Education Law

Education Technology Law Preconference - Notes

Posted on November 11, 2010
Well, the education technology law preconference session seemed to proceed decently. We covered the hours with a healthy discussion amongst administrators, lawyers and professors and several very difficult legal issues made more difficult by technology...

Education Law Association 2010: Vancouver

Posted on November 09, 2010
This is just the first of probably a few posts from Vancouver and the annual meeting of the Education Law Association. Our own Kevin Brady (who promises he will post more post-tenure) was the program chair this year and I think he has done a marvelous job on the program in a tough economy and coastal (read pricy) location...

NLRB looks ready to revisit issue of collective bargaining by graduate teaching and research assistants

Posted on November 03, 2010
The National Labor Relations Board looks set to revisit a 2004 ruling that prohibited graduate student research and teaching assistants at private colleges and universities from engaging in collective bargaining activities protected under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)...

Private School Tax Credits in Arizona

Posted on November 03, 2010
The Supreme Court held oral argument today in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, a case challenging Arizona's law which allows an individual taxpayer a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for donating to a state-approved K-12 private school "scholarship" organization...

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Public Attacks - Usually a Bad Idea

Posted on November 01, 2010
Over the weekend, a furor arose in our little ed. leadership community over an article by Fenwick English listing the names of the The 10 Most Wanted Enemies of American Public Education's School Leadership. One of the named individuals, Rick Hess, called them out on it - and rightly so...

Thoughts Prompted by Recent Chronicle of Higher Education Commentary on Academic Freedom

Posted on November 01, 2010
As someone whose research interests center on speech issues in higher education, I read with interest a recent commentary by Joan DelFattore in the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled "To Protect Academic Freedom, Look Beyond the First Amendment."  I recommend the commentary, and the author makes several good points regarding current debates over First Amendment protection for academic freedom...

Should Individuals with Past Drug Convictions be allowed to work in Schools?

Posted on October 31, 2010
This week the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a law that required background checks for school employees and the firing of individuals who had been convicted of certain past crimes.  An employee of the Cincinnati school district who was fired under the law for a drug trafficking offense 32 years earlier brought a challenge to the law in Doe v...

Value Added Evaluation Data and FOIA (State Versions, That Is)

Posted on October 22, 2010
Bruce Baker and Andy Rotherham brought my attention today to the issue of the public release of school data used in value-added teacher assessments (which are becoming popular, spurred by Race to the Top- Scott and my previous posts on the subject)...

Sixth Circuit Applies Garcetti to Classroom Speech

Posted on October 21, 2010
Today, the Sixth Circuit issued an opinion in Evans-Marshall v. Board of Education applying Garcetti v. Ceballos to exempt the curricular and classroom speech of a non-renewed teacher from First Amendment protection.  I'll have more to say about the decision later, but on a first read, my initial impressions are that: 1...

Year Round Discipline?

Posted on October 12, 2010
Why a we doing this?  It's dumb and probably not authorized under law.  Here's the situation. No other branch of government is going to stop a school from expanding their authority in this way. It is just less responsibility on the police, parks, etc...

Illinois School Finance Suit

Posted on October 12, 2010
I just received the pleadings on this, but school reform advocates last March filed a state constitutional lawsuit against the state superintendent, the state board of education, and the governor in Illinois.  The case is styled Carr et al. v. Koch...

Integrationists vs. Choice Advocates in New Orleans

Posted on October 08, 2010
First, thanks to Scott for noting my article attempting to connect the post-Katrina reconfiguration of New Orleans schools to the post-Brown efforts in New Orleans 40 years prior.  Scott humbly failed to mention his own article that was part of the same presentation in New Orleans in January – I am told it will be posted in the near future, so stay tuned...

Kiel on Hurricane Katrina and the Brown Legacy

Posted on October 06, 2010
Our own Daniel Kiel has posted to SSRN a draft of his forthcoming piece, entitled, It Takes a Hurricane: Might Katrina Deliver for New Orleans Students What Brown Once Promised?  Daniel presented this piece last January in a special session of the AALS Annual Meeting focusing on education in New Orleans after "The Storm...

Religion in Schools

Posted on September 29, 2010
Today, I took the Pew Research Center's mini-survey on religious knowledge.  The main survey's results have already been reported in many media outlets, and the results are interesting--particularly the finding that, of all religious characterizations, those reporting religious identities as Jews, Atheists/Agnosics, and Mormons had the best overall knowledge of world religions...

Are Athletic Associations Forgetting About Learning?

Posted on September 25, 2010
The UK basketball issue seems resolved, thankfully for us. But, the incident has certainly caused me to question the role of the NCAA. Of course, I'm guessing folks in Tennessee, Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Southern California, just to name a few high profile programs, are also wondering about such things...

