Education Law

Credit for Release-Time Religion Class

Posted on June 18, 2009
Howard 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, 2009
I'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, 2009
Like 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, 2009
Recent 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...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

NCLB: "A Hostage of Fortune"

Posted on June 13, 2009
I 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, 2009
Our 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, 2009
That'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, 2009
I 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, 2009
One 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, 2009
Check 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, 2009
As 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, 2009
The 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, 2009
There 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, 2009
Several 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, 2009
I 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, 2009
Paul 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, 2009
Interesting 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, 2009
A 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, 2009
I'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, 2009
The 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, 2009
I 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, 2009
Way 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, 2009
I 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, 2009
I 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, 2009
It 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, 2009
I 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, 2009
Maybe 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, 2009
Most 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, 2009
Check 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, 2009
Schools 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...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.