Education Law

If you had just one education question for a candidate, what would it be?

Posted on April 10, 2008
That was the question posed to me this morning by a colleague of mine that is planning to go to a Barack Obama rally tomorrow. The question she is planning on asking (if given the opportunity) is:"The Supreme Court decision about school segregation last year limited a school's ability to promote a diverse student body...

Education Law just a Niche?

Posted on April 10, 2008
Some evidence to the contrary today. NSBA Legal Clips just crossed the 10,000 subscriber barrier. Congrats all. You are doing a great job and I highly recommend it. It is one of the few educational law related technology items that has managed to transcend the field and is used by old and young, lawyers and administrators, professors and practitioners alike...

Muslim Fears & Public Schools

Posted on April 09, 2008
Funny how our disposition toward the separation of church and state is so dependent on the "church" in question. Today's big story in education law, running as a Drudge top story (the first time I have seen Drudge run an education story at the top that didn't involve shootings), is this article in the Star-Tribune about "Minnesota's Muslim Public School...

Devolving Education and Developing Countries

Posted on April 08, 2008
As many of you probably know Zimbabwe has been in the news lately for their recent disputed elections. Today we learn it has the possibility to get violent. You may also know that Zimbabwe was one of the most literate countries in Africa at over 90% literacy rates and by all accounts it had a sparkling education system...

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The Redding Strip Search Case Continues to Get Attention

Posted on April 07, 2008
If you have read the blog for a while, you know I took a personal interest in the Redding v. Stafford case a long time ago when Savannah Redding posted a comment to the blog to thank me for my interpretation of the case, in which I sided with the student that a strip search for Ibuprofen was unreasonable...

Mathew's Education Blog List

Posted on April 07, 2008
Those new to the blogosphere can often be overwhelmed by the immensity of it. It is huge. Like, really huge. Technorati is currently tracking 112.8 million blogs. It is the same with education. There are a lot of education blogs. I have been blogging for three or four years now and I have probably only seen like a 1/10 of the education blogosphere...

Friday Snippets: 4/4/08 - It's Always Something with Illinois

Posted on April 04, 2008
Here is another week's worth:Arizona hits a snag on opting out of NCLB, but their efforts are not over yet. The California homeschooling decision is still generating backlash and New Hampshire homeschoolers are also upset over a bill that require them to submit curriculum plans before they withdraw their children...

Nice Religion Test Case

Posted on April 03, 2008
Mark Walsh at the School Law Blog has tipped us off to a really nice test case for church/state issues. A school in the Dallas area has painted "In God We Trust" on the wall of a public school gymnasium. Picture. News report (video). The Texas Education Code permits the display of the national motto: Sec...

The Grades Just Disappeared!

Posted on April 02, 2008
When I was a kid, I always used to pray for this to happen. I was sort of a B & C type student, with the occasional A or D thrown in there to mix it up. One byproduct, though, of my apathy toward grades was that I would frequently be scolded when report cards came home...

Some More Teachers on Tape

Posted on April 01, 2008
Not long ago Scott McLeod put up a provocative post at Dangerously Irrelevant that had a series of YouTube Clips where students took videos of teachers in their classrooms and later posted them to YouTube for the world to see (each of the videos below have thousands of hits)...

April Fools Jokes No Fun For Schools

Posted on April 01, 2008
Since Australia is a few hours ahead of us, they have already had time for an April fools joke to go wrong. A student in a suburb of Melbourne called in a bomb threat as an April fools joke, and even though the administration suspected as much, they still had to evacuate the school, call the police and do the whole thing...

Turnitin Copyright Lawsuit Dismissed (Wrongly)

Posted on March 31, 2008
The copyright lawsuit against Turnitin.com has been dismissed. Andy Carving at Learning.Now has a nice analysis. I have a couple problems with this ruling. First, the judge relied heavily on the clickwrap agreement (the "I Agree" checkmark box we all check when using a service)...

Rolling out the Welcome Mat

Posted on March 30, 2008
The buzz at AERA was over this large, large (seven-story) billboard a block north of Times Square. (The owner's blog post and more pictures here.)If you can't read it, here is the description:"Vote for the Worst unionized Teachers (who can't be fired)...

Friday Snippets: 3/21/08 - If the Fed. Gov. breaks a law and no one cares ... does it make a sound?

Posted on March 28, 2008
An abbreviated version of the Snippets this week as I was mostly out of town:The Arizona House votes to opt out of NCLB. The CA Homeschooling case goes up on appeal. Michigan anti-bullying bill stalls because of inclusion of anti-bullying protections in model state policy for homosexual students...

Liveblogging AERA: Law and Education SIG Secretary/Treasurer

Posted on March 27, 2008
I have never exactly been that great with money. It is not a coincidence that I married an accountant. But, for some reason, the Law and Education SIG of AERA has entrusted the money to me ? starting ? well, yesterday. It is a great honor and I am looking forward to filling the position...

