Education Law

Would Teachers Read the Law If It Was Available?

Posted on March 01, 2010
Listened to a great podcast from the Berkman Center on open access law. Specifically, it was an interview with Carl Malamud, of public.resource.org fame, on his and other efforts to open up the law. They have a series of upcoming discussions at the nation's top law schools to work on this issue and he will be addressing Congress on the issue in the near future...

Twitter Thing Not Going Away

Posted on February 27, 2010
The U.S. Department of Education announced today on their own twitter feed that they will make an announcement on Race to the Top on their press secretary's twitter feed next week. That's right, multiple twitter feeds with different streams of information are flowing out of most organizations of import nowadays, especially educational organizations...

ELA Proposal Deadline 2010 - Last Reminder

Posted on February 25, 2010
Photocredit: poyangThis is just the final reminder to submit your proposals for the Education Law Association Conference this weekend as they are due Monday. I talked with The Edjurist's own Kevin Brady today, the outstanding program chair for this year, and he said he was pleased with the submissions so far...

Free - Thoughts

Posted on February 21, 2010
So, finished up "Free: The Future of a Radical Price" this weekend. First, it is free in audio, if your like me and increasing addicted to your iPod for learning, try it out. The book was published in 2009 by Hyperion, and Chris Anderson (the editor of Wired Magazine) is the author...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

ELA Proposal Deadline 2010

Posted on February 17, 2010
The Education Law Association's annual conference for 2010 is in Vancouver -- that's right, Olympic-central at the moment. Anyway, if you want to go and get it paid for by your university, district or firm, you probably need to submit a proposal (guidelines) and the deadline for that is March 1...

Ed Schools: Officially Part of the "Problem" Narrative?

Posted on February 15, 2010
Reading my latest edition of Time Magazine this week, there was a story on school turnarounds and the likely components of NCLB. The article was really neither good or bad, but this struck me:  Of course, the education establishment (i.e., the teachers' unions and ed schools) likes to remind critics that children are not cogs and what works for companies may not necessarily work for schools...

Online Terms of Use Agreements and Teacher Liability

Posted on February 15, 2010
A couple weeks ago I presented virtually at EduCon 2.2 in Philadelphia (although I was in snowy Lexington). Jon Becker created the session called Stump the Lawyers.  Anyway, they stumped us (sort of, I sheepishly admit, although certainly we being lawyers we had something to say, even if it didn't relate)...

State Agencies and the Space for Change

Posted on February 11, 2010
Had the pleasure of filling in this morning at a meeting of the Council on Postsecondary Education in Frankfort. They had invited Curt Bonk down from IU to come talk to the Board and in a follow-up meeting with higher ed. faculty in the state. It was informative and I found myself taking a lot of notes (which is a sure sign that I'm learning something because I usually don't)...

"National" Standards and the Art of Cat Herding

Posted on February 04, 2010
'Standardizing' anything without a forceful mandate is like herding cats.  In the 'national standards' movement, this appears to be what is being attempted.  The entities developing the standards have been hard at work over the past year, and they have recently released drafts of the standards for Language Arts and Math...

Cases about Kids

Posted on February 03, 2010
Colin Firth, who frequently plays a Lawyer on TV, with a "little author of great thoughts." I like them better. Just a small thought, but one that occurred to me tonight as I was reading complex cases about motions to amend, pension system statutory interpretation, student loan interest accrual, the Bankruptcy Code, etc...

Mixed Early Results from Innovative Assignment/Integration Plan

Posted on February 01, 2010
In 2007, the Supreme Court declared the Jefferson County (Louisville) Public Schools' student assignment policy – a plan that required an African American student enrollment of between 15 and 50 % in all non-magnet schools – to be unconstitutional (PICS v...

Second Circuit Strikes a Blow Against Teachers' Speech Rights

Posted on January 29, 2010
I noticed that Education Week's School Law Blog had posted about a case from the  U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that marks yet another disturbing use of Garcetti v. Ceballos in relation to speech claims by educators (a copy of the case is also available at the site)...

Zakaria on Education

Posted on January 27, 2010
He really is very close to "on the same page" as me on education - I have posted earlier that I really liked his book as well. I can just tell that we think alike and approach the issues in similar ways, so it should be no surprise that I really liked his latest video in prepartion of for the State of the Union tonight on education...

AAUP launches new journal focused on academic freedom

Posted on January 27, 2010
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has launched a new online publication, the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom.  I spent some time perusing some of the articles in the inaugural edition.  Not surprisingly, as a journal sponsored by the AAUP, it provides scholarly articles supportive of academic freedom...

Ethics Codes ... It's a concept, it's a law, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's ... Not that Important

Posted on January 26, 2010
Alabama doesn't know what do to with its teacher Code of Ethics. The Legislature doesn't like it, nor does the Unions. The State Board of Education created it and the Governor likes it, and thus today he vetoed a Legislative effort to block the Code of Ethics from entering regulation...

