So, it's time to catch up a little. First, more stupid zero-tolerance fallout. A girl brought empty gun shells to show science teacher ... and suspended. This is not as bad as some others, but these kind of stories continue weekly these days...
Pictures from ELA 09
Posted on October 27, 2009Here is the Flickr slideshow from the Education Law Association Conference in Louisville. Many of the photos in the red and green ballroom are from the Rose at 20 event that we sponsored. You can click on the photo to get the information on it. Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
Integrating Web 2.0 Technology into School Law Courses
Posted on October 26, 2009At the Education Law Association conference this past week, I presented on Integrating Web 2.0 Technology into School Law Courses. Sometimes when I present on this subject I just lay out the tools, but this time I decided to try a different tact. So, you should know that I borrowed Lawrence Lessig's presentation style, lots of Michael Wesch's data, and Scott McLeod's ideas, amongst others, ...
Our Position at UK and a Few More in Law
Posted on October 26, 2009I wanted to put our new Open Rank position at the University of Kentucky, Department of Education Leadership Studies out there. We are looking for someone in one or more of these areas: leadership in educational technology, teacher leadership, engagement with diverse communities, instructional leadership, professional learning communities, economics of education, or quantitative research methods...
ELA Decompression
Posted on October 26, 2009Well, ELA is over for another year and I thought I would decompress for a minute with some broader thoughts. Everyone seemed to enjoy Louisville. I think it held up quite well for a conference city. I was a little surprised, but happily so. The General Sessions lacked a little umph this year...
Liveblogging ELA - Stats on School Law Learning
Posted on October 23, 2009Vivian Hopp Gordon is not getting enough credit for the work she is doing researching school law instruction and learning nationally. She has surveyed school leaders and put those results into some nice presentations. Now she needs to get those into pubs so that I can pass them along to you...
Liveblogging ELA - Cyber Charters
Posted on October 23, 2009Okay, the best session of the conference so far (for me at least) was 2 presentations on cyber charter schools. It has me so stoked that I sort of want to write my own article about it. But, let me review their work first. Brady, Umpstead & Eckes presented on the legal issues that might arise from Cyber-Charters...
LiveBlogging ELA - No Substitute for Networking ... I'm Talking to You Students
Posted on October 23, 2009Got to talk to a lot of students at ELA today. Writing "students" and talking to them really gives me a weird feeling because just a year or two ago I was one of them. Now firmly and comfortably on the other side, I can admit that I was feeling a lot of the same feelings and asking myself a lot of the same questions (as in, what in the hell compelled me to come to this embarrassing thing?)...
Liveblogging ELA - Charles Rose's Conservative General Session
Posted on October 23, 2009Small "c" conservative. But, conservative nevertheless. I would imagine that the General Counsel to any organization (Rose is the General Counsel to the U.S. Department of Education) is probably not your most motivational speaker, but Charles' presentation was, let's say, fact filled...
Liveblogging ELA - Support for Pre-Service Law Grows
Posted on October 22, 2009The last couple of years, several scholars, such as Dave Schimmel in this article, have argued that pre-service teachers need more exposure to legal and ethical issues before they hit the classroom. Well, at this conference I am seeing that support grow amongst representatives of Professional Standards Boards...
Liveblogging ELA
Posted on October 22, 2009Well, the sessions have started, so let the blogging begin. I'll call it liveblogging, but it is sort of contemporaneous-blogging when I steal away a few minutes here and there. In this post, I want to sort of set the scene, report on the Rose session last night and give some initial thoughts...
Catching Up With Cases
Posted on October 21, 2009Also, thanks to the Rose timedrain, I have been lax in putting out some important cases that have come down lately. So, let's get them out. First, last Friday Pontiac v. Spellings en banc came out of the 6th Circuit. Mark's got the details. It came down in a split decision, meaning the dismissal was affirmed...
ELA Starts Today
Posted on October 21, 2009Lost for me in all the Rose hubub, has really been the ELA conference, which starts today in Louisville. Scott, Neal and I are all going to be presenting (Scott and Neal on important things ... me, not so much). I love ELA because everything interests me...
Rose at 20 - Invite and Thank You's
Posted on October 16, 2009I want to formally invite all my readers to come to Rose at 20: The Past and Future of School Finance Litigation (don't worry it's free!). Next Wednesday, we are having a little get together in the evening at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, KY to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the Rose v...
Do We Need A Student Rights Scorecard?
Posted on October 16, 2009Such scorecards seem to be effective. On the front page of Kentucky.com right now is a story on the fact that Kentucky got a D in children's rights (non-educational rights, that is). First Star and the Children's Advocacy Institute of USD Law gave out grades to each state and sent them to newspapers ...
AASA Legislative Update on YouTube
Posted on October 15, 2009Slowly, but ever so surely, the upper echelon of education is wading into Web 2.0 - and, rest assured I'll be here to report what I find that's related to educational law. It's about time, I say. It's nice that these people are finally talking to me in a format that I can understand...
Enhanced Attorney's Fees in Civil Rights Cases & NSBA's Public Stance
Posted on October 14, 2009Mark Walsh, doing his usual outstanding job, had a great post today on the Supreme Court oral argument in a case involving enhanced attorney's fees. Mark does such a great job with the facts and the Justice's positions at oral argument, I won't repeat them here...
The Elephant and the Dragon ... A Review
Posted on October 13, 2009This weekend I managed to squeeze in (between the celebrations of my sister being named homecoming queen! Yeah!) another of Dr. McLeod's recommendations. Today: The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What it Means for All of Us, Robyn Meredith, 2008, $10...
In a Tight Market Year, A Few Jobs Available
Posted on October 13, 2009It is a tight market for educational leadership positions nationwide, as it is in law and other areas. So, academic jobs will be a little scarce this year. But, I wanted to pass along a few that have come out already with a focus on law. University of Missouri - I like lots of people there...
So can we be done with Zero-Tolerance Policies Yet?
Posted on October 12, 2009The camping knife, fork and spoon suspension of a 6 year old for violating the school's zero-tolerance policy is making the rounds this morning from the NY Times. I am not even going to comment on that story, because it is just the latest in a long line of stupid discipline from schools under zero-tolerance policies...
School Discipline Litigation Stats in Ed. Next
Posted on October 11, 2009Source: Education Next, Law and Disorder in the ClassroomHere is a lovely little article in Education Next on school discipline cases arising out of classrooms. The authors are Richard Arum and his doctoral student Doreet Preiss.The article is from a larger essay that is part of this book out from Brookings...
Keeping the Definition of Biometric Records Under Control
Posted on October 08, 2009I was just getting around to reading an article (see middle of page 5) out of Iowa that Scott M. clued me into regarding the new Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations that came out late last year. Michelle at the Connecticut Ed...
Dissertation of the Year to Scott
Posted on October 08, 2009Love passing along kudos to our contributors and the latest is that Scott B. won the Education Law Association, Joseph Beckham Dissertation Award. Scott defended his dissertation a couple months ago with R. Craig Wood as his Chair at the University of Florida...
In Love with Lessig
Posted on October 07, 2009I hope my wife is not reading ... but, I must admit my infatuation with Lawrence Lessig. He doesn't really speak on education directly, but the ideas impact education substantially. I highly recommend just clicking around this page. This video is particularly compelling...
Drug Testing Past the Limit
Posted on October 06, 2009A school district in rural Texas is again going to try to randomly drug test all students. The leadership has decided that if it is challenged that they will set the legal precedent and win. That's possible, of course, if they take it all the way to the Supreme Court (who has provided pretty clear guidance in Vernonia and Earls)...
Filtering = Banning ... or Not?
Posted on October 05, 2009Ira Socol makes a great point on his blog today, that filtering websites equates to banning books. I agree with the general concept, but I want to try to make a distinction (no idea if I'll succeed). Photocredit: DML East BranchFirst, here's the downside of that comparison ...
It Takes All Kinds of Crazy
Posted on October 02, 2009My Minnesota (or former Minnesota) friends sent me this headline: EVANGELICAL PUNK BAND ACCUSED OF MISREPRESENTING ITS CHRISTIAN MISSION, DISPLAYING ABORTION PHOTOS AT PUBLIC SCHOOL ASSEMBLIES Rep. Bachmann to raise funds again for controversial Christian rock ministry And, the story is much as you expect and well worth the read (if it doesn't load it's because I think the Minnesota Independent's servers are overwhelmed)...
A Quiet Year at the Court on Education?
Posted on October 01, 2009Mark Walsh, who watches education at the Supreme Court closer than anyone, has noted that there are no education cases currently on the docket for the Supreme Court's fall term (although there are some tangentially related cases he does a good job of explaining)...
A Sexting Discussion
Posted on September 29, 2009A friend of mine in the twittersphere, Jeremy Brueck, did an interview with a school law attorney on the issue of sexting and I think there is some very good information in there. I think the point made that the law is slow to respond to this is a good one - and judges just sort of responding willy nilly does seem to be the standard...
Private Suits against Fake Facebook Profiles
Posted on September 26, 2009Here is a story that I sort of like out of Chicago. A parent of a boy that was profiled as a gay racist on facebook is suing the four creating students on various tort claims including intentional infliction of emotional distress and defamation (follow the link for the lawsuit)...
Step Away from the Chalk ?.
Posted on September 25, 2009A graduate student at the University of Arizona was arrested this week after writing on school sidewalks (and perhaps other campus property) using, oh my, chalk. Check out the story at the student daily paper, the Arizona Daily Wildcat. According to news accounts, the chalk drawings merited a 911 call to report the incident and analysis by university police officers of surveillance tape to identify the offending student (perhaps the university CSI team also dusted the student's hands for chalk residue)...
Presentation Materials - Web 2.0 Presentation
Posted on September 25, 2009I gave a presentation today to Instructional Systems Design students here at UK and these are the materials I used and some extra resources. Title: Implications of Web 2.0 on Educational and Training Organizations Videos: Ray Kurzweil - How Technology Will Transform Us Information Revolution Did You Know 3...
"National" Standards--First Draft
Posted on September 22, 2009The Common Core Standards Initiative has released its first draft of the proposed "national" (NOT "federal") standards for language arts and math. The draft standards are here, and the CCSI has requested that interested parties provide comments on the draft...
Students Don't Know Constitutional History ...
Posted on September 22, 2009.. because their teachers don't know Constitutional history. Oklahoma study finding only 3% of high school students would pass U.S. Citizenship test and only 25% can name our first President. I get my students who are mostly practicing teachers and always start from scratch because I feel like I need to...
We're Making Waves
Posted on September 16, 2009Okay, small ones. Teeny ones. The kind of waves that result from, say, a spider walking on water. But waves nonetheless. Latest is that the Five Freedom's Project quoted The Edjurist and Scott B. in particular on the issue of national standards in their monthly newsletter...
American University Law Review Symposium on Tinker
Posted on September 16, 2009Our readers may be interested in a recent symposium issue on the Tinker case, which has its 40th anniversary this year, in the American University Law Review. I was particularly interested in an article by Professor Kristi L. Bowman, of Michgan State University College of Law, entitled The Civil Rights Roots of Tinker's Disruption Tests...
Twitter Primer for Professors
Posted on September 16, 2009UCEA today decided to e-mail all the professors in their organization (all professors of education leadership) about their new Twitter page and encouraged them to sign up. And, lots of folks did (Welcome all). But, now what? So, since I get asked a lot anyway about Twitter, I decided to do a little post as a primer for professors using Twitter...
Harrison and Harrison on the NCAA and Antitrust Law
Posted on September 15, 2009Professor Jeffrey Harrison of the University of Florida Levin College of Law and Casey C. Harrison, a J.D./M.S. (Sport Science) candiate at the same school, have recently posted to SSRN an interesting working paper relating to the antitrust concerns of the NCAA, which they refer to as a "monopsony," a sole buyer in a market with multiple sellers (as opposed to a traditional monopoly, which would be a sole seller in a market with multiple buyers)...
Gigs Up Anti-Bullying Laws
Posted on September 15, 2009The 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...
Orange County Student Newspaper (probably better than real Orange County Register)
Posted on September 14, 2009This is an absolute disaster of an article on the decision by the principal of the Orange County High School for the Arts to delay the publication of their student newspaper. The article is written with so much bias it is sort of hard to even read. The author called sources on only one side of the issue and clearly allowed that to sway him away from writing an objective story...
Utah & Feds Just Can't Get Along
Posted on September 14, 2009One of the reasons I really like Utah is its open defiance of the federal government on some issues. Today, for instance, the Department of Education slapped a penalty on Utah's Office of Education for failing to use the right test in a couple districts...
A More Benign Use of the Spending Power
Posted on September 14, 2009Is it just me or is anyone else sort of liking the Obama Administration's usage of the spending power in education. Now, granted, I sort of dislike any use of the spending power related to schools, but compared to the flashy, demanding, annoying law that NCLB was with deadlines and sanctions and public fights between the Fed...
Did You Know 4.0
Posted on September 14, 2009I know some of our audience overlaps (so sorry techies if you saw this twice) but to my legal interested folks out there, please check out Did You Know 4.0 from my partner in the CASTLE blogging network Scott McLeod and associated team members. A special shout-out goes to Laura Bestler, a graduate student at Iowa State who helped design parts of The Edjurist, who did a lot of the work on the video...
"Delusions of Adequacy"
Posted on September 09, 2009Justin blogged earlier this week about the recent Missouri Supreme Court decision upholding the trial court's rejection of the state's most recent school funding lawsuit. Now that I am beginning to emerge from beginning of the year course planning, conference paper preparation, and final dissertation edits, I thought I would chime in...
Get Schooled: You Have The Right*
Posted on September 08, 2009*For promotional purposes only - no legal right to an education exists in the United States and neither the Gates Foundation or its affiliates nor Viacom or its subsidiaries or affiliates are subject to enforce or guarantee the lack of said right. Just helping out the Gates Foundation and Viacom on their new endeavor (via EdWeek)...
New DOE Online Digs
Posted on September 08, 2009Liking the Department of Education site upgrades a lot. Their site was always one of the most difficult education sites to navigate and certainly set a tone that the rest of education sites followed (not a lot of great education sites out there). It would be really cool (and probably too much to ask) if they were to put up tutorials and maybe even videos of how they went about building the new one...
We survived it.
Posted on September 08, 2009Now, was that so bad ... It was dull (hello, not a campaign speech?), but I actually sort of liked it. I hope he does it every year and it becomes a tradition for all Presidents.
The ELA Listserv Disaster
Posted on September 08, 2009Something that a lot of you probably didn't see over the weekend, unless you are subscribed, was the disaster that unfolded on the ELA Administrator listserv. Here is how it played out: An administrator asks what others are doing re: Obama's speech...
This Kentucky thing is not going to be easy ...
Posted on September 08, 2009Sometimes I love that I am in Kentucky, and some days I dread that I am in Kentucky. Today is one of those latter kind of days. If you didn't see it splashed all over the Internet or in the comments earlier (thanks Matt Foster!), then I guess I should give you some background...
Are Personal Emails of Wisconsin School District?s Employees Subject to the State's Open Records Law?
Posted on September 07, 2009The Wisconsin Supreme Court has agreed to review a case dealing with whether the personal emails of employees of a school district sent using district email accounts and district-owned computers are subject to release under the state's open records law, even if the emails did not in any way relate to the employee's job duties...
What Would Google Do ... A Review
Posted on September 07, 2009I'm making an effort to review the books I read on here, whether or not they relate explicitly to education law (this one does only tangentially). I have been reading heavily into technology lately and we return to that theme today. So you know, I get a lot of my tech...
Students ... Give Up Your Passwords? Parents ... Give Up Your Schools!
Posted on September 04, 2009A private school in S.C. has passed a policy requiring students in the school to give school officials their social networking passwords upon request (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.). The story (also on CNN video - a couple minutes in). Here's the local video: I've thought about this for a couple days now, and I can't really think of a legal problem here (if you disagree, let me know, I would be happy to be proved wrong)...
Welcoming Dr. Hutchens to The Edjurist
Posted on September 03, 2009Source: UKY COE GraphicsToday is a great day for The Edjurist because I get to introduce our third UK contributor, Dr. Neal Hutchens. Neal is as talented and promising as they come and we're lucky to have him both here at UK and blogging at The Edjurist...
The President's Speech to Students and the Craziness that Ensued
Posted on September 03, 2009Okay ... approaching the edge of sanity today with the public outcry against the President's upcoming address to students returning to school. This whole thing, the politicization of this event by some, makes me a little sick to my stomach. He is tasked with making students do better, but is not allowed to simply ask them to do better...
Aggressive Churches and School Influence
Posted on September 02, 2009I was sort of disturbed by this story out of Gainesville earlier this week which had a local church encouraging its school age students to wear t-shirts to school which said "Islam is of the Devil." The Gainesville Sun has pictures and video. Starting at 2:58, the pastor starts speaking, and it is worth listening to...
"Put Christ Back Into Schools" Facebook Group - Really?
Posted on September 02, 2009The "Put Christ Back Into Schools" Facebook group is almost at a million members. Their position statement: Allow Teaching of and only the Bible by teachers at any time to students anytime. Allowing the Bible (and only the Bible) to be an elective in all schools, and not forced upon...
Missouri School Funding Suit Fails
Posted on September 01, 2009The Missouri Supreme Court has rejected a school funding suit brought by many districts in that state. It caps 5 years and 6 million dollars worth of litigation. The decision is here. More info on Missouri school finance is here and here. These school finance suits are always high-risk, high-reward endeavors and today the districts that brought the suit lost big...
Should We Trust the Numbers? Good Question.
Posted on August 27, 2009Iowa State is holding a symposium on Sept. 11 titled: Should We Trust the Numbers? A Workshop on Philosophy, Mathematics and Statistics in the Court of Law. What a just flat out awesome idea for a symposium. While the program is a bit philosophical for my tastes, the question nevertheless is extremely important and one that scholars across the country are wrestling with as more and more legal scholars are also being trained as researchers (ex: myself, Scott B...
More on Bearing the Costs of Education
Posted on August 26, 2009Following up on my post yesterday on educational cost inflation, NPR today has information from a Sallie Mae/Gallup study (via The Atlantic) on how students are paying for college (there are lot of other very informative charts in the study and it is worth checking out): Sallie Mae/Gallup via The AtlanticThere are a couple of interesting points...
Education Costs in Perspective
Posted on August 25, 2009Niraj Chokshi: The AtlanticThere's a scary chart. The inflation in the price of education has consistently outpaced inflation in the medical world and, of course, inflation itself. Now, I am sure the numbers can be argued (although they are from the Department of Labor), but that's not the point...
