Education Law

Facebook is the Local Newspaper Now ...

Posted on March 23, 2011
Facebook is the new local newspaper ... in case you hadn't noticed.  Case in point ... the Pinckneyville Post today. The "Post" publishes an actual newspaper (I've seen it, it is about 10 pages long, typical newspaper size, typically 2 actual stories, obituaries, classifieds and not much else)...

Tuition Increase Outrage? Or not.

Posted on March 21, 2011
Why is there not more public outrage at some of the tuition increases going on this year? Arizona announced today a proposed 22 percent increase. My friend Jon Becker told me on twitter that VCU has that beat - and that the governor is now punishing them for it...

ELA Proposal Deadline

Posted on February 28, 2011
Just a reminder: The Education Law Association will host its annual meeting for 2011 in Chicago November 9-12.  The deadline for proposals to present at the conference is March 1st (tomorrow).  If you want to submit a proposal, click here, and follow the instructions...

Remedial Abstention as a State Constitutional Requirement

Posted on February 24, 2011
Here's a new one.  The Kansas Legislature has passed out of a House committee a proposed amendment to the state constitution barring the Kansas courts from issuing remedial orders to increase school spending.  The local paper's story is here...

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Education (again) is the Flashpoint

Posted on February 18, 2011
For some reason, this is our curse. We are the flashpoint for many, many important national confrontations.  The most notable is Brown v. Board, but through the years education has consistently bore the burden of these national confrontations. Evolution (Scopes & Kitzmiller), government regulation of speech (Tinker & Pickering), Affirmative Action (Bakke, Grutter, etc...

Globalizing education in Michigan

Posted on February 15, 2011
Michigan's Superintendent of Public instruction spoke at the iNet conference in Lansing, Michigan yesterday.  The State Board of Education approved new cut scores on state educational assessments (MEAP & MME) so that they are consistent with College and Career Readiness standards...

Unnecessary Apprehension

Posted on February 09, 2011
Unnecessary apprehension. That's about the best way I know to sum up the prevailing predisposition of school administrators toward technology. For some reason (and I have some guesses), school administrators think that technology, particularly the Internet, is a legal blackhole...

Trial Court Decision in California School Finance Case

Posted on January 31, 2011
Last Spring, I reported here that a new school finance suit had been filed in California.  The suit, styled Robles-Wong v. California, presented claims founded both on inadequacy of spending systemwide and inequality of educational opportunity among California districts...

Achieving socioeconomic desegregation and diversity: One district's retrenchment from 21st century school integration

Posted on January 31, 2011
In his 2009 book, Hope and despair in the American city: Why there are no bad schools in Raleigh, sociologist Gerald Grant  compares two cities—his former hometown of Syracuse, New York, and Raleigh, North Carolina—in order to more closely examine the consequences of the nation's ongoing school integration efforts...

Race to Nowhere

Posted on January 25, 2011
For those folks that live relatively close to Lexington, tonight the P20 Innovation Lab is hosting a free screening of the new movie Race to Nowhere. More details on the showing are here. You can view a trailer here. I'll be moderating a panel discussion after the movie...

Interactive Snowday Notification

Posted on January 24, 2011
One of the things that has caught my eye this winter is the use of Facebook to notify parents of school closures. In particular, the comment option on Facebook posts has be used frequently by parents to give their two cents on the decision. Today, for instance, my local district, Fayette County Public Schools, has cancelled...

Translating University Technology into Cold Hard Cash - A Good Idea?

Posted on January 19, 2011
The Post-Dispatch had a great story today on how universities are increasingly commercializing the technological developments of their researchers. They do so largely through patenting and licensing. This activity, especially in the medical world, can generate substantial amounts of money...

"Highly Qualified School Board Members:" Raising the Entry Qualifications

Posted on January 12, 2011
News out of Colorado today has a school board member bringing his gun to school board meetings because of his fear of retaliation over comments he made on his radio show. His comments were to the effect of denigrating and downright insulting Martin Luther King, Jr...

Should State Boards of Education Issue Guidelines?

Posted on January 10, 2011
Today, the Virginia School Board is considering adopting a set of guidelines on teacher electronic communication. The "guidelines" cover everything from texting to online gaming ... basically, they say teachers can never talk to students using electronic communication...

Educational Adequacy and Fiscal Reality

Posted on January 06, 2011
Two recent developments highlight what I think portends lots of coming chaos in school finance.  The first is a suit filed by parents in a middle-class Kansas school distict challenging the state's limits on local property tax millage rates (enacted in response to Kansas's numerous school finance cases)...