Budget Shifting ... Carefully

Posted on January 25, 2010
Here's a legal topic that is happening now that might not be getting a lot of attention - budget shifting. Particularly, schools shifting money from earmarked funds toward other priorities. There was a good example out of Ohio today where some IDEA funds were shifted toward general priorities...

New Tennessee Higher Education Bill Ties Funding to Graduation Rates. A Good Thing? Maybe . . .

Posted on January 22, 2010
The Tennessee Legislature has passed a new higher education bill with some interesting reforms.  Just as my home state of Kentucky is considering legislation that would make transfer from two- to four-year institutions easier, one part of the legislation in Tennessee aims to standardize transfer...

"Rose at 20": Foreword

Posted on January 20, 2010
I just posted to SSRN my latest draft of the Foreword to the "Rose at 20" Special Feature issue forthcoming in the Kentucky Law Journal.  The issue, which includes three featured papers by distinguished school finance scholars Bill Thro, R...

90 Lashes for a Cell Phone in Class + Prison - Literally

Posted on January 20, 2010
Sounds like a joke, doesn't it?  It's not.  And, it happened in a country we are closely allied with, Saudi Arabia.  Why do we ... ? Oh, never mind I guess, I think we all already know the answers here.   The upside though? One less county our students are going to have to compete with in the future...

"Cyber-bullying" Redux--The AALS Panel

Posted on January 18, 2010
I have posted in this space once before regarding the recent phenomenon of "cyber-bullying."  I have come to believe since then that tort-based law provides redress for most of what we generally term "cyber-bullying," and that much of what we use this term to describe is (and should be) outside the reach of school regulation...

Guns at School - Should the Courts Get More Involved?

Posted on January 17, 2010
Kid goes hunting in the morning. Puts gun in truck. Drives truck to school. Authorities find it. Kid expelled. Lawsuit ensues. Community upset.  This is a pattern that gets repeated several times a year, especially in rural America. The latest one getting national press, as Scott M...

Educators - Expect to be Recorded

Posted on January 15, 2010
A controversy has erupted in Mississippi over the recording of school board meetings. I've posted on this before at the behest of Wes Fryer, so I'll just refer you to that (although I should probably do an extended version for School Boards Journal or something)...

Building the Technology Movement Into Law

Posted on January 14, 2010
Superb post by my CASTLE partner Scott McLeod over at Dangerously Irrelevant on: Creating the new schooling paradigm: Educational technology policy priorities Right now he is taking submissions for other policy/legal priorities for moving our school law into the 21st Century, as well as our schools...

Recent (and troubling) State Court Decision Involving Faculty Speech

Posted on January 13, 2010
This past month, a state court in Idaho dismissed the suit of Habib Sadid, a tenured professor at Idaho State University (ISU), who claimed that he was retaliated against for criticizing the actions of university officials.  Among his claims, Sadid argued that the university's actions violated his First Amendment rights...

Back from AALS

Posted on January 13, 2010
I just returned from the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools (the AALS) in New Orleans.  For those of you not familiar with the organization, it is the primary professional academic organization on the law side (like AERA for education)...

What if ...

Posted on January 12, 2010
What if education reporters were like sports reporters? After years of being lauded by the very same media, how many of our "performance enhancing" (not cheating on those tests, mind you) superintendents would be under collective fire until they held a tear-filled press conference?

Why Charter Schools Bother Me

Posted on January 09, 2010
This case really illustrates why charter schools fundamentally bother me. Here is a summary of it (I did this for the School Law Reporter, and since I am putting this one out for free, do me a favor and consider joining ELA): Northern Kane Ed Corp v. Cambridge Lakes Educ Ass'n, 914...

Body Scanners in Schools ... Tick, Tock

Posted on January 08, 2010
Photocredit: John&Julie CHow long until these new body scanners enter the school house? It's probably inevitable that some school will do it sooner or later, so let me try to head this one off now. First, ethically ... c'mon. Your fooling yourself if you think scanning millions of kids this way is worth it, even if you do catch a couple extra weapons entering the school...

Putting it All Together - Education, Technology & Law

Posted on January 07, 2010
Finally this semester I get a chance to pull it all together in writing ... and I'm excited.  It's been tough until now not only because I have been busy with lots of other important stuff, but also because it took a lot of time to learn how to frame the technology argument and embed it within a legal argument...

The California Higher Ed. Funding Amendment

Posted on January 06, 2010
I sort of like it. It makes the right kind of statement. Here is the official summary. And here is Gov. Schwarzenegger's rationale: California universities are known around the world as the crown jewel of California's education system [Evidence here]...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.