The Rubber Room in the New Yorker
Posted on August 25, 2009A lovely (long) article on the New York City Rubber Rooms (which I frequently get asked about) in the New Yorker worth checking out. And, this is probably coming out pretty soon - which will keep the rubber room in the news. h/t Kishizuka
California as the Prototype
Posted on August 24, 2009If you haven't noticed, California is gearing up the wheels of education reform. The Governor has even called a special session to work on reforming some laws that conflict with the Obama Administration's demands for federal "Race to the Top" dollars...
Defining "Civil Rights" for Curriculum Purposes
Posted on August 24, 2009Mississippi is looking like they will make "civil rights" an essential part of the curriculum from kindergarten to 12th grade. The civil rights curriculum will be a part of the social studies course, but will be independently tested. This is a good idea, but "civil rights" should be defined broadly...
Some Catching Up: Rose Event Details & New Website
Posted on August 20, 2009I want to do a little catching up today. I had an extremely busy, but productive, summer. But, lately that has left little time for blogging as I have been traveling around the state and my college coordinating projects. And, I want to make some of those public: First, I am coordinating an event in conjunction with the Education Law Association in Louisville, Kentucky on October 21 in the evening...
Special Ed. Teacher Instruction in Law
Posted on August 19, 2009The big news making rounds today is the new GAO report on teacher education as related to special education. In it, the GAO finds that most schools of education require at least one course related to students with disabilities and only 20 percent offer instruction related to ELL students...
The Budget Cut Curve
Posted on August 17, 2009I loved this graphic from a story on Stateline.org on state budget deficits: National Conference of State Legislators via Stateline.orgWhat is really interesting is their curve projections in that the curve of this recession is steeper, both higher and more narrow...
The Louisiana Fall-Out
Posted on August 12, 2009An outstanding new colleague of mine, Dr. Wayne Lewis (who blogs here on ed. policy - love to bring on these blogging faculty members!) brought me up to speed on the political fight that is going on in Louisiana right now between the State Superintendent of Schools and, well, just about everyone else...
Congrats to Dr. Bauries (and UK)
Posted on August 10, 2009Just got word from Scott, I mean Dr. Bauries, that his dissertation has been successfully defended. He is a newly minted Ph.D. from the University of Florida Department of Educational Administration and Policy with Dr. Craig Wood as his chair - one of the nation's leading school finance experts...
SSRN--A valuable resource, but is it compatible with exclusivity?
Posted on July 31, 2009Many of our readers may not be aware of this resource, but in the world of legal academia, we have become familiar with a service called the Social Science Research Network, or SSRN. The SSRN site is essentially a clearing house of scholarship (abstracts, working papers, accepted papers, and finished articles with publisher permission) in all areas having to do with social science...
Change Blogging - Becker Style
Posted on July 28, 2009Jon Becker, the law/tech. prof. at Virginia Commonwealth, is guestblogging this week at Change.org's education blog, normally run by Clay Burell. The subject for the week is segregation issues, and you can see his first, outstanding, post here. Jon plans for some "courageous conversations" this week, so go check it out.
Edjurist TV Episode 6: Kentucky School Finance History
Posted on July 21, 2009I was asked to present this morning on the history of Kentucky School Finance, the Rose v. Council for Better Education case, and the Kentucky Education Refom Act here at UK. So, below is the presentation in Episode 6 of Edjurist TV. It is narration over a Prezi...
More Data Needed: State Special Education Due Process Systems
Posted on July 19, 2009The latest 50 state (even then it was only 44 state) data on special education due process systems is from 2001. Specifically, I wanted to know the number of states running two-tier due process systems (and maybe even make a pretty map for the blog). But, no data...
AERA Law and Ed. SIG Open for More Presentations
Posted on July 17, 2009Just talked with the Law and Education SIG program chair and she confirmed that there is a lot more room in our program for more proposals. So, with the week extension, I am recommending that you should submit something to our SIG - or, alternatively, you should tell your graduate student friends to submit (they could win an award!).
AERA Proposal Deadline Extended
Posted on July 15, 2009For those of our readers working furiously to finish a presentation proposal by 11:59 P.S.T. tonight for the 2010 AERA Annual Meeting in Denver, according to the AERA website, you now have until July 22, 2009 (one week from today). Procrastinators (like me) rejoice!
Indiana's School Finance Adequacy Ruling
Posted on July 15, 2009About a month ago, the Indiana Supreme Court handed down its decision in that state's education finance adequacy litigation. The opinion is here. In the case (Bonner v. Daniels), the plaintiffs claimed, in the alternative, (1) that the state constitution's Education Clause imposed a duty on the legislature to provide a certain level of quality education, and that this duty was not fulfilled by the current system; (2) that the state constitution established a fundamental right to education, and that this right was abridged by the current system; and (3) that the current system violated Indiana's Equal Privileges and Immunities Clause (the state's version of the Equal Protection Clause) due to unequal expenditures...
Good analysis of Richerson and Blogging in the Workplace
Posted on July 14, 2009Check out Ellen Simon's great analysis of the recent Richerson case, which I wrote about here, and general issues with blogging in the workplace. since the law is quite undeveloped and the waters uncharted in this area, both employers and employees need to use common sense and tread carefully...
Leadership Day 09: Ignorance is Legally Unacceptable
Posted on July 12, 2009It's Leadership Day 09, details here. My post is simple. Ignorance of student used technology is legally unacceptable. On Thursday I ran a manifestation determination simulation in my special education class. The fact pattern had a student threatening a teacher and school via twitter (see threat here)...
AERA Deadline this Wednesday
Posted on July 11, 2009The AERA deadline for proposals is this Wednesday, July 15. AERA is in Denver next year, which should be fun. Please submit to the Law and Education Special Interest Group.
Detroit Inches Closer to Bankruptcy
Posted on July 09, 2009Detroit Public Schools overseer is meeting with an ex-bankruptcy judge today to talk it over. My Chapter 9 background here. Was hoping we didn't need to use that. H/T Linda704 via Twitter
"National" Standards--Part III
Posted on July 09, 2009Okay, now it seems that we MAY get a "national" assessment to go along with our "national" standards. According to this article in Education Week, it appears that the Department of Education has "set aside" up to $350 million dollars that is apparently earmarked to assist the states in developing "common assessments" (though talk is indeed cheap in this context)...
Because Boys Hunt and Girls Get Married?
Posted on July 08, 2009One of the really disturbing trends of late is the movement back toward segregated schooling by gender, thanks to loosening of regulations by the Bush administration, which I have said before is probably unconstitutional. So, I am happy to report, thanks to a tip from Kevin Welner, that the ACLU of Alabama was effective in ridding 10 school districts of single-sex classes...
"National" Standards Part II
Posted on July 08, 2009Recently, I noted that a new move is afoot to develop "national" (i.e., NOT federal) standards for high school reading and math. Here in this second post on the topic, I consider more deeply the question of accountability. Our readers no doubt are aware that we have had "national" standards in language arts, math, and at least five other subjects for years...
Outliers = Dangerous
Posted on July 07, 2009I planned to pen some long articulate criticism of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, but I'll leave that to my good friend Jon Becker, since we seem to be pretty much on the same page here. My bottom line, as I tweeted, is that this book is a mile wide and an inch deep and, as such, is really dangerous...
Careful with those files ...
Posted on July 06, 2009The digital age makes everything so much easier - but that can lead to really bad mistakes. Like this teacher in Elk Grove Unified Sch. Dist. (same one as in the Pledge case) that included 6 seconds of her sex life on a DVD sent home with kids. Here is CNN video via Scott McLeod...
My Favorite Holiday
Posted on July 04, 2009Just wishing everyone a spectacular July 4. It's pouring down rain right now here in Illinois, but it doesn't spoil my enthusiasm at all. I got a little fishing planned for later today and fireworks tonight. On this July 4, everyone should remember our founding fathers and present day soldiers, but give a little time to contemplate over our educational founding fathers as well and the events that shaped our particularly American system of education...
Bankrupt Schools - Implications
Posted on July 02, 2009Until this year, I have never really heard of a school district going bankrupt. It's an extremely rare event. But, Detroit may be left no other option and several schools in California (2) are telling the state they simply cannot pay their bills anymore...
Discrimination is Delicate - Leave This One to Lawyers
Posted on June 30, 2009Today we got the ruling from the Supreme Court in Ricci v. DeStefano - the case that people only really care about because the Supreme Court overturned the Second Circuit panel on which nominee J. Sonia Sotomayor sat. The point I want to make is not the one that you will see splashed all over the papers or cable news in the coming months, but instead I want to use this opportunity to reiterate that discrimination is an extremely delicate topic - and really, one best dealt with by lawyers...
ELA's Perspective
Posted on June 30, 2009This is encouraging from ELA. Administrator, Attorney and Professor perspective on Forest Grove. Ditto for Safford v. Redding.
A Symbolic End to Bush Era Symbolism
Posted on June 30, 2009Something about this just makes me feel good inside and I thought I would share: I hated those damn schoolhouses. Nothing says "we're a joke over here" like fabricating symbolism and the Bush Administration was really good at such blatent fabrications...
Do Student Dislike Education Law Classes? Evidence from Twitter
Posted on June 30, 2009Playing around with Twitter tonight. Signed up even (you can follow me at edjurist and/or if you are reading this I should probably be following you, so please tell me you handle in way or another). Anyway, ran a search for "education law" and "school law" and this is what I got (representative)...
Do Students Dislike Education Law Classes? Evidence from Twitter
Posted on June 30, 2009Playing around with Twitter tonight. Signed up even (you can follow me at edjurist and/or if you are reading this I should probably be following you, so please tell me you handle in way or another). Anyway, ran a search for "education law" and "school law" and this is what I got (representative)...
Edjurist TV Episode 5: Initial Thoughts on Safford Unified School District v. Redding
Posted on June 25, 2009The Redding case is out today (so is Horne v. Flores, but I'll address that later). Basically, my thoughts on Redding are ... Wahoo ... as I articule in Episode 5. Here are some other links. MSNBC reporting. School Law Blog ASCD Inservice And here are all my previous posts: Thoughts and Resources...
Board Certification for Education Lawyers in Florida
Posted on June 24, 2009Yesterday, I received the following message from the Florida Bar (of which I am a member). It announces the approval of board certification procedures for education law and adoption law. For those unfamiliar, board certification is a designation that a lawyer may achieve only after several years of successful and ethical practice in the field...
Interesting Short Article on Parents Involved
Posted on June 24, 2009A good deal of scholarship has been published in the legal and educational communities since the Supreme Court decided the Parents Involved case. In that case, the Court struck down the student assignment systems of Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky on Equal Protection grounds...
The Rubber Room Balloon
Posted on June 23, 2009Unbelieveable, really. 700 teachers in New York sitting in rubber rooms waiting on hearings, costing the city an estimated 65 million dollars a year. The issue: ...because their cases are heard by 23 arbitrators who work only five days a month, stints of two or three years in a rubber room are common, and some teachers have been there for five or six...
Blogging Teacher Correctly Demoted
Posted on June 23, 2009The Ninth Circuit has held in Richerson v. Beckon that a teacher who uses her blog to post comments about other employees can have adverse employment consequences taken against her. The teacher, an instructional coach and curriculum specialist, published posts on her personal blog that talked about issues that arose at work...
Learning About Roberts and Alito: Forest Grove School District v. T.A.
Posted on June 22, 2009The Supreme Court released Forest Grove Sch. Dist. v. T. A. today and in it found for the parents that their private school tuition should be reimbursed by the public school, even though the public school never made an attempt to provide FAPE in the first place...
Credit for Release-Time Religion Class
Posted on June 18, 2009Howard Friedman, who does yeoman's work at Religion Clause, has an interesting religion case out of Spartanburg, S.C. where they are giving academic credit and grades to religious-based courses offered during school release time. Spartanburg is responding to a 2006 S...
RTI and Special Education Enrollment Declines
Posted on June 18, 2009I'm teaching a special education class at the moment and I was forced to reevaluate a long held belief. You see, since IDEA was first passed as EAHCA in 1975, there has been a steady increase in special education enrollments nationally. At least, that was what I told my students because last time I checked, that hadn't changed...
Answering Scott's Question: Bureaucracy or Democracy
Posted on June 18, 2009Like many of you, I have excitedly followed along with the events in Iran. Yesterday, not by chance (the video was released because of the events), Scott McLeod posted Clay Shirky's latest TED talk and I also read Clay's Q & A on the Iranian situation...
Paying for the National Standards with Federal Dollars
Posted on June 15, 2009Recent developments around the formation of national standards have been really interesting. They got even more so today as Secretary Duncan has announced that the federal government will spend $350 million developing tests off whatever standards are eventually developed by the collection of 46 states...
NCLB: "A Hostage of Fortune"
Posted on June 13, 2009I get asked all the time about NCLB reauthorization and we talked about it in class this week (it's a law, I'm a law guy, I guess I am supposed to know that). I'm no expert for sure, but my standard response is 2010 at the soonest. I don't see any serious signs from the administration and although George Miller keeps saying it will be done this year, there is really no reason to believe that...
Harrison Williams' Bill
Posted on June 11, 2009Our own little Charlie Wilson ... sort of. Harrison (Pete) Williams was a Senator from New Jersey. He is important to us because he was the Senator that proposed the core provisions of EAHCA, what is today IDEA, based off the PARC and Mills cases which granted equal educational access to children with disabilities...
Digital Efficiency
Posted on June 10, 2009That's what Governor Schwarzenegger wants. It's nonsensical — and expensive — to look to traditional hard-bound books when information today is so readily available in electronic form. Especially now, when our school districts are strapped for cash and our state budget deficit is forcing further cuts to classrooms, we must do everything we can to untie educators' hands and free up dollars so that schools can do more with fewer resources...
Crazy, Alright.
Posted on June 10, 2009I hate columns like this. Hate them. When the top of your blog says "Business" ... maybe you should stick to writing about business. We got a name for this nonsense, it's called telling tales out of school. Pity, I really like The Atlantic otherwise, but if you got a "food" correspondent maybe you should have an education correspondent too...
NCSL Bill Tracking
Posted on June 08, 2009One of the things I am going to try to do over the summer is provide links to data sources related to education law - and today is the first of those. The National Conference of State Legislators has a great education bill tracking database that they built last year...
If Things Are Not Bad, They are Not Accurate
Posted on June 08, 2009Check out this Columbus Dispatch story today. The author blatantly accuses the schools in Ohio of lying, or intentionally ignoring, incidents of sexual harassment in schools. I'm not an expert on Ohio sexual harassment, so I can't say one way or the other whether the data cited in this story is accurate...
The Power of Pension Funds
Posted on June 08, 2009As regular readers know, I have a little secret infatuation with teacher pension systems. I've posted on them several times, but this is one of the more recent ones. Anyway, today the Indiana Teacher's Retirement System (which I know a lot about), with a couple other Indiana pension systems, stopped the Chrysler sale...
Shifting, or Blurry, Fora?
Posted on June 04, 2009The Busch v. Marple Newton Sch. Dist. case is getting a lot of play. In it the 3rd Circuit ruled that a parent may not read the bible in her son's kindergarten class, even though it was during an activity called "All About Me" which featured information about each student, including the opportunity to read from each student's favorite book...
"National" Standards--Part I
Posted on June 03, 2009There has recently been a movement among the states to collaboratively adopt learning and content standards that apply nationwide. "National, not federal, standards," as a proponent pointedly referred to them at the AREA Annual Meeting. Today, Education Week reports that 46 states, "representing 80% of the nation's K-12 student population" have signed a "memorandum of understanding" (a euphemism for an unenforceable contract) reflecting their intent to adopt such standards within three years...
NCLB and State Education Finance Remedies
Posted on June 01, 2009Several states have complained about the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and its tendency to cause states to incur expenses they would not have incurred absent the law. This tendency is troubling because NCLB appears to explicitly forbid the creation of any unfunded mandates in the law (and two states have sought to remind the Department of Education of this through lawsuits)...
Who or Where?
Posted on May 31, 2009I have been wrestling with this question of school resource officers (typically uniformed police officers) and search and seizure and how to legally deal with this issue for a while now. I thought I would give my conclusions in a scholarly series post, which I haven't done for a while...
Law Professor? Want to Blog on Education?
Posted on May 28, 2009Paul Caron wants to talk to you about the Law Profs Blog Network (in fact he has wanted to talk to you for a year now). Couple points ... we are extremely privledged to have Scott Bauries, a law professor, on board here. Here are his excellent posts...
Gratis: Is Child Support a Payment?
Posted on May 28, 2009Interesting case out of Pennsylvania (Velazquez v. East Stroudsburg Sch. Dist. - plol link) and I want to point it out because it is a great case of getting the right result ... and getting the right law. I love it when courts do that (and in appellate opinions it doesn't happen as often as you might think)...
Finding Free Legal Information
Posted on May 26, 2009A short article Kevin Brady and I did for NSBA Leadership Insider is published and making the rounds now. We did a survey of ed. law interested folks regarding how they get their legal information related to education and articulate some of the results, although more results will be published in a later article...
Some Preliminary Thoughts on "Cyber-bullying" and the First Amendment
Posted on May 23, 2009I'm sure that Justin has touched on this topic at some point, but the semester just ended at my institution, and some of the papers in my education law seminar have started me thinking on the issue of school bullying--more specifically "cyber-bullying...
South Carolina Political Fight Over Stimulus Gets Legal
Posted on May 23, 2009The family and I have been enjoying our time at the beach here in South Carolina, but all we can hear about on the nightly news (while we are waiting on the weather report) is the various lawsuits filed for and against the Governor. Mark Sanford, a while back, claimed that he was going to reject the stimulus dollars...
Restraint and Seclusion. Are we really trained for this?
Posted on May 19, 2009I have not posted to this blog in awhile--serving the research/writing/grading-papers masters--but now I take the opportunity of Justin's vacation to renew my contributions (albeit a couple of days late--my apologies, Justin). I will start with an alarming story that raises many difficult issues...
Denver still on edge from Columbine
Posted on May 18, 2009Way back when, as a high schooler, I turned down a student that asked me out (yes, I know you are shocked (admittedly I was too - I didn't get a lot of date requests)). In response, she wrote in a notebook something like 200-300 different ways to kill me...
Edjurist TV Episode 4: 2008 School Discipline Wrap
Posted on May 16, 2009I am reading all the cases related to students for the 2009 Yearbook of Education Law, so I thought I would wrap up some interesting school discipline decisions. I think you'll enjoy it because school discipline cases always have interesting fact patterns...
Can't Have it Both Ways School Resource Officers
Posted on May 14, 2009I am growing more and more frustrated in how the courts are handling school resource officers. The courts seem to have no trouble concluding that school resource officers are more like school officials for purposes of getting under the reasonable suspicion standard of the 4th Amendment (searches and seizures)...
