Education Law

Special Education Dispute Resolution Series at the Special Education Law Blog

Posted on February 07, 2008
Just wanted to point all of you to the special education dispute resolution series of blog posts at the Special Education Law Blog. Jim Gerl and I have worked together in the past and I really respect his knowledge on special education law having long served as a due process hearing officer and now a consultant to states on special education due process issues...

Nebraska Legislature Passes Anti-Bullying Bill

Posted on February 06, 2008
The Nebraska Legislature has passed an anti-bullying bill, which will be sent to the governor. The Lincoln Journal Star has a small story on it. If passed, Nebraska would join over 30 other states in taking legislative action to try to stop bullying in K-12 schools...

ELA Deadline Time Again

Posted on February 06, 2008
For all you out there that REALLY love educational law ... the ELA conference submission deadline is coming up on Feb. 15, so you have less than 10 days to get those proposals in. This years conference is at the Sheraton Gunther in San Antonio, a nice hotel I have been in before (their breakfast buffet was not the best, however, and there is not a lot of open seating space for those cool conversations we get to have with other educational law scholars and practitioners) from Nov...

Kill all the School Boards? ... Maybe. Nationalize Education? ... Maybe Not.

Posted on February 05, 2008
I read this article a week or so ago when my Atlantic Monthly came and I almost wrote a critique of it then, but I also listened to this interview on NPR the other day and I needed to point out what I see as a serious flaw in his argument. Here is the article ...

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The 9th Circuit Rehearing Redding v. Stafford (13 Year Old Strip Search Case): Congrats Savana

Posted on February 01, 2008
I was sort of happy to see Mark Walsh's scoop at the School Law Blog that the 9th Circuit has decided to rehear the Redding v. Stafford decision en banc (as a full court - or at least more - instead of just 3 judges, essentially setting aside the 3 judge's decision)...

Bong Hits Sketch

Posted on January 30, 2008
Here is another video from AfterEd. I thought some of you educational law professors out there would be interested in this one. I think I may use it this semester when teaching about student expression rights to my pre-service teachers. Of course, ironically, because the video has references to drug use, I don't suggest showing this video in K-12 schools based on the ruling from this case...

Kiss and Expel

Posted on January 30, 2008
My South Carolina readers will love this one. Two students were expelled for kissing (or allegedly perhaps more) on a school bus in Columbia, SC. We don't have all the facts so it is hard to form an opinion on this one, but if it was just kissing ... it does sound a bit severe for what appears to be otherwise stand-up students...

Ohio the Next to Ban Corporal Punishment?

Posted on January 29, 2008
A bill in the Ohio General Assembly would do just that. The bill has bi-partisan sponsors and may have a good shot at passage. If it is passed, it would make Ohio the 30th state to ban corporal punishment and would be the first new law on this issue since Pennsylvania banned it in 2005...

Things You Didn't Know About the Pledge

Posted on January 28, 2008
Here is a short video showing you 10 things you didn't know about the Pledge of Allegiance. It has some cool facts in it and of course refers to Newdow. I also want to use this opportunity to point out AfterEd, which is a channel on education broadcast out of Teacher's College, Columbia University (anyone want to know why they are the top ranked school of ed in the U...

Evaluating Teachers by Test Scores

Posted on January 23, 2008
Its coming. Like it or not.

The Congo: The Saddest Story on the Planet that No One Knows About

Posted on January 22, 2008
It is not very often that I allow myself to get off topic on this blog, but I am going to make an exception today. 5.4 million. 5,400,000. That is the number of people that have died as a result of conflict in the Congo in the last decade. Averaged out, that is 45,000 people a month or roughly 1,500 people a day...

Tonight on Frontline: Growing Up Online

Posted on January 22, 2008
If you have time tonight, check out your local PBS station. Frontline is airing a special on Growing Up Online. It is going to deal with a lot of legal and technology issues that are challenging us these days and should be really interesting.Here is a preview:

The Absence of Free Educational Law Resources Online

Posted on January 21, 2008
Spinning around the Educational Law Association e-mail listserv the past couple of days was a request by an educational professor for free resources she could use in an in-service professional development situation for teachers. She got several good responses, including this Alabama oriented educational law text, educational law blogs (thanks to Scott McLeod and Castle), the (members-only???) Educational Law Association Forum, links to non-educationally based legal resources, and a few other responses referring to textbooks (of the pay, non-online variety)...

Legacy Admissions & the Constitution

Posted on January 18, 2008
For the past week, in my undergraduate educational law course, we have been talking about desegregation and affirmative action. As such, we have been discussing Grutter v. Bollinger and Parents Involved v. Seattle.  These cases both concerned admission decisions based on race, at the higher ed...

A Question I Get All the Time: The New York "Supreme Court"

Posted on January 18, 2008
A question that always seems to come up is why are the New York lower courts called the "Supreme Court." This always confuses my students and when I was covering the NY State Courts for the School Law Reporter ... occasionally confused me. Well, Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy has the answer...

