Education Law

Friday Snippets 12/12/08 - Funding Issues

Posted on December 13, 2008
Arizona'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, 2008
I 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, 2008
This 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, 2008
Sort 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...

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Obama: Let's Modernize Our Schools

Posted on December 06, 2008
In 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
Simply 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, 2008
Charlotte 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, 2008
Gonna 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, 2008
Kathy 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, 2008
Shorter 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
Was 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, 2008
In 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, 2008
I'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, 2008
Today 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, 2008
My 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
It'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, 2008
The 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, 2008
They 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
USNews: "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, 2008
Google 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
That'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, 2008
Education 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
Andrew 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, 2008
Tonight 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 ...

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