Education Law

Is A Fear of Lawsuits Causing Schools to Close Because of Snow?

Posted on February 03, 2009
It'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, 2009
The 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, 2009
ELA 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, 2009
He thinks so. I think not. You?

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Friday Snippets - 1/23/08 - A Moment of Silence for the Moment of Silence

Posted on January 24, 2009
First, 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, 2009
One 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, 2009
Reset 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, 2009
Just 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, 2009
Think 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, 2009
Last 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, 2009
On 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, 2009
That'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, 2009
Just 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, 2009
Schools 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, 2009
2008 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, 2009
Alright, 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, 2009
Talking 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, 2009
Sometimes 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, 2009
The 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, 2009
The 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, 2009
Sorry 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, 2008
Some 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, 2008
Merry 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, 2008
Earlier 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, 2008
This 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, 2008
Over 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, 2008
So, 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, 2008
Arne 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, 2008
By 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, 2008
Just 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...

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