Education Law

Heard Enough From Me?

Posted on September 25, 2008
I am introducing a new feature here today: Edjurist Contributors. The contributors will be multi-post authors, thus, they are more than just guest-bloggers and deserve a term appropriate to their role. The contributors bring additional specialized knowledge to the blog and its audience, as I think you will quickly realize from our first contributor who I describe below...

Students, Speech & Politics, 2008 Edition

Posted on September 23, 2008
Well, its official, another political season is upon us and with it comes another round of student speech cases. Here is the first one I have seen this season. An 11 year old in Aurora, Colorado wore a shirt that said "Obama is a terrorist's best friend...

Perhaps they will decide this time?

Posted on September 23, 2008
BoardBuzz has a good post on the potential case out of Oregon that may decide the Tom F. issue ... if the Supreme Court agrees to hear it. As BoardBuzz notes, that will depend on Justice Kennedy, who, at the last minute, recused himself in the Tom F. case leading to a one page per curium decision...

Potential Employers Part of Your Social Network

Posted on September 22, 2008
Careerbuilder.com did a survey of hiring managers and found that 22% check a potential employee's social networking sites prior to hiring that person. That is double the amount that responded they checked those sites just two years ago. Although my guess (it would be interesting to do a study) is that a smaller percentage of schools are checking those pages prior to hiring teachers, assuredly an increasing percentage are...

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Friday Snippets: 09/19/08 - In the market for land?

Posted on September 18, 2008
A forgotten element in this financial crisis: teacher's pensions. Utah's turning its attention from vouchers to merit pay?Big Ten network is now featuring professors on politics. (Suddenly I like conference networks a whole lot more ...

A Good Legal Resource for Practitioners

Posted on September 18, 2008
I wanted  to point you to what I consider to be one of the better resources in education law for educators as a new edition is just out. The Principal's Legal Handbook addresses most of the big issues in education law and gives a very good overview of the topic as related to schools, which you can't really get from wikipedia or the Internet generally yet...

Georgia School Funding Suit Dropped

Posted on September 17, 2008
Joshua Mayes sends word that the 50 district wide rural school funding lawsuit in Georgia has been halted, at least temporarily. The districts did not like the new judge that was assigned to the case (the new judge was a former chair of the local Republican party)...

More on Why Garcetti was Wrong for Schools

Posted on September 16, 2008
I was asked in the comments of my previous post to explain in more detail why I think Garcetti is a bad ruling for schools. Because this is important (it affects what all teachers are allowed and not allowed to say in and out of schools) I want to make sure everyone sees my response...

Johnson v. Poway Shows Why Garcetti Doesn't Work for Schools

Posted on September 15, 2008
Of all the teacher expression cases I have read so far, this is one of the best examples of why the   Garcetti  doctrine  doesn't work for schools. Let me just start with this: (1) I personally think the teacher should be allowed to keep the banners, but (2) under the existing legal framework it is hard to see how this case was decided correctly...

Friday Snippets: 9/12/08 - The Palin Chronicles

Posted on September 12, 2008
Here is a story you didn't see on the front page, but it should have been. It is hard not to feel bad for California's schools. Legislators won't reach a budget, plus another education secretary resigns this week. There seems to be a real lack of leadership at the state level ...

Masters of PR

Posted on September 11, 2008
Front page of MSNBC tonight and a big story on NBC nightly news ..."We may have great teachers, but unless we have better leadership we are not going to get the job done." I am not going to question the merits or motives of the Broad Foundation or Eli Broad...

Finding Free Educational Law Information

Posted on September 09, 2008
It has always bothered me that we train teachers and administrators in our school law classes to use tools they won't have access to when they leave our programs. We are better off providing them some knowledge of free legal resources instead, even if those resources are not as stellar as Lexis or Westlaw...

Sex Ed. In Mexico City

Posted on September 08, 2008
The U.S. is not the only one having trouble with this issue. Here is a report on the latest book offered to 13-18 year olds in Mexico City. Mexico is making a push toward greater sex education to reduce the transmission of HIV. Here is a Topeka, Kansas (?) story on the issue and a CNN video.

Friday Snippets - 9/05/08: Is this election over yet?

Posted on September 05, 2008
Great NPR spot this week on sexy student clothing ... and what to do about it (audio). Well, my pleading with the campaign posters at Eduwonk has gone unanswered ... again. This time by the Obama Campaign. There must be some kind of secret truce or something between the parties that they will not address special education under any circumstances...

08/15/08 - The New Role

Posted on August 15, 2008
So, I am still getting comfortable with my new faculty role, thus time is short lately. So an abbreviated version of the snippets this week. But, Mark Walsh said it was a quiet week (read that post for some of the action this week), so I am going to go with that and not feel too bad about it...