Why Teacher Drug Testing Should Be Avoided
Posted on May 14, 2009It is just a nightmare procedurally. You probably haven't been following it, but I am a casual NASCAR fan and my favorite driver growing up was Jeremy Mayfield. A week ago Mayfield was the first big driver to be caught in NASCAR's drug testing scheme...
Weekend Supreme Court Viewing
Posted on May 08, 2009I will be back in Illinois this weekend because of a death in the family; so, enjoy this series on the Supreme Court in the meantime. We are approaching some pretty big decisions on education being handed down in the next month or so, so it is a good time to stop and reflect on what the Supreme Court is and why their decisions are so important...
Let's Have Another Sexting Story!
Posted on May 07, 2009Maybe we should let newspapers die. There's another AP sexting story all over the country's newspapers today. It was not responding to any particular event that just happened yesterday, they just ran one to run one and local papers picked it up. This is a big part of why schools are struggling with technology...
The Other Side of the Religion Issue ... Still Unconstitutional
Posted on May 05, 2009Most of the stories I get to write about on religion have the same basic plot: teacher intentionally or unintentionally injects their own religion, usually Christianity, into classroom, which violates the First Amendment. Well, today, I get to write the opposite story ...
A Paddling Success Story?
Posted on May 04, 2009Check this one out and decide for yourself. A principal in South Carolina has taken to "whippen" kids to restore order in the school -- and it has worked to the benefit of his school achievement scores. You can decide for yourself on this one, but it really depends on the definition of success, doesn't it...
Closing Schools for Swine Flu - Would Businesses?
Posted on April 30, 2009Schools are closing all over the U.S. because of the Swine Flu scare. Fort Worth entirely shut down for 10 days. Schools are also closed in Chicago, California, Utah, Arizona, Austin, Houston, New York. As of today, the Washington Post has 300 schools nationwide closed (up from 100 yesterday) based on Department of Education data...
Acceptable Use Policies Becoming A Relic
Posted on April 28, 2009Just participated a great conversation with Sara Dexter of the University of Virginia for one of her Technology Leader Certificate courses. One of the questions concerned Acceptable Use Policies and the ramifications of parents failing or unwilling to sign them, so I wanted to sort of rehash my answer here...
Credit Cards for 2 Year Olds
Posted on April 24, 2009There is a lot of national talk about the credit industry right now, including talk of more highly regulating credit cards. Well, yesterday my 2 year old got a credit card application in the mail. He can't even read (nor has he mastered going on the potty) yet Regions Bank was apparently willing to extend him a thousand dollar line of credit...
Downside of Doing Nothing
Posted on April 23, 2009This is a pretty bad one - I have not seen this before (I have a son who is potty training now, so I hope our daycare doesn't send something similar home to us). Embedded video from CNN Video But, the lesson here is that you can't just do nothing altogether...
Was it a search? - What?
Posted on April 21, 2009The Supreme Court heard the Safford v. Redding case today ... so it is all over the news (I will post links and video as they become available). I trust Mark Walsh's interpretation of the events and he seemed struck by Justices Souter and Breyer asking tough questions of the Redding's (the student) lawyer...
Supreme Court Previews at the School Law Blog
Posted on April 20, 2009Mark Walsh has done a superb job as always in previewing the upcoming Supreme Court cases related to education and instead of duplicating the effort, I will just point you over there. Mark usually attends the oral arguments as well, so be sure to watch for that also...
Dissertation Up
Posted on April 20, 2009My Dissertation is posted. Here is a link. It is really quite boring unless you enjoy considering principalship preparation issues and cross-referencing that with state data. The title is: EXAMINING THE CHARACTERISTICS OF SCHOOL LEADERS AND OF LOCAL SCHOOLS WHERE INDIANA EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP PREPARATION PROGRAMS PLACE THEIR GRADUATES ...
Destined for Doom: Sports Stadium Edition
Posted on April 20, 2009The money spent on sport in this country is obscene. Norman Chad does a nice job of putting it in historical perspective in light of NYC's recent stadium investments and it is worth a quick read. Once again, we are front-row witnesses to public money gone mad...
AERA 09 Wrap
Posted on April 17, 2009Yeah, didn't get a chance to blog nearly as much as I had planned. I just got back to Lexington, so let me write up a few thoughts before I forget them and I will try to return to several of them in the next couple weeks: Went to a wonderful session with Bill Koski, Kevin Welner, Mike Rebell and Anne Newman...
AERA: Day 2
Posted on April 15, 2009My Internet access is somewhat limited here, so sorry the blogging has been light. A few reflections on the day: The Law and Education SIG is so enjoyable. It really is my favorite professional group and for you fellow edjurists out there, I highly recommend that you consider it...
AERA: San Deigo Blogging
Posted on April 13, 2009San Diego is beautiful. Let's just start there. The hotels, the places to eat, the convention center, and the beach ... the beach is fabulous. Over the next couple days I will be blogging in a live way (although not live-blogging technically) several sessions and events at AERA...
AERA: San Diego Blogging
Posted on April 13, 2009San Diego is beautiful. Let's just start there. The hotels, the places to eat, the convention center, and the beach ... the beach is fabulous. Over the next couple days I will be blogging in a live way (although not live-blogging technically) several sessions and events at AERA...
Wecasting or Liveblogging School Board Meetings
Posted on April 10, 2009Wes Fryer liveblogged and UStreamed a school board meeting last week and wondered a little about the legal implications thereof. Short answer: Yes, you probably can video record or liveblog school board meetings unless someone tells you not to because it is going to disrupt the meeting or a local rule exists prohibiting recording...
How Can Schools Regulate Off-Campus Internet Speech?
Posted on April 10, 2009We'll do a little mail today as I have a couple a need to get to (I try to be pretty responsive to reader requests or questions as much as I can without practicing law, so feel free to contact me): A reader from Michigan writes in with a question/musing: "How is it a school district thinks it has a right to scan students' Facebook pages and assign consequences to those that express dislike for certain teachers or use profanity in any way...
We Have To Get Rid of Time-Out Rooms
Posted on April 09, 2009Following up on my post yesterday, I am going to make a follow-up plea today that we start eliminating these rooms. Last night I had access to some school data on usage of time-out rooms and I was absolutely in shock. Unfortunately, I cannot share this raw data and you will just have to take my word for it, but it was stark...
This was inevitable ...
Posted on April 08, 2009I have always been against the "safe room" concept that is becoming more and more popular in schools ... because this is where that concept inevitably leads: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Suing a School Over Bullying
Posted on April 07, 2009The news making the rounds this week is the school outside Cleveland that is being sued over a student's suicide, which the parents claim is a result of unaddressed bullying. It is quite the interesting case and, if it doesn't settle, will make for a nice test case...
Food Allergy Bullying
Posted on April 03, 2009This post was written by Abigail Mack, a Master's student in one of my classes here at UK. When I do my YouTube Assignment, I try to find ways to reward the best work and I thought this post warranted publishing. Enjoy. Allergy bullying occurs when one individual intimidates a person, usually a schoolmate, by threatening to expose that person to food that they are allergic to...
The Interesting South Carolina Rejection
Posted on April 02, 2009I find this one very interesting. If you haven't heard, there is a growing controversy in South Carolina because Governor Mark Sanford's refusal of some of the Stiumlus money. Not just any Stimulus money, but specifically $700 million for K-12 and higher education...
Coaches, Calipari Edition
Posted on April 01, 2009So, yes, we hired Jon Calipari. For 2.9 million a year, plus a slew of benefits (cars, tickets, country club membership, camp profits, etc). Here is his employment contract, it is one of the more interesting I have ever read (who gets 3 million for wearing the right pair of shoes?)...
Its the RIFing Time of Year
Posted on March 31, 2009Districts are letting their teachers know they are RIFed about now. A lot of teachers are going to be RIFed this year. I could link to some examples, but it is easier for you to just check your local paper, because it is going to happen everywhere. This site is tracking all the RIF's in California, totaling over 27,800 and is providing a little social networking space for them to vent...
Coaches - Not My Favorite Aspect of Education
Posted on March 29, 2009Well, I guess now is as good a time as any to make my dislike for school-employed coaches public. If you have had me in class, you are already aware of my feelings in this regard. My university just fired our basketball coach, Billy Gillespie, perhaps you've heard...
C-SPAN Tinker Session
Posted on March 27, 2009C-SPAN had a program on the 40th Anniversiary of Tinker v. Des Moines, with Mary Beth Tinker and Maryam Ahranjani, a law professor at American University (who I think could have been a little more in touch with the educational world and the impact of Tinker - wonder if they know there are J...
Don't Get Discouraged
Posted on March 27, 2009We have to relish stories like the one in North Dakota where students have been redirected from schools to sandbag lines to save their towns. We may bicker about on day to day issues, but it is nice to remember that when emergencies hit, we are still all on the same page.
Some more ed. law blogs
Posted on March 25, 2009The Ed. Law Blogosphere continues to grow. That is not to say we haven't lost a few along the way, but nevertheless it is nice to continually see new folks around the country trying their hand. So, here are some I want to point out to you. All of them have existed for a while, but I wanted to be sure that I featured them as I add them to my blogroll...
Some Butt-Art Video
Posted on March 24, 2009I hadn't come across this video before on the Stephen Murmer, butt-art case and settlement. If you are new the case (lucky you) here is the background, the complaint, the school press release and the settlement. This is one of those classic cases that we ed...
Texas Stepping into Evolution Debate
Posted on March 23, 2009Texas is getting ready to put its boot-print on the evolution debate in America. The issue has been going on for a while and I have been following it here, but now national media has noticed -- putting Texas in sort of a no-backing down position here...
Those dang open meetings.
Posted on March 23, 2009School boards really struggle with the Open Meeting Laws (sometimes called Sunshine Laws). Like this one in Iowa (h/t S.M.). Here is a compendium of every state's Open Meetings laws. Also, most states have a handbook on Open Meetings laws for new board members and most are online...
Overruling the Spirit of Pickering
Posted on March 19, 2009I'm now conformable making this statement: Garcetti expressly overruled the spirit of Pickering. Consider this from Pickering: However, the only way in which the Board could conclude, absent any evidence of the actual effect of the letter, that the statements contained therein were per se detrimental to the interest of the schools was to equate the Board members' own interests with that of the schools...
Edjurist TV: Episode 3 - Interview with Dr. Kevin Welner on his New Book: NeoVouchers: The Emergence of Tuition Tax Credits for Private Schooling
Posted on March 18, 2009Hooray, it all worked this time! This is how I envisioned these sessions and hopefully how the rest will be from now on. Today we have Kevin Welner, an associate professor at the University of Colorado - Boulder, talking about his new book: NeoVouchers: The Emergence of Tuition Tax Credits for Private Schooling (it's pretty cheap folks, I recommend picking it up!)...
The Price-Tag
Posted on March 17, 2009These Court cases cost a lot of money, especially when you lose. You might remember that a few years ago some counties in Kentucky wanted to put the Ten Commandments in the courthouse. The case was calledMcCreary County v. ACLU, because the ACLU sued to have them removed...
Upcoming CRP Conference at UNC
Posted on March 17, 2009Too many acronyms? The Civil Rights Project is co-sponsoring an upcoming conference with the University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights and the University of Georgia Education Policy and Evaluation Center on the future of desegregation. Here's the title of the conference: Looking to the Future: Legal and Policy Options for Racially Integrated Education in the South and the Nation Here is the brochure...
Should Schools Publish the News?
Posted on March 15, 2009If you haven't noticed, lately newspapers have been hitting the floor like birds at Chernobyl. The Rocky Mountain News ... done. Seattle Post-Intelligencer & Detroit Free Press... online only. The New York Times ... massive layoffs. Tribune Company & Philadelphia Newspapers ...
What happens when ...
Posted on March 14, 2009the kids don't come back. It's all just junk - or worse than that, pollution. This reminds me of a recent book I read, The World Without Us. Never thought an American public school would be reminding me of this book, but check out this amazing photoessay on permanently closed Detroit Public Schools...
Weekend Snippets - March, 2009: Gender Segregation
Posted on March 14, 2009Some snippets for your weekend perusal: Anti-Bullying Debate in North Carolina and Oregon. Popular, popular, popular. Here in Kentucky, if the legislators can negotiate it in confernece, it looks like we may get a new testing package...
Why Public Schools Exist
Posted on March 12, 2009This little recession of ours is a good reminder of why public schools exist. They don't send kids home when the bill is not paid, like private schools do. So far this year, 7 percent of children enrolled in privates have transferred back over to publics, according to the latest Time Magazine...
The Fine Line of Teacher Regulation (Because They Do Dumb Things)
Posted on March 11, 2009I think probably the thing I post most about on this blog is teachers doing dumb things. These stories are just always going to catch headlines. For instance, just this week we have: Teachers at a mental health facility building a "fight club" where students were allowed to fight one another while teachers watched...
Showing on Education, But Not Telling
Posted on March 10, 2009President Obama today is going to devote a little time to education. I say a little because this is just for show - nothing is actually happening, don't worry. But, this will probably advance the national standards debate a little further because it seems he plans to hint at that in the speech...
A Professional School of Education?
Posted on March 09, 2009Sorry, a little off topic today, but I have spent the better part of the last week in redesign meetings here at the University of Kentucky. We are (re)designing our teacher leadership Master's, our principalship post-master's and our Ed.D. (and Ed.S. and instructional supervisor, etc...
Sex in the Student Paper
Posted on March 06, 2009What else are high-school kids going to write about, right? So, no, student's as journalists don't have a right to, like, write about whatever they want. They are students ... not journalists (and, heads up Grady, journalists don't either because they work for companies like News Corp...
Edjurist TV: Episode 2 - Podcast with Dr. Jesulon Gibbs on Doninger v. Niehoff and Off-Campus Student Speech
Posted on March 05, 2009AEI Judicial Involvment in Education Forum Online
Posted on February 26, 2009The guy that hired me, now the President of NCATE, presented on reforming university-based education schools today at the American Enterprise Institute. But, while I was at the site, I thought I would check if they ever posted their video of their summit on 50 years of judicial involvment in education...
Sleeper Issue
Posted on February 25, 2009Mark Halprin said this in summation of the Presiden't speech last night, among other things: Education is the sleeper issue of this administration. I am very much uncertain what role, if any, education will play in this administration. Education was not a central componet of the Obama campaign...
Are there too many laws in education?
Posted on February 23, 2009Megan McArdle at The Atlantic reminded me of a topic I have been wanting to come back to ... the amount of law in education. At ELA this year, we had Philip K. Howard give a general session on his book Life Without Lawyers, the general premise of which is that there is too much law (and relatedly too many lawyers) in society and that we would all be better off if we generally reduced the amount of rules...
Weekend Snippets - Now I Get It
Posted on February 21, 2009Built a home office this weekend, so hopefully I can get a lot more weekend work done, including the snippets. Let's go ... Corruption like this with these massive teacher pension systems always scares me. Time to talk tuition hikes again. It will be interesting to see what the bad economy does to them...
Facebook is Public ... and Permanent
Posted on February 20, 2009This is a great read for any of you Facebook defenders out there (yes, I am talking to you Miguel). Not only is Facebook public information, which I have said before. And, not only do I recommend against teacher's using Facebook for practical purposes, which I have been criticized for (in a friendly way)...
Stafford v. Redding: Thoughts & Resources
Posted on February 17, 2009The U.S. Supreme Court has granted cert. in the case of Stafford v. Redding. This is the Savana Redding strip search case that came out of Arizona a couple of years ago and I have been following along with here at the blog. Readers know I took a personal interest in this case as not only did I disagree with the opinion, but Savana also took the time to comment on the blog, which I thought was nice...
National Standards ... Momentum is Growing
Posted on February 16, 2009When CCSSO started making rumblings last year about national academic standards, I think everyone was surprised, but I am not sure anyone thought it had a realistic chance of getting into this round of reauthorization. Well, apparently no one told Arne Duncan, who apparently is a pretty big fan of national standards...
AERA Law and Education SIG Presentations
Posted on February 13, 2009Below is a table with a list of the AERA Law and Education SIG presentations for the upcoming AERA meeting in April. The meeting is in San Antonio and the SIG activities are grouped around Monday and Tuesday the 13th and 14th, so if you are thinking of coming, it might be possible to make it a short(er) trip...
Declining Assessments
Posted on February 12, 2009Here's a problem that is coming down the pike ... declining assessment values on homes. I have been meeting with a lot of superintendents lately with a colleague and a topic that has come up is the potential for declining home values to blow up school budgets...
The Whitehouse is Liveblogging?
Posted on February 10, 2009The Whitehouse liveblogged the President's event in Florida today. Yeah, not kidding. Liveblogging from the Whitehouse. Not some reporter at the Whitehouse. The Whitehouse itself. The Government. Your Government is liveblogging now. Go ahead. Check it out...
Edjurist TV: Episode 1 - Podcast with Dr. Gina Umpstead on The Implications of Pontiac v. Spellings.
Posted on February 09, 2009Today we are debuting a new feature, Edjurist TV. The plan here is to record interviews of some of the movers and shakers in the education law community, giving them an opportunity to talk about their area of expertise. Most of the videos will be both audio and video, but this first one is audio only (i...
Weekend Snippets: What Should I Do With the Snippets?
Posted on February 08, 2009I am trying to figure out what to do with the snippets, as my Friday's are becoming increasingly packed with meetings. I got a few ideas, but I would like to hear from all of you about what you think I should do. Whether you prefer the snippets on Friday or some other day, or not at all...
The Oregon Supreme Court's Interesting Education Finance Ruling
Posted on February 06, 2009Last month, the Oregon Supreme Court came down with its first opinion addressing a state constitutional challenge to its education finance plan asserting theories of inadequate spending. The slip opinion is here. The opinion is interesting for at least three reasons; First, it was the first definitive opinion from a highest state court in an adequacy case where the Court did not give any independent consideration to separation of powers concerns...
Is Education in the Crosshairs?
Posted on February 05, 2009Talkingpointsmemo.com has education in the crosshairs of Senators working on the Stimulus Package: The biggest hit is on education spending. A few examples of the recommended cuts ... $24.786 Billion on "State Stabilization Money" $15 Billion for "State Incentive Grants" $6...
Justice Ginsburg Has Cancer
Posted on February 05, 2009Always hate to see this happen to Supreme Court justices - but it is a good reminder that even the most powerful among us are still human. We lawyers get so attached to our Supreme Court justices, trying to predict their thought patterns and whatnot, that it always is a bit of a shock when human things happen to them...
Is A Fear of Lawsuits Causing Schools to Close Because of Snow?