Liveblogging AERA: Educational Evidence

Posted on March 27, 2008
Went to an interesting presentation yesterday morning by Arthur Recesso that examined the types of evidence used to make educational decisions about teachers. He used the law as a backdrop for talking about evidence and even referenced the Federal Rules of Evidence...

Liveblogging AERA: Reigning in the Confusion over Parents Involved in Community Schools

Posted on March 27, 2008
Earlier this week I posted on the developing confusion among some scholars concerning the decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools (apparently we are going to call it PICS, but with only 1 i, even though the real groups calls itself piics, as in piics...

Liveblogging AERA: Law Oriented Assistant Professor Position

Posted on March 25, 2008
Wanted to pass along a law oriented Assistant Professor position at George Washington University that their chair, Virginia Roach, passed along to me. I am a big fan of Dr. Roach and her work which is closely tied to educational policy, and to have her as the chair of your department would be a great starting place for a young legal researcher...

Liveblogging AERA: Questioning Brown?

Posted on March 25, 2008
Back to liveblogging. Just got out of a very interesting session on the fallout of Parents Involved in Community Schools (PIICS). I found it really interesting that the presentations were not devoted as much as to what PICS got wrong, as they were to why Brown was wrong for allowing the space for PIICS to come about...

Liveblogging AERA: Initial Thoughts

Posted on March 24, 2008
Well, I am at AERA and I have checked in. There was a 40 min. wait to check in, so that was not the best. The hotels are not really close to one another and the hotel we are staying at is about 3 subway stops away. I think there are 4-5 hotels AERA is using this time and the 2 main ones are about 8 blocks apart...

Upset with Schools? Run for Governor!

Posted on March 23, 2008
I always like these stories. Two teachers in Montana have filed papers to run for Governor and Lt. Governor. Here is their campaign website. The candidate for Governor, Don Progreba, runs an educational blog at Intelligent Discontent and publishes under the name Pogie (this should help is Technorati rating if nothing else)...

Friday Snippets: 3/21/08 - Tough Week for Teachers

Posted on March 21, 2008
Here are your Friday Snippets for another week:A teacher forced a Florida boy to go in a lunchbox ... in the back of the room ... with everyone watching. (shaking head)Teachers also ... please don't bite students. Or wake students up that are sleeping in class with loud noises...

Unconstitutionally Low Graduation Rates?

Posted on March 19, 2008
Here is a new tact. The ACLU is suing a Florida School District for unconstitutionally low graduation rates (Press Release). The ACLU claims that the low graduation rates, especially given their racial breakdown, violate the high quality provision of the Florida Constitution...

AERA Law and Education SIG - 2008 Presentations

Posted on March 19, 2008
Next week, I will be in New York for AERA, the largest educational research conference in the world. It is a yearly pilgrimage for educational scholars ... however undesirable (it is really too big for my tastes and is always in the largest and costliest cities)...

The California Crunch

Posted on March 17, 2008
In case you haven't heard, there is a major budget crunch going on in California this year. Gov. Schwarzenegger has asked for a 4.4 billion dollar reduction in education spending. This is hitting schools hard, causing uncertainty and layoffs, which has left young teachers scrambling searching for new jobs in a tight market...

Friday Snippets: 3/14/08 - Drug Testing and Deer Urine

Posted on March 14, 2008
Here are the Friday Snippets for March 14 - 2008: The outrage against the California ruling against Homeschoolers begins ... and continues .. (this is not going away any time soon folks) ... and the California Department of Education reassures them nothing is going to change...

The Educational Law YouTube Assignment

Posted on March 13, 2008
As my regular readers know, I teach educational law courses here at Indiana University (soon I will be moving - check out my hat). But, I take pride in teaching not just educational law but other topics as well that school personnel need to have an idea about...

Damn those Skittles

Posted on March 13, 2008
A kid in Connecticut was suspended and stripped of his title of class vice president ... for having a bag of Skittles in school. He has since been cleared (see him talk about it), but I wonder what that superintendent would have done to me ... I pass out skittles in my class, so all of my students would have bags of skittles...

The Integration Report at the Civil Rights Project

Posted on March 11, 2008
By far one of the best things going in educational law is the Civil Rights Project, now based at UCLA. They have a new feature I want to pass along called The Integration Report. It is sort of a blog and sort of a newsletter and sort of a journal article all in one nice little, bi-weekly package...

The Rise of Educational Law Associations in Law Schools

Posted on March 11, 2008
I had planned to write a post in response to BoardBuzz's interesting post today about law schools changing their curriculum to be more practitioner oriented and whether that would affect schools (probably not was my conclusion). Also, I wanted to send a thank you to Andrew Paulson for calling school law: "a new and exciting field" (which obviously I agree with and appreciate)...

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