Thoughts on the California Home Schooling Decision

Posted on August 12, 2008
Mark Walsh and Mitchell Rubinstein have already posted that the California Appellate Court has reversed itself on the homeschooling decision that has received so much attention this past year.Here is the opinion. There were 16 amicus briefs, including, as my friend Scott Bauries pointed out to me, some heavy hitting constitutional law scholars...

Paddling Protection Nonsense in Indiana

Posted on August 12, 2008
Once in a while a proposal comes along that really riles me up. Today is one of those days. The current Governor of Indiana is proposing (although through campaign speak) a teacher discipline clarification act or something like that. Nadine Block, the Executive Director of the Center for Effective Discipline, who sent over the tip (thanks) calls it a "paddling protection act...

Friday Snippets - 8/08/08: The Eights are Wild.

Posted on August 09, 2008
An anti-bullying bill that includes protections for homosexual and transgender students and teachers is in the New York Senate. West Virginia teachers file suit claiming they were mislead into investing their retirement dollars into bad annuities. Little tip for teachers ...

Cyberbullying Regulation and Free Speech

Posted on August 05, 2008
Here is an article out today on an off-campus student conversation about Prom and a "spoiled" girl in their school. The conversation was taped and a student posted it to YouTube. The school administrators, concerned over cyberbullying, suspended the student who uploaded the video for two days, but not the other students recorded in the video that were actually making fun of the "spoiled girl...

Friday Snippets - 8/01/08 - Water on Mars

Posted on August 01, 2008
Congress has passed a Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. Here is Sen. Mike Enzi on some of the details. The President is expected to sign it.  A Texas judge changes his mind and orders a new language program for 140,000 language minority students...

Graduation Rate Suit in Florida Dismissed

Posted on August 01, 2008
The lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Florida against the Palm Beach County School Board for unconstitutionally low graduation rates has been dismissed at the Circuit Court level. I had earlier posted on the creativity of this suit (and its unlikely chances at success)...

Teaching Kids to Think

Posted on July 30, 2008
So, I have been cruising all over the southern Midwest the last couple days and while on my adventures I picked up an audio copy of Fareed Zakaria's book, The Post-American World. Fabulous read (or listen in my case). Packed with information (and cites - it was almost scholarly!) on China, India, the EU, British History, ...

Update on Autism Remarks

Posted on July 27, 2008
Charles Fox has an update on the autism rant that outraged me last week. Apparently there has been quite a lot of backlash from the remarks and calls for the radio host to be fired. Radio stations and advertisers have dropped him already. I absolutely 100% think the guy should be fired...

Friday Snippets: 07/25/08 - The Candidates and Special Education

Posted on July 25, 2008
The transition has begun to the new site. I worked on building it some this week and it is starting to take shape quite nicely. I hope to have it up an running by about the middle of next month - the tentative logo is below. Also, I have new contact information, including a new e-mail, which you can find here...

"That would have been the perfect class."

Posted on July 19, 2008
I know I have some education technology readers so I thought I would pass along the quote in the title, "that would have been the perfect class," which I heard yesterday from a second year principal that was reflecting on his leadership preparation experiences and the lack of learning technology tools...

Friday Snippets - 7/18/08 - Live from Lexington

Posted on July 17, 2008
First Snippets Live from Lexington: The Arizona Attorney General is now becoming involved in the Voucher funding issues. Anti-bullying law discussions continue in North Carolina (more). Discussions continue on Florida's proposed plan to eliminate property taxes for schools...

Is Autism the next ADHD?

Posted on July 16, 2008
One of the things that happens in a new town is that you search for new radio stations. Personally, I prefer, in order, (1) an NPR station, (2) an AM News station, (3) a sports radio station, (4) a country station and (5) a folksy station that plays a little bluegrass...

Savana Redding Wins En Banc Appeal

Posted on July 14, 2008
In the case that has probably generated more posts on this site than any other (that's what happens when the plaintiff leaves a comment), Savana Redding has finally won her case against the school that strip searched her over missing Ibuprofen. The 9th Circuit, sitting En Banc, ruled 6-5 that the strip search was not reasonable under the 4th Amendment...

A Billion Books

Posted on July 11, 2008
There are a billion books collectively in collegiate academic libraries in the U.S., according to this new report by NCES. A billion ... that is sort of hard to visualize, so I thought I would help out. If, on average, each book weighs three quarters of a pound (probably more because libraries do mostly hardbacks) then the weight of the books in academic libraries in the U...

No Friday Snippets this Week

Posted on July 10, 2008
This summer has been exhausting ... pretty much literally. As you all know by now I will be at the University of Kentucky in the fall (my name is listed now) and I am moving down to Lexington tomorrow, officially (that's right "I" - no movers - I will try to get some pics up at my homepage later of the misery)...

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