Posted on February 03, 2009It's snowing here in Lexington today. Not a lot, but a little. So, the local schools decided to call off school an hour early, which means all our classes in the department that are hosted at local schools are cancelled as well. Kentucky has had a pretty rough winter (relatively) so students have missed a lot of school already this year and will have to make some of it up in June...
Friday Snippets - 1/30-09: Give me some.
Posted on January 30, 2009The Stimulus has $12 billion in stopgap funding to keep schools operating and another $100 billion or so for other purposes. And, this week, every state started trying to claim their share. Just check your local paper, it's pretty much in every one. Here is a NY Times summary...
ELA Proposals Due - Extended Deadline
Posted on January 29, 2009ELA has extended its deadline for proposal submissions until Feb. 15 (it was Jan. 31). I called today to verify because there are some conflicting dates posted, but it is the 15th - rest assured. Here is the call for proposals. One great thing about ELA proposals is that it is not a real long proposal to write...
Should Stimulus Money for Greening Schools go to Privates?
Posted on January 26, 2009He thinks so. I think not. You?
Friday Snippets - 1/23/08 - A Moment of Silence for the Moment of Silence
Posted on January 24, 2009First, sorry to go Saturday style on you again, but I was busy yesterday and I wanted to be sure that everyone read Rich Haglund's posts on time in law and education. You can read the whole scholarly series here. Alright, let's do it: Call me Arne. Texas decides that teachers don't need to address the weaknesses of the scientific theory anymore...
Who's Verifying the Work Being Billed? -- Part 4 of 4 on Time in Education and the Law
Posted on January 23, 2009One of my law school professors explained that good lawyers are just "creative problem solvers." So, shouldn't we all be interested in crafting changes to the way time is used, both in the law, and in the education of our communities' children? Share the Responsibility: Finger Pointing and Evasion Must End In conclusion, the Commission offered three more recommendations for reform around time and learning to work: - Government should focus on results, not red tape...
Changing Days for Students and Teachers -- Part 3 of 4 On Time in Education and the Law
Posted on January 23, 2009Reset your watches and consider these suggestions from the report on time and learning. Establish an Academic Day In order to “reclaim the academic day”, the Commission recommends that students should receive “at least 5.5 hours of core academic instructional time daily...
Missouri DESE School Law Resource
Posted on January 21, 2009Just wanted to point all my readers to this great resource from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education on school law. Be sure to check out their School Law Topics and their Index of School Law with citations to statute. Very well done Missouri...
Myth-busting and Reinvention -- Part 2 of 4 on Time in Education and the Law
Posted on January 21, 2009Think about your children, or children you know and have observed playing, creating, learning. What kind of state were they in? Think about watching Michael Jordan when he was "in the zone" (even when he was--sorry, Utah Jazz fans--sick with the flu)...
What if Teachers Billed Your Child by the Hour? -- Part 1 of 4 on Time in Education and the Law
Posted on January 20, 2009Last year, I attended a continuing legal education program on ethics. One of the topics was billing, and several cases were discussed in which attorneys had violated the Rules of Professional Responsibility through some of their billing practices...
A Day of Remberance
Posted on January 19, 2009On today's MLK day, the day before the inauguration of Pres. Obama, I spent pretty much the whole day thinking about Charles Hamilton Houston. For me there is so much symmetry between Obama and Houston (and so much to learn from both of them). Besides the obvious things like the Harvard Law Review and being law professors, they shared an ideological symmetry...
$7,082,502,544.32
Posted on January 17, 2009That's the amount of money ready to be invested in schools in America's cities. The U.S. Conference of Mayors has released a report outlining all the projects that are "ready to go" that could potentially be funded by the Stimulus Package that is being put together right now in Congress with guidance from the Obama Administration...
Introducing Rich Haglund ? Guestblogging on Time (in Law and Education)
Posted on January 17, 2009Just wanted to make readers aware of our next series here at the Edjurist, Time in Law and Education, which will be authored by Rich Haglund. Rich is currently the General Counsel to the Tennessee State Board of Education and he has also worked for the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office on education issues...
Friday Snippets 1/16/08: Weather Caused School Closings in Hawaii?
Posted on January 16, 2009Schools here in Lexington today were closed because of bone-chilling cold temps. Schools in Hawaii were closed this week because of high wind. I think I would prefer the wind. Putting the sex, back in sex-education (nice, if slightly misleading title)...
My 2008 Blog Book: Is It Worthless For Tenure?
Posted on January 15, 20092008 Blog Statistics I was preparing some university evaluation criteria and I was thinking of ways to include the blog, as it is a big part of what I do. Because it is hard to make comparisons between online writing and traditional publications, I thought I would try to get a word count...
Let's Talk About Teachers Having Sex With Students
Posted on January 14, 2009Alright, this is absolutely one of my least favorite topics to write about, but since it has been grabbing a lot of headlines lately, I figure we might as well get it over with. This is sort of like plane crashes. It happens only infrequently, but when it does it is guaranteed to grab national headlines...
2009 or 2010?
Posted on January 13, 2009Talking about 2010 now for NCLB Reauthorization. In my opinion, I would rather wait until 2010 and have Congress' and the President's full attention rather than a hurry-up reauthorization in 09. The benefit to an 09 reauthorization, though, may be limited federal expansion as any new spending right now will be hard to pass outside of infrastructure issues...
Who Says Ed. Leadership only Prepares Principals and Superintendents?
Posted on January 12, 2009Sometimes we prepare Governors too. Congrats to Gov. Perdue who was inaugurated on Saturday as the first female Governor of North Carolina with her Ph.D. in educational administration from the University of Florida.
New Blog/Resource at the First Amendment Center on Religion in Schools
Posted on January 12, 2009The First Amendment Center is in the progress of updating their religion and schools content and presentation. The new site is here: http://www.religionpublicschools.org. I am not sure whether everything will be updated to reflect the new format or whether the page will just link to current First Amendment Center formats...
The Public Service Academy - Let's Hope it Happens
Posted on January 08, 2009The big education story in the New York Times today is on the Public Service Academy and I wanted to highlight it because I am indirectly connected to it through a friend of a friend and it is gaining momentum to the point where it is probably more likely to happen than not (a lot of new folks in the Obama Administration support it, although not Obama himself, yet anyway)...
Back to It - A New Education Senator
Posted on January 07, 2009Sorry I have been on a hiatus. I've had my head buried in Powerpoints trying to finish a product up. Let's do some news and notes: First Mark Walsh has a nice summary of some of the events of the past couple weeks while no one was paying attention, so give that a read...
Controversial New FERPA Rules Take Effect Next Week
Posted on December 30, 2008Some controversial new FERPA regulations are set to take effect on Jan. 8th. FERPA stands for the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and in schools, both K-12 and higher ed., it is the set of regulations that govern how student information is released...
Merry Christmas All
Posted on December 24, 2008Merry Christmas everyone. Yes, I said it and I am proud of it. Christmas is a pretty American thing these days, so wishing someone a Merry Christmas is just a nice holiday greeting - it is not advocating religion as I have stated repeatedly over at Dangerously Irrelevant...
The Christmas Debate Continues
Posted on December 22, 2008Earlier I posted on the competition Scott McLeod at Dangerously Irrelevant has going on for egregious Establishment Clause violations. Well, now I am imploring you to go over and read/participate in the raging Christmas and Establishment Clause debate taking place there...
Friday Snippets: 12/19/08 - Can I Get a Vacation?
Posted on December 19, 2008This is scary for Colorado's higher ed. institutions. Not likely, but scary. Air quality standards for Indiana's schools? No more building by interstates I guess. Super interesting case at the N.C. State Supreme Court over whether students are entitled to a summer vacation or whether the district can unilaterally assign them to year-round school...
Holiday Violation Game
Posted on December 18, 2008Over at Dangerously Irrelevant, Scott McLeod has invited everyone to play "Spot that Holiday Violation." The point is that everyone writes in their most egregous Establishment Clause violation they found during this holiday season. The person who experienced the most egregious violation, as determined by Scott, myself and Jon Becker, wins a "yet to be determined" prize (although I hear those CASTLE coffee mugs are nice)...
A Correction and a Question - Intermediate Scrutiny
Posted on December 17, 2008So, I posted something technically inaccurate a couple weeks back and I was made aware of it (the beauty of having more than one contributor to the blog), so I want to correct it, but in doing so it raises another interesting question, which I will ask you to respond to at the end...
Why is No One Serious About Education?
Posted on December 16, 2008Arne Duncan was announced as the nominee for education secretary today at a press conference in Chicago. Here's the video. Here are Obama's remarks. I am not going to spend a lot of time criticizing the pick beyond what I already said about my disappointment of an Illinois pick and how this reminds me of the Rod Paige pick - and we all know how fabulously that worked out...
Duncan as Education Secretary ... Disappointing
Posted on December 15, 2008By now you have probably seen the reports. Rumors are swirling around Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education and with the Obama team, where there is smoke there is fire so I feel pretty confident we will see a presser in the next couple days announcing this...
Site Upgrades: Contibutors and Series
Posted on December 14, 2008Just an announcement of a couple new features on the site. First, it looks like Scott Bauries is going to be sticking around and posting some, so he has officially been promoted to a "contributor." You can see the new list of "contributors" in the far sidebar under the search box...
Friday Snippets 12/12/08 - Funding Issues
Posted on December 13, 2008Arizona's Supreme Court heard arguments in their funding case this week. Miami-Dade is starting a new school funding suit. Montana's funding suit takes a set-back. Missouri is debating whether teachers should retain Social Security in their retirement systems...
Judicial "Inadequacy" in Providing Remedies for Education Finance "Inadequacy"?
Posted on December 12, 2008I missed this when it first was filed (most likely because I was still in private practice then), but an interesting set of developments occurred during the second half of 2007 and the first half of 2008 in the Idaho school finance litigation. Those of you with interests in the area will recall that, in late 2005, the Idaho Supreme Court held the state's education system unconstitutional on adequacy grounds...
Discovery Rules and State Education Laws
Posted on December 11, 2008This post is the last (for now) in a series of posts addressing e-discovery and the effects that it could have on educational practices. I am posting this for somewhat intellectually selfish reasons, as the issues addressed here will be more interesting to legal academics and education policy researchers than teachers and principals...
Illinois Politics
Posted on December 09, 2008Sort of off topic, but I am a proud Kentuckian today. By now you have heard the governor of my home state of Illinois has been arrested. This is just the latest in a long line of corruption stretching back decades. It is embarrassing. I have sort of alluded to it before, but I don't miss Illinois politics at all...
Obama: Let's Modernize Our Schools
Posted on December 06, 2008In his weekly YouTube address this week President Obama outlined his economic recovery infrastructure building plans, which included a major statement about our schools. Regular readers will know that I am a big fan of this as I have been advocating for our schools to "go green" in a coordinated manner for a long time as well as upgrade our technological infrastructure...
Friday Snippets: 12/5/08 - Freezes Ain't Funny
Posted on December 05, 2008The debate over Education Secretary is heating up. David Brooks says it is a fight between "reformers" and "establishment." I think that is a little too simple of way of putting it. Two comments: 1: the pick is not as important as people are making it out to be, 2: the only candidate I am against is Arne Duncan...
Thank You For Paying Attention
Posted on December 03, 2008Simply Marvelous. Thank you Sec. Reich for paying attention to what this economic crisis is doing to our schools while we hand out Monopoly money to every Citi, Fannie and Ford that sticks their hand out.
News Organizations are Searching Facebook for Teachers
Posted on December 02, 2008Charlotte is apparently going to be the leading district in the issue of teacher facebook postings and subsequent discipline. Now, in addition to the district search facebook pages of potential and current teachers, the local news entity, WCNC and the Charlotte Observer, are actively searching local teacher facebook pages and reporting their findings in the newspaper - which is leading to teachers being fired...
We Need Innovative Bureaucrats
Posted on November 30, 2008Gonna combine a couple ideas I have been toying around with in my head the last couple of days. First, if you haven't heard already, the Drew MySpace trial concluded with a conviction. Its a mixed bag result, but the "jury did find there’s a crime based on accessing a Web site and not following its terms of service...
A Sad Twist, But a Feel Good Story
Posted on November 26, 2008Kathy Cox, the Superintendent that WAS smarter than a 5th Grader, has filed for bankruptcy because her husband's construction business collapsed leaving the family with millions in liabilities. Cox intends to keep her promise, though, to donate the winnings to schools for disabled children...
Friday Snippets - ELA 08 Edition
Posted on November 22, 2008Shorter edition this week as it is midnight already and I have 8:00 sessions tomorrow. A California court declares a statute requiring sex-offenders to live at least 2,000 feet from a school or park unconstitutional. Interesting to see how this one plays out...
Liveblogging ELA - Where is Internet Speech?
Posted on November 22, 2008The last presentation at ELA I attended was a quite interesting one. A couple of researchers from the University of Cincinnati presented on a study of school principal's perceptions toward off-campus speech. Their findings will hopefully be out in an article soon, but the general idea was that place of the creation of the speech was a significant predictor of a principal's disciplinary reaction to the speech...
Liveblogging ELA - "Cyber" issues
Posted on November 20, 2008Was just in a very concerning session on off-campus speech and cyber-speech. Actually, it scared me a good deal. Some thoughts: People are scared of this "Internet thing." Really scared. Administrators in this session suggested that (a) students don't understand that there are consequences to any of their actions these days, (b) an administrator said that we should get rid of all anonymous Internet content, (3) participants continually referred to the Internet as "cyberspace" -- as in someplace other than the world they live in...
Liveblogging ELA - Pre-Service Teacher Education
Posted on November 20, 2008In a role-alike session for educational law professors now and the focus of this meeting is teaching pre-service teachers about the law. I want to record a few of the points that are being made now. Once you get your foot in the door with a pre-service class on education law, the students will make it permanent because the demand is very high for this...
Education Law Research in a Cyberage
Posted on November 20, 2008I'm at the Education Law Association conference in San Antonio and I just gave a presentation on Education Law Research in a Cyberage (slides below) with Kevin Brady, an education law professor at North Carolina State. I'll hit some of the major points I made in my presentation, although not all because I plan to publish this in an article when I get some more research...
NASSP Principal's Online School Law Guide
Posted on November 19, 2008Today The Edjurist is announcing a new relationship with The National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP). I was invited a couple months ago to join an effort to build an online school law guide for principals. Well, yesterday that effort officially went live and is now available...
Does Privledging Male Teachers in Hiring Constitute Illegal Discrimination?
Posted on November 19, 2008My sharp as a tack ed. law class asked me the other day whether the privledging of male teachers in hiring decisions in schools constitutes discrimination. The short answer here is yes, it does. But, let's break it down a little. It is certainly no secret that education has a lack of male teachers, and doesn't really know what to do about it as my friend Shaun Johnson notes...
The Drew Cyberbullying Case Goes to Trial
Posted on November 18, 2008The trial of Lori Drew for Cyberbullying starts today. This case has got a lot of attention nationally, so it bears watching. Here is the quick and dirty: An older woman and associates created a fake MySpace account in which they portray a young man...
Few Positions for Ed. Law Professors
Posted on November 17, 2008It's a Monday in the heart of the academic job season. The number of leadership positions posted at the Chronicle today? Zero.* On a normal Monday in November the past few years I would say there would be at least 10-15 postings if not more. But, this is not a normal year...
Friday Snippets: 12/14/08 - Weddings on my mind.
Posted on November 14, 2008The majority of the education news stories around the country this week were on the economic crisis and how that is hurting schools. Folks, everyone is hurting and everyone is looking for ways to save money. That means reduced programs, capital projects on hold, and a lack of filling positions...
The Kids Listen
Posted on November 13, 2008They are always listening and our kids are just a reflection of us. Here is a sad example from Idaho where kids on a school bus started chanting "assassinate Obama." "I think the thing that struck us was just like, 'Where did they get the word and why would they put that word and that person together?'" said Whoolery...
Adventures in Facebook
Posted on November 13, 2008The stories just keep on coming, but here is a particularly entertaining one out of Charlotte courtesy of my fabulous colleague Beth Rous. Seems teachers just can't understand that Facebook is a public space. Superintendent Peter Gorman has recommended firing a teacher who listed “teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte” as one of her activities and drinking as one of her hobbies...
The Adjunct Wave
Posted on November 12, 2008USNews: "about two thirds of America's college instructors are now adjuncts" Things have changed so much in so little time.
Google Flu?
Posted on November 12, 2008Google is now tracking the flu. Yep, I am not kidding. They use their tracking capabilities of web searches to determine how many people in a given area are beginning to feel flu like symptoms. Here is a NY Times article on it. And here is Google explaining it themselves...
Cell Phones and Bus Drivers
Posted on November 10, 2008The State Board of Education in Utah will likely ban school bus drivers from using cell phones while on the job at their next meeting. This is part of the fallout from the California train wreck where the driver missed a signal because he was texting...
Is the blogoshpere dead?
Posted on November 08, 2008That's what Nicholas Carr thinks. And he is no slacker. Sorry that a few of my posts lately have not focused on ed. law, but instead on blogging generally; but, since this is a blog itself the topic has always interested me and since I was asked to speak on blogging not long ago at a professional conference as if people perceived me as some expert, I thought I would start studying it so as to better pretend to be one...
Friday Snippets: Nov. 7, 08 - Let's Gamble
Posted on November 07, 2008Education Week has the issues that will face the next president (subscription required). Its budget cut time. Kansas. Alabama. Indiana. California. Rhode Island. Everywhere. In response states are turning to gambling. In light of tight budgets in Hawaii, they are proposing closing schools for a week...
Webinar on Dropout Prevention for Girls
Posted on November 07, 2008The National Women's Law Center is holding a free webinar on dropout prevention policies for girls. Issues to be addressed include pregnancy and parenting responsibilities of girls and model programs for addressing these challenges. It's next Wednesday at 1 eastern for those interested...
American Quote
Posted on November 06, 2008Andrew Sullivan has the quote for the week: "The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults," - Alexis de Tocqueville. If you have not read Tocqueville's Democracy in America, I really encourage you to do so...
Change! ... Anyone Got Any Ideas?
Posted on November 06, 2008Tonight my class asked me what an Obama administration might mean, especially for education ... well, no surprise, the Obama team has already thought of that. Introducing ... change.gov. Yep, a day after being elected the new administration has already commandeered (and apparently built) a ...
The Historic Day - My Journal
Posted on November 04, 2008Today is important. I want to share some reflections and feelings not because I think any of you will be interested in them, but that 40-50 years from now I can come back and read about what I was feeling on this day. So, I am going to be updating this thread all day with whatever I am feeling...
O'Conner on Citizenship Education
Posted on November 03, 2008I can't help but feel slightly uncomfortable at Justice O'Conner's foray into citizenship education, which is in the blogs again. We must do a better job of educating young people to become active and informed participants in our democracy. Absolutely true...