Drunk Photos and Facebook

Posted on January 17, 2008
Well, Facebook just continues to generate educational law news ... or in this case buzz. Andrew Paulson over at Board Buzz has an interesting account of students being disciplined and questions over photos of them on Facebook which showed them partying with alcohol...

Now here is a good idea: WiFi on Busses

Posted on January 14, 2008
Check out this cool idea ... WiFi on school busses. And not just WiFi, but also courses complete with online tests. Now, I know there is a lot that could go wrong with this just like with anything else, but I can't tell you how happy I would have been surfing the web or doing courses while on the bus (I was the first to be picked up and usually had a 60 min...

Politics and Teachers' Unions

Posted on January 14, 2008
The Nevada NEA is suing to block some caucus sites inside casinos and some speculate it is on behalf of the Sen. Hillary Clinton campaign for president. This lawsuit is aimed at stopping many in the gaming industry from voting in midday elections outside their home districts and comes on the heels of the Culinary Workers Union (Nevada's most powerful) endorsing Sen...

Pledge of Allegiance - State Requirements

Posted on January 11, 2008
I was asked the other day about the different state requirements to say the Pledge of Allegiance across the United States. This First Amendment Center article has the status of different states as of mid-2006 and it is the best advice I can pass along at the moment...

New Pro-Evolution Report

Posted on January 08, 2008
Making news the past couple of days is a new report out from the National Academy of Sciences. The report questions creationism's continuing presence in discussions of science curriculum. It has some pretty strong things to say about creationism and intelligent design (including below) and no doubt will be used by advocates on both sides for many years to come...

Happy Birthday NCLB! Your Present? A Big Legal Loss in Pontiac v. Spellings

Posted on January 07, 2008
Well, tomorrow is the birthday of NCLB. It is officially 6 years old and lots of folks have a something to say about it, as BoardBuzz notes (also, Alexander Russo, Cato).   President Bush, for his part, went to a Chicago elementary school to celebrate and there he issued a fact sheet touting NLCB's achievements and reiterating his proposals for reauthorization (audio of an NPR summary of potential changes)...

Texting Students: Not so Bad

Posted on January 07, 2008
Proof that texting in schools is not all bad: College and university officials are now utilizing text messages to relay various messages to students, including information about hazards on campus and snow days. This after using the texting system to alert students of school violence dangers in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings...

Online Degrees: Fair or Phony

Posted on January 02, 2008
A question I seemed to get asked a lot concerns the validity of online degrees. My standard response is that it depends on the program. Then, invariably, I will get asked whether "X" University is an acceptable online university degree program. Of course, I am never familiar with the program they ask me about so I usually just respond that they need to know whether it is accredited and they need to know their alternative options...

Chicago Military Academies

Posted on December 29, 2007
The Newshour had an interesting story on the use of military type academies in Chicago's public schools. While anyone who has had a class with me will know I am certainly a fan of discipline and hard work,  this may be a little too far. Most strikingly, these military academies are only based in low-income African American and Latino parts of the city and not based in White areas of the city, such as the suburbs...

The Nine: A Review

Posted on December 28, 2007
Well, I just finished The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin. It was good and I recommend it to people that are familiar/interested with the Justices on the Supreme Court. Couple of things I would say about it. First, I learned a lot about the Justices that I did not know, especially some of the lesser known Justices like Breyer and Souter...

New Creationism/Evolution Front

Posted on December 27, 2007
Here is the newest front in the creationism/evolution battle:Creation college seeks state's OK to train teachers Dallas school plans master's in science education, fueling debate over teaching evolution 08:40 AM CST on Saturday, December 15, 2007 By HOLLY K...

Disciplined Teacher Database

Posted on December 21, 2007
See my post today At the Schoolhouse Gate on the newly released list by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune of teachers with disciplinary marks on their state teaching certificate. Scary stuff.

Blogging and Education Professors

Posted on December 14, 2007
Mitchell Rubinstein noted today that the University of Wisconsin Law School gave a good deal of credit to Law Professor Ann Althouse, whose blog was ranked in the top 100 law blogs by the ABA. The law school came out with this press release. The ABA top 100 can be found here (no, don't bother checking, the Edjurist is not on the list)...

New ISLLC Standards Approved

Posted on December 13, 2007
Apparently, the new ISLLC standards were approved today by NPBEA (from an NCPEA update). The ISLLC standards are the standards for school administrator preparation that serve as the basis for most state's regulations of educational leadership preparation providers...

Alaska to Spend a Billion Dollars a Year on Education

Posted on December 12, 2007
Just in case you were having doubts about how much we spend on education at the state level, the Governor of Alaska announced last week that she intends to increase state dollars for education to a billion dollars a year within the next three years...

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