Open Access Boost

Posted on September 24, 2010
Today, Google gave Law.gov a 2 million dollar check. It sort of helped their bottom line.  C'mon law journals and law schools. Step up to the plate here and help us make our own law public. It should be a national embarrassment that it is not so...

"Flipping" Ed. Law Instruction

Posted on September 14, 2010
My friend Karl Fisch was featured by Daniel Pink in a story in the Telegraph on Sunday for flipping his instruction such that students do lecture at home and homework at school, instead of the more traditional lecture at school and homework at home. I thought it was a great story and I highly encourage you to read it...

With the California state budget in free-fall, why can?t the ?Governator? charge students for AP classes?

Posted on September 12, 2010
This week the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, alleging that public schools are denying students the free education guaranteed by the state constitution by forcing their families to pay fees to participate in certain classes...

P20 Website & Next Generation Learning Summit

Posted on September 06, 2010
So, we launched the P20 website over the weekend. I know some of you have been wondering about it, so the new one is now out and there is space for feedback and whatnot. I'll have more news in the coming weeks about the companion network that is also launching and how to participate in it...

Call for Papers--AALS Education Law Section

Posted on August 30, 2010
The Education Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools has distributed the following Call for Papers for the upcoming Annual Meeting in San Fransisco.  Note that selection comes with publication in the Michigan State Law Review.  Here's the Call: Call for Papers Announcement The AALS Education Law Section will hold a program during the AALS 2011 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California on Immigration and Higher Education...

"The Storm" Turns Five

Posted on August 29, 2010
Most people in the Gulf Coast region do not call Hurricane Katrina by its name.  They call it "The Storm."  Perhaps this is because, especially in Mississippi and Louisiana, The Storm so fundamentally changed daily life that it is unnecessary to say which storm one refers to...

The Battle for Detroit Public Schools

Posted on August 29, 2010
One of the most interesting education law issues going on in Michigan is the battle between Robert Bobb, the Detroit Public Schools' (DPS) state-appointed emergency financial manageer and DPS's Board of Education. Multiple lawsuits have been filed. It illustrates the tension between state authority over education and our tradition of locally controlled schools...

"The processes and procedures for student elections are under review."

Posted on August 27, 2010
MSNBC reported today that the Nettleson School District in Mississippi recently sent around a memo to its middle school students regarding their opportunity to run for class office.  This memo listed each office available in each grade, and then further specified the racial requirements for each office!!!  Even more astonishing than the actual policy of class office segregation by race (if it is possible to be more astonishing) is the school district's tepid, bureaucratic response to the revelation that it continues to practice Jim Crow education by explicit edict...

Class Resources

Posted on August 27, 2010
So, within the past couple days I have received a couple requests from folks about ideas for their school law courses and I have been helping my TA gear up for teaching pre-service teachers about the law. During this time, I was reminded what a good resource the blog is for subject-specific content...

Can policies stop a mobile learning tsunami?

Posted on August 26, 2010
No. They can't. There is no legal floodwall even remotely big enough to stop this one.   Yet, we keep trying ... and causing ourselves even more policy trouble in the effort because as we are trying to build the wall higher and stronger we are also trying to bail out the water already on the other side...

Picky, Picky, Picky ... Really?

Posted on August 25, 2010
So, guess you heard New Jersey missed out on Race to the Top because they didn't follow the directions properly? The Gothamist (a site I sort of like) has a good overview and the Star-Ledger has the actual reviews. Had New Jersey provided the right budget years, they may have received an additional 4+ points in their application...

Missing RttT: A Pep Talk Revisited

Posted on August 24, 2010
So, now that Kentucky has officially been shut-out of the Race-to-the-Top competition (very disappointing day) I think it is a good time to revisit a post that I wrote months ago now at the beginning of all this RttT madness. So, without any changes or additions here is exactly what I said months ago ...

Sports is losing money for universities ... why are we doing it?

Posted on August 23, 2010
Another report out today confirmed what most of us already know, college athletics is a money pit. An NCAA study done by (Lexington's own, yeah!) Transylvania University found that only 14 of the 120 FBS schools make money and those are typically the programs with the largest and most well-heeled football programs...

Social Network Lockdown ... And What To Do About It

Posted on August 19, 2010
Angela Maiers got a note recently from a concerned teacher which she posted on her blog (thanks to @Linda407 for notifying me). The note basically articulates the tenuous position a teacher finds himself in after the school has issued policy stating that social networking (facebook/twitter, specifically) is not permitted at all during school hours - not even during the teacher's duty free lunch hour, according to his contract (must be a union state)...

Starting School

Posted on August 18, 2010
So, everyone is starting up school again this year. Lots of fresh faces in new places. Good luck to everyone this year. I'm excited about the possibilities, even in our economic state of depression (pun intended?) .  I'm particularly excited about some of our ed...

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