The Times We're In
Posted on November 02, 2008In the 06-07 school year, over 1 in 5 new schools opened in the U.S. was charter school. Still less than 5 percent of all public K-12 schools are charters, but their popularity is growing rapidly.
UCEA Reflections
Posted on November 02, 2008Spent the weekend at UCEA. I am in the Orlando Airport right now, so I thought I would write a few reflections. Disney was not as bad as I thought it would be ... which is good because we are doing Disney (Anaheim) again next year. Ohh joy. THe hotel was not that bad, not as bad a last year...
We Can be Creative With This Stuff!
Posted on October 31, 2008Lots of people think of the law as a stogy old field that old men with white hair do. Well, sure. That's part of it. But, there is also an exciting, interactive and indeed even creative part of the law and I try hard to instill those creative aspects of the law in my teaching...
Letter to the Next President
Posted on October 30, 2008Dear Mr. President, Congratulations on winning the election to the most powerful office in the most stable democracy in the world. I am sure lots of folks are going to be sending you letters about this or that particular issue they want dealt with right away...
Professors Freedom to Endorse?
Posted on October 27, 2008Apparently, at least at Indiana University, it extends within your office, but not your window or on the hallway side of your door. A campaign sign in an IU professor's office is acceptable, while a sign in the window facing outward is iffy, and a sign in the lobby of an academic building most likely is against the law, school officials said...
Friday Snippets 10/24/08 - Mad Librarians
Posted on October 24, 2008Wow - this is highly concerning. A 16.2 million dollar hazing ruling against UT -Austin. The N.J. Senate approved the severance pay cap we have been watching lately. N.J. is also considering taking the compulsory attendance age up to 18. Arkansas has a lawsuit claiming forced transfers of students because of race...
Palin to Talk Policy on Special Needs Issues
Posted on October 23, 2008Anyone that has been following the blog at all the past couple months will know that Jim Gerl, of the Special Education Law Blog, and I have had a bit of personal quest to get something out of the candidates on special education policy (Jim more so than me - and it was his idea to start)...
Why We Blog? Sort of, I guess.
Posted on October 21, 2008I was really looking forward to Andrew Sullivan's Atlantic Monthly article on Why I Blog. I read it as it I was eating a piece of chocolate thinking here was someone who could articulate all my inner feelings toward blogging in one cogent article. The man has been blogging since 2000 and has an enormous audience, so I was thinking surely this is the guy to sum it all up for us...
School Violence and SROs
Posted on October 20, 2008So, the big story today is the video out of Missouri showing a cop dragging down a student as he attempted to stop a fight in school (here is the backstory). The national cable networks picked up the story this morning. The cop is under investigation and I am not going to comment on the incident...
Too Predictable - NYC Teacher Politics Ruling
Posted on October 20, 2008Ahh, sometimes the game is so predictable it is annoying. The NYC teacher's union political buttons case was one of those utterly predictable cases. Here was my prediction on where NYC teachers could engage in political activities. So, I like the bulletin board case and don't like the campaign button case as much...
Friday Snippets: 10/17/08: No Tattoos!
Posted on October 17, 2008Lots of stuff this week, so let's get started: The administrator retirement caps issue in New Jersey hits formal hearings. If I were school administrators, I would watch this closely as this could be a "coming soon to a state near you" kind of issue...
Jim Gerl is Smiling
Posted on October 15, 2008Watching the debate now and sort of following along with the liveblogs ... here is MSNBC on McCain's statements on Palin's Vice Presidential qualification that she is a special education expert: UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ON SPECIAL NEEDSFrom NBC's Domenico MontanaroMcCain mentioned that Palin knows more about the issue of autism than nearly anyone...
California School Funding in Plain English
Posted on October 14, 2008Here is something interesting. The CommonCraft couple have created one of their "In Plain English" videos about school funding in California. You know their work: Blogs, Wikis, Social Networking, Podcasting, Photosharing, Twitter, and lots more. They are very well known in the Web 2...
From Teaching to Law School
Posted on October 13, 2008I sort of frequently get asked about going from teaching full-time in a public school to enrolling in law school. Obviously, I did it and I know a lot about it. I always sort of feel bad telling people about being a lawyer and law school as I know that anyone brave enough to think about law school probably was a pretty decent teacher and we need to keep our good teachers in the classroom...
Politics, Teachers and Schools
Posted on October 13, 2008I've never witnessed a more political year than this one. I was back in Illinois this weekend visiting my old school where I taught, watching my little sister get crowned homecoming attendant, going to a wedding and making applebutter (and burning my hand pretty badly - it was a crazy weekend), but politics was topic #1 on everyone's mind...
Friday Snippets 10/10/08 - The Slow Down
Posted on October 10, 2008As if teacher pension systems were not in enough trouble ... excess executive travel too? What about borrowing against the pension funds? There is just no way this doesn't get really, really ugly. An example of how schools are contributing to the economic slowdown and how the economic slowdown can affect learning...
The E-Discovery Amendments and Electronic Technologies in Schools (Email and Local Documents)
Posted on October 09, 2008This is the third installment in a series of posts concerning the amendments made to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (the "FRCP") in 2006, most of which concerned the discovery of electronically stored information. This installment focuses on the implications that the e-discovery amendments have on the use of email by school employees, as well as on the saving of documents on local work stations...
Revisioning the Justification for School Employee Legal Education
Posted on October 07, 2008So, for my scholarly post for the week, I am going to talk about my democratic vision for school law. I have been teaching school law for a few years now and I have been consistently struck by the idea that we education law folks are very good at teaching our content areas such as torts and contracts (I would argue we do the best job in all of ed...
Just Fire Them All
Posted on October 06, 2008This Mt. Vernon, Ohio teacher religion case just gets worse and worse. It has gotten so bad I am extremely surprised the lawyers for the school district even let this get to trial. If I were the school's lawyer in this case, I would settle no matter the price...
Does Yoga Violate the Establishment Clause
Posted on October 06, 2008Here is an interesting one out of New York. Some parents there are objecting to the school's use of yoga to relieve stress before exams because it violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. What's that ... you didn't know yoga was a religious activity? That all the folks down at the local health center were really engaging in worship each morning? That all those yoga books were actually religious texts...
Friday Snippets - 10/3/08 - Officially a Resident of the Bluegrass
Posted on October 03, 2008A quick edition this week. Spent today getting my Kentucky driver's license (which was surprisingly easy) and writing. Lots and lots of writing lately. I am realizing that more and more the professional career choice I made was ... author ... as I do more writing than just about anything else...
The E-Discovery Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and School District IT (document retention systems)
Posted on October 01, 2008This is the second installment in a series of posts examining the effects of the amendments made to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (the "FRCP") in 2006 on technology use in schools. In the initial post, I provided a broad overview of the discovery process and the role of electronically stored information within it...
It's Banned Books Week!
Posted on September 30, 2008Here is the American Library Association's webpage for it. Here is their page on the most frequently challenged books and authors for 2007. Toni Morrison's books come out of the top 10, but she still remains the fourth most frequently challenged author...
Short Selling
Posted on September 29, 2008That is what I taught my high school students to do. The students had to take an accounting/resources class at the high school I taught in and under my Title I job it was my responsibility to help the struggling students. They spent a good deal of the course learning about stocks and financial markets and played a simulated stock market game that spanned three of the four months of the course...
Friday Snippets: 9/26/2008 - Interesting Times
Posted on September 26, 2008We are sure living in some interesting times, no? Everyday lately we get word of news that would have consumed months of newscycles. Last night hearing that Washington Mutual failed ... I didn't even blink - this is old hat by now. What are we going to do next year when all this settles down again? Boy, this Chicago thing just gets more interesting all the time...
The Recent E-Discovery Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Communicative Technologies in School Districts (Intro)
Posted on September 25, 2008Hello to all readers of The Edjurist. I want to thank my colleague, Justin Bathon, for allowing me to share my ideas as a contributor to this forum. My first set of posts is partly inspired by an online discussion (see comments) that Justin forwarded to me...
Heard Enough From Me?
Posted on September 25, 2008I am introducing a new feature here today: Edjurist Contributors. The contributors will be multi-post authors, thus, they are more than just guest-bloggers and deserve a term appropriate to their role. The contributors bring additional specialized knowledge to the blog and its audience, as I think you will quickly realize from our first contributor who I describe below...
Students, Speech & Politics, 2008 Edition
Posted on September 23, 2008Well, its official, another political season is upon us and with it comes another round of student speech cases. Here is the first one I have seen this season. An 11 year old in Aurora, Colorado wore a shirt that said "Obama is a terrorist's best friend...
Perhaps they will decide this time?
Posted on September 23, 2008BoardBuzz has a good post on the potential case out of Oregon that may decide the Tom F. issue ... if the Supreme Court agrees to hear it. As BoardBuzz notes, that will depend on Justice Kennedy, who, at the last minute, recused himself in the Tom F. case leading to a one page per curium decision...
Potential Employers Part of Your Social Network
Posted on September 22, 2008Careerbuilder.com did a survey of hiring managers and found that 22% check a potential employee's social networking sites prior to hiring that person. That is double the amount that responded they checked those sites just two years ago. Although my guess (it would be interesting to do a study) is that a smaller percentage of schools are checking those pages prior to hiring teachers, assuredly an increasing percentage are...
Friday Snippets: 09/19/08 - In the market for land?
Posted on September 18, 2008A forgotten element in this financial crisis: teacher's pensions. Utah's turning its attention from vouchers to merit pay?Big Ten network is now featuring professors on politics. (Suddenly I like conference networks a whole lot more ...
A Good Legal Resource for Practitioners
Posted on September 18, 2008I wanted to point you to what I consider to be one of the better resources in education law for educators as a new edition is just out. The Principal's Legal Handbook addresses most of the big issues in education law and gives a very good overview of the topic as related to schools, which you can't really get from wikipedia or the Internet generally yet...
Georgia School Funding Suit Dropped
Posted on September 17, 2008Joshua Mayes sends word that the 50 district wide rural school funding lawsuit in Georgia has been halted, at least temporarily. The districts did not like the new judge that was assigned to the case (the new judge was a former chair of the local Republican party)...
More on Why Garcetti was Wrong for Schools
Posted on September 16, 2008I was asked in the comments of my previous post to explain in more detail why I think Garcetti is a bad ruling for schools. Because this is important (it affects what all teachers are allowed and not allowed to say in and out of schools) I want to make sure everyone sees my response...
Johnson v. Poway Shows Why Garcetti Doesn't Work for Schools
Posted on September 15, 2008Of all the teacher expression cases I have read so far, this is one of the best examples of why the Garcetti doctrine doesn't work for schools. Let me just start with this: (1) I personally think the teacher should be allowed to keep the banners, but (2) under the existing legal framework it is hard to see how this case was decided correctly...
Friday Snippets: 9/12/08 - The Palin Chronicles
Posted on September 12, 2008Here is a story you didn't see on the front page, but it should have been. It is hard not to feel bad for California's schools. Legislators won't reach a budget, plus another education secretary resigns this week. There seems to be a real lack of leadership at the state level ...
Masters of PR
Posted on September 11, 2008Front page of MSNBC tonight and a big story on NBC nightly news ..."We may have great teachers, but unless we have better leadership we are not going to get the job done." I am not going to question the merits or motives of the Broad Foundation or Eli Broad...
Finding Free Educational Law Information
Posted on September 09, 2008It has always bothered me that we train teachers and administrators in our school law classes to use tools they won't have access to when they leave our programs. We are better off providing them some knowledge of free legal resources instead, even if those resources are not as stellar as Lexis or Westlaw...
Sex Ed. In Mexico City
Posted on September 08, 2008The U.S. is not the only one having trouble with this issue. Here is a report on the latest book offered to 13-18 year olds in Mexico City. Mexico is making a push toward greater sex education to reduce the transmission of HIV. Here is a Topeka, Kansas (?) story on the issue and a CNN video.
Friday Snippets - 9/05/08: Is this election over yet?
Posted on September 05, 2008Great NPR spot this week on sexy student clothing ... and what to do about it (audio). Well, my pleading with the campaign posters at Eduwonk has gone unanswered ... again. This time by the Obama Campaign. There must be some kind of secret truce or something between the parties that they will not address special education under any circumstances...
08/15/08 - The New Role
Posted on August 15, 2008So, I am still getting comfortable with my new faculty role, thus time is short lately. So an abbreviated version of the snippets this week. But, Mark Walsh said it was a quiet week (read that post for some of the action this week), so I am going to go with that and not feel too bad about it...
Thoughts on the California Home Schooling Decision
Posted on August 12, 2008Mark Walsh and Mitchell Rubinstein have already posted that the California Appellate Court has reversed itself on the homeschooling decision that has received so much attention this past year.Here is the opinion. There were 16 amicus briefs, including, as my friend Scott Bauries pointed out to me, some heavy hitting constitutional law scholars...
Paddling Protection Nonsense in Indiana
Posted on August 12, 2008Once in a while a proposal comes along that really riles me up. Today is one of those days. The current Governor of Indiana is proposing (although through campaign speak) a teacher discipline clarification act or something like that. Nadine Block, the Executive Director of the Center for Effective Discipline, who sent over the tip (thanks) calls it a "paddling protection act...
Friday Snippets - 8/08/08: The Eights are Wild.
Posted on August 09, 2008An anti-bullying bill that includes protections for homosexual and transgender students and teachers is in the New York Senate. West Virginia teachers file suit claiming they were mislead into investing their retirement dollars into bad annuities. Little tip for teachers ...
Cyberbullying Regulation and Free Speech
Posted on August 05, 2008Here is an article out today on an off-campus student conversation about Prom and a "spoiled" girl in their school. The conversation was taped and a student posted it to YouTube. The school administrators, concerned over cyberbullying, suspended the student who uploaded the video for two days, but not the other students recorded in the video that were actually making fun of the "spoiled girl...
Friday Snippets - 8/01/08 - Water on Mars
Posted on August 01, 2008Congress has passed a Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. Here is Sen. Mike Enzi on some of the details. The President is expected to sign it. A Texas judge changes his mind and orders a new language program for 140,000 language minority students...
Graduation Rate Suit in Florida Dismissed
Posted on August 01, 2008The lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Florida against the Palm Beach County School Board for unconstitutionally low graduation rates has been dismissed at the Circuit Court level. I had earlier posted on the creativity of this suit (and its unlikely chances at success)...
Teaching Kids to Think
Posted on July 30, 2008So, I have been cruising all over the southern Midwest the last couple days and while on my adventures I picked up an audio copy of Fareed Zakaria's book, The Post-American World. Fabulous read (or listen in my case). Packed with information (and cites - it was almost scholarly!) on China, India, the EU, British History, ...
Update on Autism Remarks
Posted on July 27, 2008Charles Fox has an update on the autism rant that outraged me last week. Apparently there has been quite a lot of backlash from the remarks and calls for the radio host to be fired. Radio stations and advertisers have dropped him already. I absolutely 100% think the guy should be fired...
Friday Snippets: 07/25/08 - The Candidates and Special Education
Posted on July 25, 2008The transition has begun to the new site. I worked on building it some this week and it is starting to take shape quite nicely. I hope to have it up an running by about the middle of next month - the tentative logo is below. Also, I have new contact information, including a new e-mail, which you can find here...
"That would have been the perfect class."
Posted on July 19, 2008I know I have some education technology readers so I thought I would pass along the quote in the title, "that would have been the perfect class," which I heard yesterday from a second year principal that was reflecting on his leadership preparation experiences and the lack of learning technology tools...
Friday Snippets - 7/18/08 - Live from Lexington
Posted on July 17, 2008First Snippets Live from Lexington: The Arizona Attorney General is now becoming involved in the Voucher funding issues. Anti-bullying law discussions continue in North Carolina (more). Discussions continue on Florida's proposed plan to eliminate property taxes for schools...
Is Autism the next ADHD?
Posted on July 16, 2008One of the things that happens in a new town is that you search for new radio stations. Personally, I prefer, in order, (1) an NPR station, (2) an AM News station, (3) a sports radio station, (4) a country station and (5) a folksy station that plays a little bluegrass...
Savana Redding Wins En Banc Appeal
Posted on July 14, 2008In the case that has probably generated more posts on this site than any other (that's what happens when the plaintiff leaves a comment), Savana Redding has finally won her case against the school that strip searched her over missing Ibuprofen. The 9th Circuit, sitting En Banc, ruled 6-5 that the strip search was not reasonable under the 4th Amendment...
A Billion Books
Posted on July 11, 2008There are a billion books collectively in collegiate academic libraries in the U.S., according to this new report by NCES. A billion ... that is sort of hard to visualize, so I thought I would help out. If, on average, each book weighs three quarters of a pound (probably more because libraries do mostly hardbacks) then the weight of the books in academic libraries in the U...
No Friday Snippets this Week
Posted on July 10, 2008This summer has been exhausting ... pretty much literally. As you all know by now I will be at the University of Kentucky in the fall (my name is listed now) and I am moving down to Lexington tomorrow, officially (that's right "I" - no movers - I will try to get some pics up at my homepage later of the misery)...
Lots of School Law Issues in Lexington
Posted on July 08, 2008Since it became clear that I was moving to Lexington, I have added its paper to my daily reading list. As I have been reading it over the months, I have been noticing that Lexington has a lot of school law issues cropping up all the time. Today, for instance, a mother is suing a school over her daughter being bullied enough to send her to the hospital...
Heads Up: Post-X Generation
Posted on July 06, 2008The Washington Post has saw fit to change generations on us, just so you know. Generation X is entering their 30-40's now and the Millennials are now coming of age. I have seen this language around before, but the Washington Post is trying to put a definitive stamp on things...
Friday Snippets - 4/07/08 - New Laws Taking Effect
Posted on July 04, 2008Got to love July 1. The start of a new year, everything is fresh and hopeful ... at least in school terms. But, July 1 is frequently when all the new laws affecting schools take effect also (more). Not to spoil your optimism. We are not quite at the "just do whatever you want" point yet with NCLB, but we are getting closer...
School Law Professors & Technology
Posted on July 04, 2008Since I teach educational leaders, I thought I would participate in Leadership Day 2008, which was started over at Dangerously Irrelevant last year and is happening again this year. Leadership Day 2008 is supposed to focus on ways to help school leaders become more technologically literate so that they can better lead schools in the 21st Century...
School Standoff in Kansas City - Between School Districts
Posted on July 02, 2008There is a standoff, literally, going on between Kansas City and Independence, Missouri School Districts. The Independence School District wants to take control of seven schools that were formally operated by the Kansas City School District. The KC School District seems to acknowledge that Independence has a right to take over the buildings, but because of an ongoing dispute between the districts over the cost of the school buildings owed to the Kansas City District and the lack of payment from Independence Schools, the doors were locked and security guards were posted to keep the Independence officials out of the buildings...