Memphis City Schools Votes Itself Out of Business

Posted on January 04, 2011
Strange things are afoot in Memphis, Tennessee.  Some very brief background – in Memphis and Shelby County, we have both a city district (approx.. 100,000 students) and a suburban county district (approx. 45,000 students).  Just before the holidays, the city district voluntarily voted to surrender its charter, effectively dissolving the district...

Proposed Bill in Kentucky would bar undocumented students from attending public colleges and universities

Posted on January 03, 2011
A bill filed for the upcoming session of the Kentucky legislature would deny undocumented students admission to public postsecondary institutions.  The issue of permitting undocumented students to enroll at public colleges and universities has resulted in national debate and in pointed conflicts in several states...

Book Reviews: Future of Management - Where Good Ideas Come From - Grand Design - Drive - What Technology Wants - Macrowikinomics

Posted on January 01, 2011
My holiday reading list was pretty diverse, so wanted to get the reviews out in case any of you have a few days left to squeeze in a book. Since I haven't done one in a while, I thought I would also include some of the other books I read over the last couple months that caught my attention...

Washington (State) Special Education Funding Challenge Fails

Posted on December 13, 2010
At the end of last week, the Washington Supreme Court issued its decision in School Districts' Alliance for Adequate Funding in Special Education v. State (link to majority opinion).  The court rejected a challenge to the adequacy of special education funding in the state, holding that any such inadequacy was not shown "beyond a reasonable doubt...

National Education Finance Conference

Posted on December 13, 2010
I am a little late in posting this, but 2011 will mark the inaugural year of the National Education Finance Conference, an annual event intended to allow for "collaboration among legislators, postsecondary education, school district and state agency personnel, professional organizations, and researchers concerned with the importance of equity, adequacy, and efficiency concepts that affect state, local, and federal revenue generation, distribution, and expenditures...

Courts' seeming concern with educational che guevaras in relation to teacher speech

Posted on December 10, 2010
I was reading the recent decision involving teacher speech from the Sixth Circuit, Evans-Marshall v. Bd. of Education.  Scott Bauries posted about the decision if you're not familiar with the case.  The Evans-Marshall decision cites Mayer v...

Know your Community this time of Year

Posted on December 06, 2010
This time of year there are usually lots of news stories out there about possible Establishment Clause violations in schools. A few years ago we even turned them into a game, although I guess we learned our lesson not to repeat that. And, on schedule, the first of the new stories this year are beginning to come in...

Data Security

Posted on November 28, 2010
If the U.S. Government (and basically every other government combined) can't stop the release of some of our most closely guarded state secrets in this era of the Internet ... how are schools ever going to comply with FERPA? It's one thing to protect a physical piece of paper ...

Another Pledge of Allegiance Case

Posted on November 18, 2010
Over at the Constitutional Law Prof Blog, Professor Steven Schwinn reports on a recent First Circuit decision upholding a New Hampshire law that requires teachers to lead their classes in the Pledge of Allegiance (with a silent opt-out right for the students) against challenges based on both the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause...

Site Updates

Posted on November 17, 2010
Just a few site updates to tell you about. Nothing major.  Cleaned up the Blog Roll.  Changed the "Job Board" to "Job Advice" (not enough time to check them anymore).  Cleaned up the Editors list a bit - thinking about adding a few more...

CA Supreme Uphold In-State Tuition for Undocumented Students

Posted on November 16, 2010
The California Supreme Court bucked the general anti-immigrant trend of recent months by upholding the state's policy of providing in-state college tuition at California colleges and universities for undocumented students who spent their final three years of high school in a California high school...

Emerging Themes from the Office of Civil Rights

Posted on November 13, 2010
I'm also sitting in the ELA general session with Russlyn Ali.  I agree that the information and the exchange of ideas in the room has addressed many important issues in education policy. Here are a couple of hot topics: Racial segregation in schools...

Why I Love ELA and Why You Should Join

Posted on November 13, 2010
Just in the third general session with Russlynn Ali, Assistant Secretary in charge of the Office of Civil Rights. As she opened it up for questions, a lawyer with a very large and important (and fun to hang out with) education law firm asked a question about OCR enforcement policies, as several districts that he is working with are concerned about OCR's new stance on bullying (as am I)...

Louisiana's Constitution and Education Reform

Posted on November 12, 2010
I have posted before about education reform in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina.  In my most recent entry, I mentioned two law review issues that focus on the education law issues in the New Orleans reforms.  I just posted my contribution to one of these issues on SSRN...

Technology's Value at ELA - A New Challenge

Posted on November 11, 2010
This year, I think it is time to take stock of the emergence of technology as a specialty topic of education law. And, I'm happy to report, that our group of legal scholars is recognizing the importance of addressing how technology is driving legal challenges...

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