Ed. Law Professor Position - UIS
Posted on July 01, 2008There is an Ed. Law assistant professor position at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Unlike some other Ed. Law professorship positions, this one does not necessarily require a Ph.D. - a J.D. and/or an Ed.D. may be enough so for any educational lawyers out there that have experience adjuncting at other universities, this may be an opportunity to get a full-time position at a growing university in the capital city of an important state...
The Changing Nature of Online Legal Research
Posted on July 01, 2008I am working on a few different projects on educational law research. As mentioned before I am working on rebuilding the Edjurist. But, I am also working on a survey of educational law related folks and their online legal research needs with Kevin Brady, a professor at North Carolina State...
Friday Snippets: 06/27/08 - Sanding the Floors
Posted on June 26, 2008An abbreviated, Thursday edition of the Snippets this week as I am going to spend the whole weekend refinishing my hardwood floors. A report on NCLB that showed some closing the the achievement gap made a lot of headlines this week. CEP's website where you can download the report...
Is Education Starting to "get" Myspace and Facebook
Posted on June 25, 2008Can this be? Are educators starting to understand social networking a little? In today's Saint Louis Post-Dispatch they report on a fairly standard summer professional development meeting conducted by the teacher's union in Missouri. But, here is what is different: Shipma [director of legal services for the Missouri NEA] does not think a ban on teachers using such sites is the answer...
Midwestern Teacher Retirement Systems
Posted on June 24, 2008Little bit of an odd post today, but I thought I would share a link to my latest report. The Indiana Department of Education asked a few of us at IU to examine the retirement benefits of school administrators and whether Indiana's benefit package could be affecting superintendent mobility out of the state...
Cert. Denied
Posted on June 23, 2008Mark Walsh, who does an excellent job tracking these things, has 3 education cases being denied cert. by the Supreme Court. I was sort of hoping they would grant cert. in the corporal punishment case, but they didn't (and perhaps for the better, considering how conservative this court is, the last thing we need is a Supreme Court opinion validating physical punishments of kids by school authorities)...
This mess is going to trial ...
Posted on June 21, 2008I really don't like this case. I have been following it for a while now and each time I think about it, it sort of annoys me more. Before, it was teacher v. school. Now, it is kids v. school & teacher. Here is Mr. Freshwater speaking for himself (pardon the ads)...
Friday Snippets: 6/20/08 - Summer Slowdown Begins
Posted on June 20, 2008Arizona's Attorney General appeals the earlier unconstitutional vouchers ruling there. Virginia is reviewing the legality of their school fees. (These are always questionable under state constitutions).\ Quite a little fight shaping up in Florida this fall over the vouchers amendments...
Building a New Edjurist: What Would You Like to See?
Posted on June 19, 2008During the rest of the summer I am working on building a new Edjurist website. I will still be posting here, but sometime in late July I will move over to a new, far more powerful platform. The new platform allows me to take the Edjurist beyond blogging and offer a range of different resources related to education law...
The Magic of Teachers and Fear
Posted on June 17, 2008It annoys me when the mainstream media runs scary teacher stories. There are millions of teachers, but the press have an amazing ability to spot the few bad apples among them and use that as evidence that the entire system is corrupt. So, I enjoyed this story dripping with satire from the Colbert Report last night...
The Growing Education Law Blogosphere
Posted on June 16, 2008Did some searching today for educational law blogs and wanted to pass along my findings. Our little community of educational law bloggers is growing. By my count, there are at least 15 specific educational law blogs that are active, give or take a couple...
Friday Snippets: 06/13/08 - Title IX & Sec. 1983 & Certiorari
Posted on June 13, 2008Interesting case this week out of Florida on pre-release waivers for activities. The case is not related to schools directly, but may have school implications. I get asked a pre-release waivers a lot. My standard advice ... do them, but don't rely on them...
I Just Don't See How Single Gender Classes Are A Good Idea
Posted on June 12, 2008I have been trying to be patient with this growing single-sex classroom idea. I have tried to withhold judgment and see the issue from all sides. I see the articles week after week from around the country touting how it is such a good idea. But, I just can't get on board with it...
What Can Educational Leadership Learn from the 2008 Election?
Posted on June 11, 2008What can educational leadership learn from the 2008 election? That is the question I plan to base a upcoming paper on. I am going to wait until after the general to publish it (not even sure where yet) but I think there are a lot of valuable lessons that educational leadership can draw from this election and articulating those is worth something...
Friday Snippets: 6/6/08 - I'm an Anti-Dentite
Posted on June 06, 2008The LA Teacher's walkout plan referenced a couple posts back, will be going forward as a judge denied an injunction trying to stop it.The Scopes Monkey Trial will not be reenacted in full this year in the Dayton, TN courtroom where the first drama played out...
The Ed. Tech Dominance of the Edublogosphere
Posted on June 05, 2008Scott McLeod (an education technology theorist - is time for your own wikipedia page Scott?) over at Dangerously Irrelevant (a godfather edublog) has put a list together of the Top 50 P-12 Edublogs ... at least as ranked by Technorati authority. It must have taken forever to put together the list and I applaud Scott's efforts...
Again with the Duct Taping of Students to a Chair ... For the Love of God, STOP IT!
Posted on June 04, 2008It is something of a quandary for educational law instructors ... this duct taping of students to chairs. Most of us teach intentional torts to our students and the easiest example of false imprisonment is always this example. So, when these stories come along we have a tendency to notice them...
Not on the Same Page Here
Posted on June 02, 2008Much has been made this year of the California Budget Cuts. I have written about it here and in several editions of the Friday Snippets and its been a regular feature in local California newspapers. I think there is real outrage on the part of people with an interest in education ...
Friday Snippets - 5/30/08 - Gas Prices - Ugh!
Posted on May 30, 2008Well, surprise, surprise, California schools are not going to get rid of most of their teachers that they gave pink slips to. I just wonder how many good teachers they lost as a result of this fiasco. Probably somebody will do a study on it someday. By the way, if you remember, Texas was at the front of the line in trying to steal teachers away from Calif...
Could be Hearing More about This Racial Discrimination Case
Posted on May 27, 2008Here is a case that has all the makings of blowing up nationally. I am not saying it will, but the ingredients are in place to make this case the next Jena 6. Allegations of over-discipline of African American children, racial slurs, etc. WKRG.com VideoThe case is out of Monroeville, Alabama ...
Friday Snippets - 5/23/08 - Honoring the Legacy of Brown v. Board
Posted on May 23, 2008The Headliner:The headliner this week has to be the passing of Zelma Henderson, the last surviving plaintiff in the Topeka case that eventually was consolidated with other cases under the name Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. I am not sure the public really gets what these plaintiffs had to go through in this case with the waiting and the losses in previous courts, but it was a lot, and these parents in Topeka, Virginia, South Carolina and Delaware are American heroes and I am glad that as this case becomes a seminal point in American history that they are being remembered in the right way...
Response to Kevin Carey's "Money-Sucking Flagship Universities"
Posted on May 22, 2008Over at the Quick and the Ed, they don't allow comments, so I thought I would write my response to Kevin Carey's "Money Sucking Flagship Universities" here. First, let me say I agree with Kevin a lot. In fact, I agree with him the vast majority of the time ...
What's Al Gore Doing?
Posted on May 22, 2008Resolving the democratic primary, perhaps? Working on his latest powerpoint presentation? Maybe promoting his book or movie? Well, no, what he is currently doing is involving himself in the Education Budget Crunch across the country with specific focus in California...
Overpriced School Lawyers?
Posted on May 19, 2008From today's Philadelphia Inquirer:WHILE PHILADELPHIA School District officials continue combing their books for nearly $40 million in spending cuts needed to balance next year's budget, one group of school employees appears to be safe from the ax: lawyers...
Friday Snippets - 5/16/08 - Special Education the Headliner
Posted on May 16, 2008The HeadlinerThe headliner this week was special education issues. (1). The Ninth Circuit went with the Second Circuit's reasoning for unilateral placement reimbursement. Jim Gerl has the details. (2). Mitchell Rubinstein thinks the 3rd Circuit made a major blunder in Pardini v...
Video Cameras in Schools
Posted on May 15, 2008Some notes on video cameras in schools. First, not only are they becoming more prevalent but as the digital technology improves the feeds from the cameras can be sent to an increasing number of places ... other than just the principal's office. The first step was sending a live feed to district headquarters...
Fordham Scholars Announced
Posted on May 14, 2008Fordham has announced the winners of their Fordham Scholars program that is oriented toward educational law this year. Each of the winners will receive a $25,000 grant to investigate their topic and publish their results in peer-reviewed journals. Nora Gordon, an economist at UCSD, plans to look at how litigation has affected homeschooling legislation...
About Those Greener Pastures
Posted on May 14, 2008It has been a year for changing jobs among some of the best teacher bloggers: Kilian Betlach (Teaching in the 408); Dan Meyer. Anyway, these high profile moves have spurred some discussion in the education blogosphere. Chris Lehmann thinks we need to treat early career teachers with more care...
Data and Respectability in Confusing Times
Posted on May 13, 2008Lately I have been sitting at my computer day after endless day crunching numbers. Meanwhile, as I am wont to do, I keep up with politics. It is no surprise this has been an exciting year for politics and the mass confusion surrounding the democratic primary has kept things interesting...
ECS and Web 2.0
Posted on May 12, 2008One of the best but least known resources in the Education World are the StateNotes put out by the Education Commission of the States. Many fellow researchers are vaguely familiar with them and I see them referred to occasionally in scholarly writing, but the StateNotes and the ECS Issue Sites are rarely a education scholar's first stop when looking for information on a given topic (they are probably a first stop for policy folks and legislative aides)...
Suspended for Not Standing During Pledge
Posted on May 12, 2008Three students were suspended in rural Minnesota for not standing during the pledge. The school has a policy that requires students to stand for the pledge, but does not require the students to actually recite the pledge. This is an interesting little case...
Friday Snippets: 5/9/08 - Not Quite the End of Vouchers
Posted on May 09, 2008A pretty busy week here at the end of the school year: A big story this week was the San Diego State drug bust. The student's have now plead not guilty. Frankly, I am a little surprised this does not happen more often. I don't think it is all that difficult so it might be from a lack of trying...
Academic Freedom, Garcetti & Blogging
Posted on May 08, 2008Jon Becker has an interesting discussion going on over at Educational Insanity on Blogging and Free Speech Rights. I encourage you to check it out and leave a comment. (Also, Lisa Nielsen, Teacher 2.0)My take: Under Garcetti I wouldn't feel to comfortable about anything that you say on a blog being protected...
Hating Paper
Posted on May 08, 2008So, I am dissertating right now (feeling on the downhill slope finally). God it is horrible. Anyway, I am really hating the strict format. I am so confined in what I can do with information. The medium is so static. I am not a person that likes to read data in black and white on a page...
Thoughts on Dr. Suellen Reed and Apolitical Education in Indiana
Posted on May 07, 2008A few days ago we learned that Dr. Suellen Reed is stepping down from her long held (16 years) post of Superintendent of Public Instruction. (Michele McNeil sums up her time here). So, I just want to give a little reflection on her work and how it affected me...
Letting Parents into the Classroom Electronically
Posted on May 05, 2008Here is an interesting story (video) from ABC on electronic notifications that allow parents to track students grades and attendance. The online software featured in the video is called ParentCONNECT, which is produced by Pearson Education. You can see a screenshot of the information it offers in the image to the right (right click- view image, to see larger version)...
School Finance Plaintiffs Win Appeal to Indiana Supreme Court
Posted on May 03, 2008The Indiana Supreme Court has rendered a decision in the school finance case of Bonner v. Daniels. Short version: Students won a pretty major decision. Essentially this round was over standing and justiciability in court. What was not decided was the liability of the state in this case...
Friday Snippets 05/02/08 - Teachers and Bikinis and Keeping their Jobs
Posted on May 02, 2008Little lighter this week as I was out of town. Evolution Update: Florida, Louisiana A little more Jena 6 fallout. Idaho's District Court is reconsidering what to do to force changes in Idaho's school funding system. Sometimes the school finance lawsuits pay off handsomely...
Law Day!!! - Really?
Posted on May 01, 2008Today is Law Day ... so says the President. The theme of this year's Law Day, "The Rule of Law: Foundation for Communities of Opportunity and Equity," recognizes the fundamental role that the rule of law plays in preserving liberty in our Nation and in all free societies...
Teachers and the Web: A Recipe for Disaster
Posted on April 28, 2008Teachers don't seem to get the fact that the Web is a public place. I don't really know why, but they just don't. Teachers would never do the kind of dumb things they do on the Web in their classroom or even a public park. The Web is just as public, if not more public, than these places yet they seem to think they can just post whatever they want and no one will know...
No Drug Dogs in Canadian Schools
Posted on April 28, 2008Continuing with our "America is Different" theme ...The Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that random searches by drug sniffing dogs are illegal under their Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Mark Walsh has the details. Here is some of the relevant language:The dog sniff amounts to a search within s...
American Teachers Don't Know How to Strike
Posted on April 27, 2008When teachers strike in other countries ... they really strike. The latest, a nationwide teachers strike in the UK. 9,000 schools closed in whole or part affecting nearly 3 million kids. BBC News Video. More: (1) Union answers questions (2) Government Response...
Friday Snippets - 4/25/08 - Chasing Bananas
Posted on April 25, 2008On we roll another week. The big news of the week is the NCLB regulatory changes. Summary. Full Changes. H/T David Hoff. (I will offer thoughts when I have more time to parse through it). 10 students ran around school dressed as bananas. 1, dressed as a gorilla, chased them...
Specialty License Plates for Schools
Posted on April 24, 2008So, I was checking out my new hometown newspaper today and I find that an anti-porn group is seeking to have its own license plates. The plate would carry the motto "In God We Trust" and the proceeds from the sale of the plate would go to combat pornography and other vices in the eyes of the Christian group that is promoting it...
There Needs to be More Clinical Work Like This Going On
Posted on April 23, 2008Great story in today's USA Today about students at Yale Law School taking a school adequacy lawsuit to Connecticut's Supreme Court (also the Yale Daily News). The lead attorneys (law students) on the case are Neil Weare and David Noah who did oral argument today...
Maybe There Are Worse Things You Can Do As A Teacher ...
Posted on April 22, 2008But not many ...Packing heat in the classroom.
Educational Entrapment?
Posted on April 21, 2008Educational Entrapment? Why not? Okay, I hear you lawyers out there crying foul and you may be right. Typically, entrapment is a legal defense whose application is limited only to instances where law enforcement officials trick a person into committing a criminal act who otherwise would not have committed it...
The Price of Budget Politics
Posted on April 20, 2008There is always a price to be paid for playing politics with money ... and it is no different for education. A month ago I wrote that the massive amount of pink slips was going to cost California its young teachers, as a result of enormous proposed budget cuts from Gov...
Judge thinks Harry Potter is "Extremely Complex" - That Worry Anyone Else?
Posted on April 19, 2008In a copyright case that really has very little to do with education (the defendant was a former school librarian that is wanting to make a book about Harry Potter that J.K. Rowling wants to block) I found this interesting ... District Judge Robert Patterson Jr said that he had read the first half of the first Harry Potter novel to his grandchildren, but found the ?magical world hard to follow, filled with strange names and words that would be gibberish in any other context...
Friday Snippets: 4/18/08 - There is Just Something about Coaches and Religion
Posted on April 18, 2008Your Friday Snippets for Another Week. Here we go again with Ken Starr. This time he has agreed to take the long running (as in going on 2 decades) Flores v. Arizona case to the Supreme Court. The case, for those not familiar, concerns the State of Arizona's implementation of their English Language Learner program...
Putting the Brakes on Drivers Ed.
Posted on April 17, 2008Not that long ago my cousin, who was 17, had not went to the driver's facility to get his license even though he had passed driver's ed. and everything else that was necessary to get the license. He just didn't want it - he didn't need it he would say...
What's That on the Lawn? Eww ... Gross.
Posted on April 15, 2008Here is a little story that caught my attention ... human waste purposefully spread on and around an elementary school play area by the EPA. No, I am not kidding. KMOX original story (click audio)KMOX follow up finding that local residents knew of the plan...
Students Attacking Teachers - Teachers Running to the Media
Posted on April 14, 2008Here is an odd story out of Baltimore. A teacher was attacked by a student in the classroom. It was a fairly brutal fight and students stood around and did nothing to intervene. One student, though, did pull out the old cellphone camera and recorded it on video, which later made its way to Youtube...
Friday Snippets: 4/11/08 - Cuomo's School Lawyer Net Starting to Catch Fish
Posted on April 11, 2008Here are the snippets for another week:At AERA, Kevin Brady, said that his review of the education psychology literature found the highest rates of bullying in middle school girls. I believe it. 2 stories this week: 14 year old is beaten up by 2 older girls & Teenage girls gang up on another student...
SES and Choice Participation Still Lagging
Posted on April 11, 2008SES and Choice were abuzz in the education blogosphere this week. Here are the relevant numbers and here is the DOE report that started it all. Quick summary: It's not good. 17% participation in SES and 1% participation in choice. That does represent a small rise in SES participation but little to no increase in choice...
If you had just one education question for a candidate, what would it be?
Posted on April 10, 2008That was the question posed to me this morning by a colleague of mine that is planning to go to a Barack Obama rally tomorrow. The question she is planning on asking (if given the opportunity) is:"The Supreme Court decision about school segregation last year limited a school's ability to promote a diverse student body...
Education Law just a Niche?
Posted on April 10, 2008Some evidence to the contrary today. NSBA Legal Clips just crossed the 10,000 subscriber barrier. Congrats all. You are doing a great job and I highly recommend it. It is one of the few educational law related technology items that has managed to transcend the field and is used by old and young, lawyers and administrators, professors and practitioners alike...
Muslim Fears & Public Schools
Posted on April 09, 2008Funny how our disposition toward the separation of church and state is so dependent on the "church" in question. Today's big story in education law, running as a Drudge top story (the first time I have seen Drudge run an education story at the top that didn't involve shootings), is this article in the Star-Tribune about "Minnesota's Muslim Public School...
Devolving Education and Developing Countries
Posted on April 08, 2008As many of you probably know Zimbabwe has been in the news lately for their recent disputed elections. Today we learn it has the possibility to get violent. You may also know that Zimbabwe was one of the most literate countries in Africa at over 90% literacy rates and by all accounts it had a sparkling education system...
The Redding Strip Search Case Continues to Get Attention
Posted on April 07, 2008If you have read the blog for a while, you know I took a personal interest in the Redding v. Stafford case a long time ago when Savannah Redding posted a comment to the blog to thank me for my interpretation of the case, in which I sided with the student that a strip search for Ibuprofen was unreasonable...
Mathew's Education Blog List
Posted on April 07, 2008Those new to the blogosphere can often be overwhelmed by the immensity of it. It is huge. Like, really huge. Technorati is currently tracking 112.8 million blogs. It is the same with education. There are a lot of education blogs. I have been blogging for three or four years now and I have probably only seen like a 1/10 of the education blogosphere...
Friday Snippets: 4/4/08 - It's Always Something with Illinois
Posted on April 04, 2008Here is another week's worth:Arizona hits a snag on opting out of NCLB, but their efforts are not over yet. The California homeschooling decision is still generating backlash and New Hampshire homeschoolers are also upset over a bill that require them to submit curriculum plans before they withdraw their children...
Nice Religion Test Case
Posted on April 03, 2008Mark Walsh at the School Law Blog has tipped us off to a really nice test case for church/state issues. A school in the Dallas area has painted "In God We Trust" on the wall of a public school gymnasium. Picture. News report (video). The Texas Education Code permits the display of the national motto: Sec...
The Grades Just Disappeared!
Posted on April 02, 2008When I was a kid, I always used to pray for this to happen. I was sort of a B & C type student, with the occasional A or D thrown in there to mix it up. One byproduct, though, of my apathy toward grades was that I would frequently be scolded when report cards came home...
Some More Teachers on Tape
Posted on April 01, 2008Not long ago Scott McLeod put up a provocative post at Dangerously Irrelevant that had a series of YouTube Clips where students took videos of teachers in their classrooms and later posted them to YouTube for the world to see (each of the videos below have thousands of hits)...
April Fools Jokes No Fun For Schools
Posted on April 01, 2008Since Australia is a few hours ahead of us, they have already had time for an April fools joke to go wrong. A student in a suburb of Melbourne called in a bomb threat as an April fools joke, and even though the administration suspected as much, they still had to evacuate the school, call the police and do the whole thing...
Turnitin Copyright Lawsuit Dismissed (Wrongly)
Posted on March 31, 2008The copyright lawsuit against Turnitin.com has been dismissed. Andy Carving at Learning.Now has a nice analysis. I have a couple problems with this ruling. First, the judge relied heavily on the clickwrap agreement (the "I Agree" checkmark box we all check when using a service)...
Rolling out the Welcome Mat
Posted on March 30, 2008The buzz at AERA was over this large, large (seven-story) billboard a block north of Times Square. (The owner's blog post and more pictures here.)If you can't read it, here is the description:"Vote for the Worst unionized Teachers (who can't be fired)...
Friday Snippets: 3/21/08 - If the Fed. Gov. breaks a law and no one cares ... does it make a sound?
Posted on March 28, 2008An abbreviated version of the Snippets this week as I was mostly out of town:The Arizona House votes to opt out of NCLB. The CA Homeschooling case goes up on appeal. Michigan anti-bullying bill stalls because of inclusion of anti-bullying protections in model state policy for homosexual students...
Liveblogging AERA: Law and Education SIG Secretary/Treasurer
Posted on March 27, 2008I have never exactly been that great with money. It is not a coincidence that I married an accountant. But, for some reason, the Law and Education SIG of AERA has entrusted the money to me ? starting ? well, yesterday. It is a great honor and I am looking forward to filling the position...
Liveblogging AERA: Educational Evidence
Posted on March 27, 2008Went to an interesting presentation yesterday morning by Arthur Recesso that examined the types of evidence used to make educational decisions about teachers. He used the law as a backdrop for talking about evidence and even referenced the Federal Rules of Evidence...
Liveblogging AERA: Reigning in the Confusion over Parents Involved in Community Schools
Posted on March 27, 2008Earlier this week I posted on the developing confusion among some scholars concerning the decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools (apparently we are going to call it PICS, but with only 1 i, even though the real groups calls itself piics, as in piics...
Liveblogging AERA: Law Oriented Assistant Professor Position
Posted on March 25, 2008Wanted to pass along a law oriented Assistant Professor position at George Washington University that their chair, Virginia Roach, passed along to me. I am a big fan of Dr. Roach and her work which is closely tied to educational policy, and to have her as the chair of your department would be a great starting place for a young legal researcher...
Liveblogging AERA: Questioning Brown?
Posted on March 25, 2008Back to liveblogging. Just got out of a very interesting session on the fallout of Parents Involved in Community Schools (PIICS). I found it really interesting that the presentations were not devoted as much as to what PICS got wrong, as they were to why Brown was wrong for allowing the space for PIICS to come about...
Liveblogging AERA: Initial Thoughts
Posted on March 24, 2008Well, I am at AERA and I have checked in. There was a 40 min. wait to check in, so that was not the best. The hotels are not really close to one another and the hotel we are staying at is about 3 subway stops away. I think there are 4-5 hotels AERA is using this time and the 2 main ones are about 8 blocks apart...
Upset with Schools? Run for Governor!
Posted on March 23, 2008I always like these stories. Two teachers in Montana have filed papers to run for Governor and Lt. Governor. Here is their campaign website. The candidate for Governor, Don Progreba, runs an educational blog at Intelligent Discontent and publishes under the name Pogie (this should help is Technorati rating if nothing else)...
Friday Snippets: 3/21/08 - Tough Week for Teachers
Posted on March 21, 2008Here are your Friday Snippets for another week:A teacher forced a Florida boy to go in a lunchbox ... in the back of the room ... with everyone watching. (shaking head)Teachers also ... please don't bite students. Or wake students up that are sleeping in class with loud noises...
Unconstitutionally Low Graduation Rates?
Posted on March 19, 2008Here is a new tact. The ACLU is suing a Florida School District for unconstitutionally low graduation rates (Press Release). The ACLU claims that the low graduation rates, especially given their racial breakdown, violate the high quality provision of the Florida Constitution...
AERA Law and Education SIG - 2008 Presentations
Posted on March 19, 2008Next week, I will be in New York for AERA, the largest educational research conference in the world. It is a yearly pilgrimage for educational scholars ... however undesirable (it is really too big for my tastes and is always in the largest and costliest cities)...
The California Crunch
Posted on March 17, 2008In case you haven't heard, there is a major budget crunch going on in California this year. Gov. Schwarzenegger has asked for a 4.4 billion dollar reduction in education spending. This is hitting schools hard, causing uncertainty and layoffs, which has left young teachers scrambling searching for new jobs in a tight market...
Friday Snippets: 3/14/08 - Drug Testing and Deer Urine
Posted on March 14, 2008Here are the Friday Snippets for March 14 - 2008: The outrage against the California ruling against Homeschoolers begins ... and continues .. (this is not going away any time soon folks) ... and the California Department of Education reassures them nothing is going to change...
The Educational Law YouTube Assignment
Posted on March 13, 2008As my regular readers know, I teach educational law courses here at Indiana University (soon I will be moving - check out my hat). But, I take pride in teaching not just educational law but other topics as well that school personnel need to have an idea about...
Damn those Skittles
Posted on March 13, 2008A kid in Connecticut was suspended and stripped of his title of class vice president ... for having a bag of Skittles in school. He has since been cleared (see him talk about it), but I wonder what that superintendent would have done to me ... I pass out skittles in my class, so all of my students would have bags of skittles...
The Integration Report at the Civil Rights Project
Posted on March 11, 2008By far one of the best things going in educational law is the Civil Rights Project, now based at UCLA. They have a new feature I want to pass along called The Integration Report. It is sort of a blog and sort of a newsletter and sort of a journal article all in one nice little, bi-weekly package...
The Rise of Educational Law Associations in Law Schools
Posted on March 11, 2008I had planned to write a post in response to BoardBuzz's interesting post today about law schools changing their curriculum to be more practitioner oriented and whether that would affect schools (probably not was my conclusion). Also, I wanted to send a thank you to Andrew Paulson for calling school law: "a new and exciting field" (which obviously I agree with and appreciate)...
Edjurist NetVibes Aggregator
Posted on March 08, 2008Ever wonder how I do it? How do I have time to read blogs and newspapers across the country everyday? Well, I have help. There are a lot of cool tools on the web that make the process of finding educational law news easier. Today, I will share one of my secrets so that you can use it too...
Friday Snippets: 03/07/08 - Douche Bag Soldiers & Jury Duty
Posted on March 07, 2008Well, we are going to try a new feature here at The Edjurist Accord. I am beginning to get more than my standard 5-6 stories a week that I want to post to the blog with commentary, so I have decided to put links to all the additional stories I find in one post on Fridays (something to help you and me pass the time until the weekend)...
School Shooting ... Drills?
Posted on March 06, 2008Police in Chicago are recommending that schools start putting their students through school shooting drills. Just as they hold fire drills to help prepare students on how to survive a blaze, schools should schedule regular training exercises on what to do when a gunman walks into a classroom, one law enforcement official said Monday...
Classrooms, Cel Phones and YouTube
Posted on March 06, 2008All you teachers and administrators out there, you must check out a compilation of cel phone videos of classroom disputes between teachers and students that Scott McLeod at Iowa State put together at Dangerously Irrelevant . I would say it is shocking ...
Loving Students' Creativity
Posted on March 05, 2008Sometimes, you just got to hand it to the kids. This is one of those times. A group of 29 students in New Jersey, upset over shortened lunch periods, decided to pay for the their lunch in pennies ... 200 of them ... for a total of 5800 pennies for the 29 lunches...
A Student Bill of Rights?
Posted on March 04, 2008Pete Reilly at Ed. Tech. Journeys has an interesting post on a students bill of rights he ran across in the UK (also check out today's post on the budget and deficit). The UK bill of rights flier contained the basics and was predicated on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child...
NY School Attorney Investigation Continues to Expand
Posted on March 03, 2008The investigation of school attorneys in New York continues to expand. The list of districts required to submit information on how their school attorneys were compensated has now expanded to Westchester County as well, brining the total number of districts required to report information on school attorneys to 172, reports Newsday (via the ABA Journal's Martha Neil)...
More on Going Online with Law Journals.
Posted on March 02, 2008A week or so ago I wrote a post about Publishing 2.0 and about how the faculty of the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to retain the copyright of their work so that it could be posted freely online. At the time I advocated for electronic, peer reviewed journals as a possible way to meet both needs...
See, Ed. Law Blogs Have a Purpose
Posted on March 01, 2008Here is a testimonial from Lon in Oregon on using special education law blogs in his practice as an educator. Although it refers to a different educational law blog, the idea behind it (especially the 3rd paragraph below) is exactly why I publish here...
Drew Carey, Watts, Charters, Unions and School Boards - Yikes
Posted on March 01, 2008Yeah - not kidding. But, not that bad either. Worth a watch, especially if you are a future administrator or anyone affiliated with a charter school.
Individualized Suspicion - Where art thou?
Posted on February 28, 2008Well, our little hot streak of educational law news continues today. A whole class of students in Kentucky was patted down and asked to remove their shoes and socks after an envelop containing five dollars went missing from a teacher's desk. Okay .....
Democratic Debate sans Education
Posted on February 27, 2008I watched the last (perhaps) Democratic primary debate last night. I am interested in the election generally, but over the past few weeks I have been noticing that education seems to be taking a back seat. Education was not a huge topic in the first democratic debates of the season (there have been 20!), but it usually made it into a question or two...
It Comes in Waves Sometimes
Posted on February 27, 2008Well, just a day or two ago I was thinking to myself how quiet it has been on the educational law news front. I should have known better. I have been blogging for a couple years now and one thing I have learned is that educational law news comes in waves sometimes...
Kindergartener Suspended for Mohawk
Posted on February 27, 2008A kindergartener in Parma, Oh outside Cleveland has been suspended for his Mohawk. The Cleveland Plain Dealer has the story and a picture. The school said the boy's haircut caused a disruption. Andrew Paulson at BoardBuzz, um, sort of defends the school and attacks the parent...
Interesting Bill on Teacher Decertification in Washington State
Posted on February 26, 2008There is a bill in the Washington State Legislature that would make it easier for schools to decertify teachers for various crimes, mostly related to child abuse. I read the bill and it is pretty standard stuff. So standard, in fact, that the Washington NEA associate is backing the bill...
NY Investigation of School Lawyers Expands Across Long Island
Posted on February 26, 2008Oh boy. The New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has caught wind of the school attorney scandal in a few districts on Long Island (see my earlier post) and is now requesting records on payments to school attorneys from all school districts across Long Island, reports Newsday and the ABA Journal...
Puerto Rican Teachers on Strike - Yeah, the Whole Island
Posted on February 24, 2008Teachers across Puerto Rico are on strike. Because of their centralized education system (in which strikes are illegal) collective bargaining decisions are made at the state level; so, the strike is an Island-wide, illegal strike by the FMPR, a 42,000 teacher strong association...
The Restrictiveness of Student Speech Codes
Posted on February 24, 2008There was an interesting back and forth between Thomas Sowell ( RealClearPolitics - their daily summary is one stop shopping for political articles) and Eugene Volokh (the Volokh Conspiracy - my favorite legal blog). The debate is over the relative restrictiveness of campus speech codes in schools, universities in particular...
English Language Learners & Litigation
Posted on February 22, 2008One of the biggest challenges facing schools today are English Language Learners and the increased attention this group has received under NCLB. Next to special education, the English Language Learner population is the AYP subgroup most frequently responsible for schools being classified as in need of improvement...
Two Million Minutes: A Global Comparison
Posted on February 20, 2008A new documentary, Two Million Minutes, is starting to get a lot of play. It follows the high schools years of students in India, China, and Carmel, Indiana (a rich Indianapolis Suburb). The movie has been released and I ordered a copy today and will report back when I watch it, but here is the trailer for the movie:Also here is an ABC News Interview with the Authors (Sorry about the Advertisement) and below is a local news story on the documentary:Also, for those of you that have not seen it yet, here is a link to Did You Know (I) and Did You Know 2...
And This is Why We Get a Bad Name ...
Posted on February 20, 2008So, this is why we lawyers get a bad name. A school district lawyer in New York has been suspended from his law firm and is under investigation for being employed by multiple school districts as well as law firms as outside counsel. Apparently, he was hired as a full-time employee in five separate school districts at the same time and the ABA Journal reports he was credited with working 1,286 days in one year...
Paying for Term Papers
Posted on February 19, 2008Well, my infatuation with AfterEd continues. In a new video, they look into the term paper industry. (Here is the transcript of the chat). Couple thoughts. First, I am highly, highly concerned about this type of activity in educational leadership programs...
Publishing 2.0
Posted on February 15, 2008Check out this interesting vote by the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Basically, the move is designed to subvert the copyright power that scholarly journals have to limit access to scholarly research only to paying customers. This move allows professors and researchers on the faculty to post much of their research online, freely available to worldwide audiences...
One more push for NCLB Reauthorization before the Election
Posted on February 14, 2008The rumors are starting to swirl again on NCLB Reauthorization. It seems Sen. Ted Kennedy and House Education Committee leaders are interested in giving NCLB Reauthorization one more push in the coming months before the election. While many still feel it is unlikely, including myself, Sen...
The Other Side in Educational Law: College President Removed in Religious Dispute
Posted on February 13, 2008Perhaps a question I get asked more than any other by educational leadership practitioners is where to draw the line between following the black letter of the law and following the wishes of the community when they don't conform with the law. Of course, as a lawyer, I would never (or at least close to never) advocate a school leader disregard the law...
A Little on Leadership Preparation and Employment (While it Lasts)
Posted on February 12, 2008It's not very often that my little group of researchers on educational leadership preparation makes the news, so when they do, I want to point it out. Ed Fuller, who works for UCEA at the University of Texas, is quoted in an article in the Austin-American Statesman, and his research on principal movement out of the profession is presented in the article...
New Award for Students Writing in Educational Law
Posted on February 11, 2008Just wanted to pass along word that the Education Law Association has announced a new award for students writing in educational law: The George Jay Joseph Education Law Writing Award. The award is in conjunction with the Journal of Law and Education and the winning entry will be published in that legal journal...
Blogs on the Rise
Posted on February 10, 2008As I mature in my blog use, I try to keep up with research on the increase of the use of blogs in the law. Well, the Law Librarian Blog has posted some statistics on the increase in the citations to blogs in Law Reviews. I know some of my readers are legal bloggers themselves, so keep up the good work...
Thoughts on Misconduct and Police in Schools
Posted on February 09, 2008I just wanted to point you all to a thoughtful post at Teaching in the 408 on police patrolling in schools. TMAO reflects on the first year of the police presence in his school. I am going to post a lot of it here (with my thoughts after) because I want you to read it, but do me a favor and click over into his blog and finish it...
False Imprisonment: Teacher tapes student to chair in Chicago
Posted on February 09, 2008Well, it continues to happen. When I teach intentional torts and false imprisonment to my students I can see them sitting there thinking ... who would ever do anything like that to a kid? And I tell them, you know, it happens all the time (unfortunately)...
Special Education Dispute Resolution Series at the Special Education Law Blog
Posted on February 07, 2008Just wanted to point all of you to the special education dispute resolution series of blog posts at the Special Education Law Blog. Jim Gerl and I have worked together in the past and I really respect his knowledge on special education law having long served as a due process hearing officer and now a consultant to states on special education due process issues...
Nebraska Legislature Passes Anti-Bullying Bill
Posted on February 06, 2008The Nebraska Legislature has passed an anti-bullying bill, which will be sent to the governor. The Lincoln Journal Star has a small story on it. If passed, Nebraska would join over 30 other states in taking legislative action to try to stop bullying in K-12 schools...
ELA Deadline Time Again
Posted on February 06, 2008For all you out there that REALLY love educational law ... the ELA conference submission deadline is coming up on Feb. 15, so you have less than 10 days to get those proposals in. This years conference is at the Sheraton Gunther in San Antonio, a nice hotel I have been in before (their breakfast buffet was not the best, however, and there is not a lot of open seating space for those cool conversations we get to have with other educational law scholars and practitioners) from Nov...
Kill all the School Boards? ... Maybe. Nationalize Education? ... Maybe Not.
Posted on February 05, 2008I read this article a week or so ago when my Atlantic Monthly came and I almost wrote a critique of it then, but I also listened to this interview on NPR the other day and I needed to point out what I see as a serious flaw in his argument. Here is the article ...
The 9th Circuit Rehearing Redding v. Stafford (13 Year Old Strip Search Case): Congrats Savana
Posted on February 01, 2008I was sort of happy to see Mark Walsh's scoop at the School Law Blog that the 9th Circuit has decided to rehear the Redding v. Stafford decision en banc (as a full court - or at least more - instead of just 3 judges, essentially setting aside the 3 judge's decision)...
Bong Hits Sketch
Posted on January 30, 2008Here is another video from AfterEd. I thought some of you educational law professors out there would be interested in this one. I think I may use it this semester when teaching about student expression rights to my pre-service teachers. Of course, ironically, because the video has references to drug use, I don't suggest showing this video in K-12 schools based on the ruling from this case...
Kiss and Expel
Posted on January 30, 2008My South Carolina readers will love this one. Two students were expelled for kissing (or allegedly perhaps more) on a school bus in Columbia, SC. We don't have all the facts so it is hard to form an opinion on this one, but if it was just kissing ... it does sound a bit severe for what appears to be otherwise stand-up students...
Ohio the Next to Ban Corporal Punishment?
Posted on January 29, 2008A bill in the Ohio General Assembly would do just that. The bill has bi-partisan sponsors and may have a good shot at passage. If it is passed, it would make Ohio the 30th state to ban corporal punishment and would be the first new law on this issue since Pennsylvania banned it in 2005...
Things You Didn't Know About the Pledge
Posted on January 28, 2008Here is a short video showing you 10 things you didn't know about the Pledge of Allegiance. It has some cool facts in it and of course refers to Newdow. I also want to use this opportunity to point out AfterEd, which is a channel on education broadcast out of Teacher's College, Columbia University (anyone want to know why they are the top ranked school of ed in the U...
The Congo: The Saddest Story on the Planet that No One Knows About
Posted on January 22, 2008It is not very often that I allow myself to get off topic on this blog, but I am going to make an exception today. 5.4 million. 5,400,000. That is the number of people that have died as a result of conflict in the Congo in the last decade. Averaged out, that is 45,000 people a month or roughly 1,500 people a day...
Tonight on Frontline: Growing Up Online
Posted on January 22, 2008If you have time tonight, check out your local PBS station. Frontline is airing a special on Growing Up Online. It is going to deal with a lot of legal and technology issues that are challenging us these days and should be really interesting.Here is a preview:
The Absence of Free Educational Law Resources Online
Posted on January 21, 2008Spinning around the Educational Law Association e-mail listserv the past couple of days was a request by an educational professor for free resources she could use in an in-service professional development situation for teachers. She got several good responses, including this Alabama oriented educational law text, educational law blogs (thanks to Scott McLeod and Castle), the (members-only???) Educational Law Association Forum, links to non-educationally based legal resources, and a few other responses referring to textbooks (of the pay, non-online variety)...
Legacy Admissions & the Constitution
Posted on January 18, 2008For the past week, in my undergraduate educational law course, we have been talking about desegregation and affirmative action. As such, we have been discussing Grutter v. Bollinger and Parents Involved v. Seattle. These cases both concerned admission decisions based on race, at the higher ed...
A Question I Get All the Time: The New York "Supreme Court"
Posted on January 18, 2008A question that always seems to come up is why are the New York lower courts called the "Supreme Court." This always confuses my students and when I was covering the NY State Courts for the School Law Reporter ... occasionally confused me. Well, Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy has the answer...
Drunk Photos and Facebook
Posted on January 17, 2008Well, Facebook just continues to generate educational law news ... or in this case buzz. Andrew Paulson over at Board Buzz has an interesting account of students being disciplined and questions over photos of them on Facebook which showed them partying with alcohol...
Now here is a good idea: WiFi on Busses
Posted on January 14, 2008Check out this cool idea ... WiFi on school busses. And not just WiFi, but also courses complete with online tests. Now, I know there is a lot that could go wrong with this just like with anything else, but I can't tell you how happy I would have been surfing the web or doing courses while on the bus (I was the first to be picked up and usually had a 60 min...
Politics and Teachers' Unions
Posted on January 14, 2008The Nevada NEA is suing to block some caucus sites inside casinos and some speculate it is on behalf of the Sen. Hillary Clinton campaign for president. This lawsuit is aimed at stopping many in the gaming industry from voting in midday elections outside their home districts and comes on the heels of the Culinary Workers Union (Nevada's most powerful) endorsing Sen...
Pledge of Allegiance - State Requirements
Posted on January 11, 2008I was asked the other day about the different state requirements to say the Pledge of Allegiance across the United States. This First Amendment Center article has the status of different states as of mid-2006 and it is the best advice I can pass along at the moment...
New Pro-Evolution Report
Posted on January 08, 2008Making news the past couple of days is a new report out from the National Academy of Sciences. The report questions creationism's continuing presence in discussions of science curriculum. It has some pretty strong things to say about creationism and intelligent design (including below) and no doubt will be used by advocates on both sides for many years to come...
Happy Birthday NCLB! Your Present? A Big Legal Loss in Pontiac v. Spellings
Posted on January 07, 2008Well, tomorrow is the birthday of NCLB. It is officially 6 years old and lots of folks have a something to say about it, as BoardBuzz notes (also, Alexander Russo, Cato). President Bush, for his part, went to a Chicago elementary school to celebrate and there he issued a fact sheet touting NLCB's achievements and reiterating his proposals for reauthorization (audio of an NPR summary of potential changes)...
Texting Students: Not so Bad
Posted on January 07, 2008Proof that texting in schools is not all bad: College and university officials are now utilizing text messages to relay various messages to students, including information about hazards on campus and snow days. This after using the texting system to alert students of school violence dangers in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings...
Online Degrees: Fair or Phony
Posted on January 02, 2008A question I seemed to get asked a lot concerns the validity of online degrees. My standard response is that it depends on the program. Then, invariably, I will get asked whether "X" University is an acceptable online university degree program. Of course, I am never familiar with the program they ask me about so I usually just respond that they need to know whether it is accredited and they need to know their alternative options...
Chicago Military Academies
Posted on December 29, 2007The Newshour had an interesting story on the use of military type academies in Chicago's public schools. While anyone who has had a class with me will know I am certainly a fan of discipline and hard work, this may be a little too far. Most strikingly, these military academies are only based in low-income African American and Latino parts of the city and not based in White areas of the city, such as the suburbs...
The Nine: A Review
Posted on December 28, 2007Well, I just finished The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin. It was good and I recommend it to people that are familiar/interested with the Justices on the Supreme Court. Couple of things I would say about it. First, I learned a lot about the Justices that I did not know, especially some of the lesser known Justices like Breyer and Souter...
New Creationism/Evolution Front
Posted on December 27, 2007Here is the newest front in the creationism/evolution battle:Creation college seeks state's OK to train teachers Dallas school plans master's in science education, fueling debate over teaching evolution 08:40 AM CST on Saturday, December 15, 2007 By HOLLY K...
Disciplined Teacher Database
Posted on December 21, 2007See my post today At the Schoolhouse Gate on the newly released list by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune of teachers with disciplinary marks on their state teaching certificate. Scary stuff.
Blogging and Education Professors
Posted on December 14, 2007Mitchell Rubinstein noted today that the University of Wisconsin Law School gave a good deal of credit to Law Professor Ann Althouse, whose blog was ranked in the top 100 law blogs by the ABA. The law school came out with this press release. The ABA top 100 can be found here (no, don't bother checking, the Edjurist is not on the list)...
New ISLLC Standards Approved
Posted on December 13, 2007Apparently, the new ISLLC standards were approved today by NPBEA (from an NCPEA update). The ISLLC standards are the standards for school administrator preparation that serve as the basis for most state's regulations of educational leadership preparation providers...
Alaska to Spend a Billion Dollars a Year on Education
Posted on December 12, 2007Just in case you were having doubts about how much we spend on education at the state level, the Governor of Alaska announced last week that she intends to increase state dollars for education to a billion dollars a year within the next three years...
Suspended for Hate List
Posted on December 11, 2007A student in Colorado composed a "hate list" of less than 5 students at Sagewood Middle School. The list contained "no threat or intent to harm anyone" but was apparently just a list of peers the student in question disliked. Nevertheless, the student was suspended...
Student Work
Posted on December 07, 2007Over the next few weeks, I will be posting some of my student work. We (the teachers of A308/E310 at Indiana University) had an assignment that asked students to combine their knowledge of educational law with some Web 2.0 tools. The results were very impressive...
Everyday Race and Education
Posted on November 29, 2007I am posting the following for a couple of reasons. First, Mica Pollock is a great up and coming professor at Harvard University who is doing some cool work from a cultural anthropologist's standpoint. So, the lecture at USC's School of Education is certainly worth your time, especially if you deal with race or affirmative action issues and you are concerned about how we "talk" about that in schools...
Check out this Feel Good Story
Posted on November 28, 2007For all the bad press that our schools get these days, it is nice when you come across a story that reminds you that we really do have great people in our schools. In Franklin, NH a principal is donating a kidney to one of his students. Here is the story...
Illinois Mandatory Moment of Silence Law
Posted on November 27, 2007In Illinois, there has been an ongoing controversy over their mandatory moment of silence law. Well, now a judge has ruled that there is no punishment for districts that fail to comply:A mandatory moment of silence foisted upon Illinois schoolchildren by state lawmakers in October is somewhat less mandatory today...
UCEA Liveblogging: Evaluating Educational Leadership
Posted on November 15, 2007The Taskforce on Evaluating Educational Leadership meeting went well today. Dr. Robert Kottkamp, who was largely responsible for the formating of the taskforce, gave a compelling reflection on how much progress the educational leadership field has made in just a few years...
Live Blogging UCEA
Posted on November 15, 2007Over the next few days I will be live blogging out of Alexandria, VA as I attend the University Council for Educational Administration conference. Scott McLeod from Iowa State is also live blogging at Dangerously Irrelevant. UCEA is an educational leadership entity primarily, but because of the large presence of educational law in educational administration programs, there are a substantial number of educational law presentations and some of the best educational law researchers in the world attend the conference (of course, this year it conflicts with ELA, grrr)...
Video Camera Live Feed to Police Headquarters
Posted on November 13, 2007The top story on the Drudge Report yesterday was about a school in New Jersey that is sending live feeds from their 20 school cameras directly to the police. The Drudge Report is a conservative leaning news source, so it ran the story to decry the lack of privacy in the modern world...
SREB Report: States need to take more active role in Principal Preparation
Posted on November 12, 2007It has sort of been a slow news weekend regarding educational law, so I wanted to provide the link to this new report from the Southern Regional Education Board. As any regular reader of the blog knows I am involved in the educational leadership preparation community so when new reports come out calling for greater state intervention, I take notice...
Well, Its Official: No NCLB Reauthorization this Year
Posted on November 08, 2007Not that it was any secret at this point, but the NCLB Reauthorization is now officially not going to happen in 2007. The key Senators that controlled the Education Committee have stated their plan to take up the law again early next year. Andrew Rotherham at Eduwonk thinks there may be some activity after the primaries, but that it is still a long shot to be reauthorized before the election...
Vouchers Fail in Utah Referendum
Posted on November 08, 2007The sweeping Utah Voucher plan is no more ... well at least not for a while. The plan that made headlines when it was passed was rejected by the voters Tuesday by a wide margin. Voters decisively rejected the will of the Utah Legislature and governor Tuesday, defeating what would have been the nation's most comprehensive education voucher program in a referendum blowout...
Brave, But Not Crazy: A Lesson in Teacher Activism and the Power of the State over Curriculum
Posted on November 06, 2007By now, you are probably aware of the David Wasserman story our of Madison, WI. In protest over the state mandated testing required by the No Child Left Behind Act, David chose to protest the administration of the test. He sat in the teachers' lounge while a colleague was in the classroom giving the test...
The Cost of Educational Finance Suits
Posted on November 05, 2007At any one time across the U.S. there are around 10 educational finance lawsuits at play. These lawsuits typically involve an entity attempting to sue the state to provide more adequate or equitable funding of the public education system. While I try to keep up with many of them, I don't note all of them on the blog...
NCLB Reauthorization Status Report from LATimes
Posted on October 31, 2007Just wanted to link all of you to a great status report on NCLB Reauthorization. Kudos to Nicole Gaouette the author. WASHINGTON -- Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) has never been one to back away from a brawl -- he once warned an adversary that if he wanted to fight, it was going to take a while, so he'd better bring lunch...
What to do with Law Students and how to get them into Education?
Posted on October 31, 2007The New York Times has an interesting article this morning on changing the law school curriculum toward a more practically oriented perspective. Here are a couple of highlights. 1. Schools are moving to include a course on interpreting statutes and regulations in the first year...
Principals in Power in New Orleans?
Posted on October 25, 2007Even since Hurricane Katrina, the schools in New Orleans have been in a state of constant flux. Rules are being rewritten and there are more charter schools and other non-traditional education opportunities than ever before. The latest is a proposal by Recovery Superintendent Paul Vallas (former Superintendent of Chicago and Philadelphia)...
Reader Comment Strip Search of 13 Year Old - Redding v. Stafford
Posted on October 23, 2007Typically I don't post reader comments on the main blog page, but this one warranted special attention. About a month ago I wrote on a strip search case out of the 9th Circuit: Redding v. Stafford. The case involved a strip search of a 13 year old by school administrators who were looking for prescription Ibuprofen...
PDA, Sexual Harassment and Bullying - Where are the lines?
Posted on October 19, 2007Interesting story in the Dallas Morning News this morning on public displays of affection among students (PDA). Schools take hard line against public displays of affection Critics say bans on hugging, touching go too far in bid to prevent sexual harassment suits 04:51 AM CDT on Friday, October 19, 2007 By STELLA M...
Special Ed Law Blog and Board Buzz Mixing it up over Recent Tom F. Case
Posted on October 17, 2007Just wanted to clue my readers in to the mini-debate that went on between the Special Education Law Blog and Board Buzz at NSBA. And, a hearty kudos to the authors for mixing it up a little. We could use more of that in the educational law blogosphere...
President Bush on NCLB Reauthorization and Supplemental Services
Posted on October 17, 2007As sort of a follow up to the post linking to a report I coauthored on NCLB choice and SES, I want to post this link to some CBS News Video of President Bush in Arkansas talking about NCLB. Interestingly, he states that if Congress passes a weakened NCLB, he will veto it...
New CEEP Report Out: Outcomes of the School Choice and Supplemental Educational Services Provisions of NCLB
Posted on October 16, 2007A new report titled, Outcomes of the School Choice and Supplemental Educational Services Provisions of NCLB is out today at the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University. I was a coauthor on the report along with Terry Spradlin...
Banned Books at Time.com
Posted on October 15, 2007Time has a list of banned books and the controversy surrounding them on their website (click next in gray bar to see more).Some surprises in there including a couple of children's books.
Education 2.0
Posted on October 15, 2007Whenever I present on educational law I almost always run into questions about educational technology. I have even presented on that specific topic: Educational Law in Light of the Technological Revolution. So, it was no surprise last week when myself and some colleagues were presenting to a group of women administrators that a question came up on the law related to educational technology...
Tom F. Case Already Published
Posted on October 10, 2007In what has to be some sort of land speed record, the Supreme Court has already published the Board of Education of the City School District of the City of New York v. Tom F. case. Here is the full text of the opinion:PER CURIAM.The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court...
Teacher Suing to Carry Gun in School
Posted on October 09, 2007Sort of a shocking story out of Oregon yesterday: MEDFORD, Ore. - High school English teacher Shirley Katz insists she needs to take her pistol to work because she fears her ex-husband could show up and try to harm her. She?s also worried about a Columbine-style attack...
More on Board of Education of the City of New York v. Tom F.: Oral Argument
Posted on October 06, 2007As promised, here is a little more on the Oral Argument at the Supreme Court in the case of Board of Education of the City of New York v. Tom F. Jim Gerl's Analysis at the Special Education Law Blog: When the oral argument began, Justice Kennedy left the Courtroom...
First Amendment Notes
Posted on October 05, 2007Couple of school related First Amendment notes to pass along. First, the Supreme Court this week denied review of the Mayer v. Monroe County Community School Corporation Case. The Education Law and Policy Blog has more on the details of the case. I am sort of disappointed the Supreme Court denied this case...
More Economists Suggesting Greater Investment in Education
Posted on October 04, 2007My daily reading brought me across another interesting article today related to education and economics. In George Will's Washington Post Editorial today, he has a profile of the young economist Austan Goolsbee who is both an economics professor at the University of Chicago and an advisor to the Sen...
Search and Seizure Poll
Posted on October 04, 2007Scott McLeod's recent post at Dangerously Irrelevant, which I linked to yesterday, got me wondering how people perceive the extent of searching going on in schools. So, I thought I would ask you ... what do you think?Poll:
School Administrators Taking Search & Seizure too Far?
Posted on October 03, 2007Great post today at Dangerously Irrelevant on what the Fourth Amendment should mean to school leaders. First, Scott lays out all the ways that we are or can be monitoring our school children's every move in schools. Then, he presents an interesting question of just how frequently do school administrators trample on the Fourth Amendment in the name of school safety? I, like Scott, believe it happens far too often and is something that educational law instructors need to focus on more heavily when teaching about search and seizure in preparation programs...
Alcohol Testing at Carmel Before Games
Posted on October 02, 2007I came across this article and found it to be very interesting. Carmel High School is now testing students for alcohol use before games. According to school authorities, there has not been an increase in alcohol problems at the football games...
Bd. of Educ. of the City of New York v. Tom F.: Oral Argument Today
Posted on October 01, 2007The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments today in a special education case regarding public school tutition reimbursement for private school tuition in the case of Board of Education of the City of New York v. Tom F. As with many cases in special education, this one is somewhat complicated and relies heavily on the langugage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, particularly 20 U...
ECS Reauthorization Database
Posted on September 27, 2007Stumbled across this a couple of days ago and I just wanted to pass along the link. I am getting a lot of questions from school personnel lately regarding the reauthorization and what different groups are saying ... and, the Education Commission of the States and their top notch policy analyst Mary Fulton have put together a database on just that issue...
Interesting Article on Saint Louis Public School's Longtime Lawyer
Posted on September 25, 2007Really interesting read tonight about Saint Louis Public Schools and the longtime legal counsel they employed...
Fed Chair Bernanke: Education is a Good Investment
Posted on September 24, 2007If you are reading this blog, you probably already know that education is a good investment because most readers have devoted their life to education in some form or another. But, just in case you had any remaining doubts, the nation's top economist has confirmed your suspicions...
9th Circuit Strip Search Case: Redding v. Stafford
Posted on September 24, 2007The Adjunt Law Prof Blog has the scoop this morning on a 9th Circuit case which upheld the use of a strip search in K-12 schools. In the case of Redding v. Stafford Unified School Dist. out of Arizona, two students were subjected to a strip search after the principal of the school had a tips regarding some students bringing illegal prescription drugs on campus...
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