Digital Commons Network^™

Institutional Betrayals As Sex Discrimination, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

Title IX jurisprudence has a theoretical and doctrinal inadequacy. Title IX’s purpose is to protect public school students from sex discrimination in all its forms. Yet, courts have only recognized three relatively narrow forms of sex discrimination under it. Title IX jurisprudence, therefore, cannot effectively recognize as sex discrimination the independent injuries, called institutional betrayals, that schools impose on students because they have suffered sexual harassment. Institutional betrayals occur when schools betray students’ trust in or dependency on them by failing to help students in the face of their sexual harassment. These injuries cause harms that can be more severe …

Latent Class Analysis Of K-12 Teachers’ Barriers To Implementing Oer, Hengtao Tang Ph.D., Yu Bao

Faculty Publications

Open educational resources (OER) are a cost-effective alternative to traditional textbooks for K-12 teachers to provide differentiated instruction at a much lower cost. However, teachers have to overcome barriers to implement OER in their classrooms, especially if cultural and economic factors are considered. To help each teacher overcome individual barriers, a person-centered approach to understand teachers’ barriers of implementing OER is needed yet absent. This research thus filled the gap by conducting a latent class analysis of teachers’ profiles in terms of their barriers in using OER. The findings identified three types of teacher profiles and revealed how different profiles …

Hearing Loss Prevalence And Years Lived With Disability, 1990–2019: Findings From The Global Burden Of Disease Study 2019, Ismaeel Yunusa, Lydia M. Haile, Kaloyan Kamenov, Paul Svitil Briant, Aislyn U. Orji, Jaimie D. Steinmetz, Et. Al.

Faculty Publications

Background

Hearing loss affects access to spoken language, which can affect cognition and development, and can negatively affect social wellbeing. We present updated estimates from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study on the prevalence of hearing loss in 2019, as well as the condition's associated disability.

Methods

We did systematic reviews of population-representative surveys on hearing loss prevalence from 1990 to 2019. We fitted nested meta-regression models for severity-specific prevalence, accounting for hearing aid coverage, cause, and the presence of tinnitus. We also forecasted the prevalence of hearing loss until 2050.

Findings

An estimated 1.57 billion (95% uncertainty interval …

Governed By Circumstances As They May Arise: A Short Reflection On The Knowledge School And Its Context, Jennifer Weil Arns

Faculty Publications

As technologies have moved forward and cultural assumptions have changed, we find ourselves at a moment of opportunity. Our sense of the word library is drawn from a rich array of service traditions and a value proposition based on the belief that libraries help those who use them advance in life, engage with others in their communities, and learn more about themselves and the world around them. The Knowledge School concept builds on this assumption and expands it with a broader challenge – a commitment to creating public value, changing communities, and educating those who feel a personal commitment to …

Healthcare Practitioners’ Views Of Social Media As An Educational Resource, Adam G. Pizzuti, Karan H. Patel, Erin K. Mccreary, Emily Heil, Christopher M. Bland, Eric Chinaeke, Bryan L. Love, P Brandon Bookstaver

Faculty Publications

Social media is increasingly utilized as a resource in healthcare. We sought to identify perceptions of using social media as an educational tool among healthcare practitioners. An electronic survey was distributed to healthcare administrators, nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, physicians, and physician assistants f hospital systems and affiliated health science schools in Georgia, Maryland, South Carolina, and Wisconsin. Survey questions evaluated respondents' use and views of social media for educational purposes and workplace accessibility using a Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Nurses (75%), pharmacists (11%), and administrators (7%) were the most frequent respondents. Facebook® (27%), Pinterest® …

The Promise And Peril Of Using Disability Law As A Tool For School Reform, Claire Raj

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Language Nests On The Move: The Case Of Võro Pre-Primary Education In Estonia, Kara D. Brown, Mariko Faster

Faculty Publications

This article considers the circuitous route of knowledge exchange from South (New Zealand)-to North (Finland)-to regional South (Estonia) by examining the development of Võro language nests (keelepesä) in Estonia. Language nests reflect the global nature of educational knowledge exchange as well as the importance of networks of languageresearchers and activists in this policy inspiration. Estonia is a fascinating case for understanding the international spread and local development of the language-nest approach in a post-Socialist context. The authors draw on concepts of policy borrowing and diffusion and the “grammar of schooling” to explore the spread of the language nest approach and …

The School Civil Rights Vacuum, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

Recent cases of pervasive sex abuse at universities, including those committed by Larry Nassar at Michigan State University and by Jerry Sandusky at Pennsylvania State University, demonstrate the limitations of Title IX as a tool for protecting college students. What has gone far less recognized is that in the K–12 public school context, Title IX and other civil rights laws, including the Fourteenth Amendment, are at least as ineffective at protecting students from sexual, physical, and verbal abuse and harassment. Public school students rarely succeed on Fourteenth Amendment or Title IX claims, even in some of the most egregious cases. …

Coerced Choice: School Vouchers And Students With Disabilities, Claire Raj

Faculty Publications

The landscape of public education, once thought to be a core function of the state, is shifting towards privatization. The appointment of Betsy DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education further cements this shift. In particular, DeVos intends to vastly expand the availability of vouchers and tax credits that use public dollars to fund private school tuition. The debate over this expansion and its impact on traditional public schools has been polarizing and combative. Thus far, commentators have framed vouchers as purely matters of choice and increased educational opportunities. Drowned out in the debate are the voices of students with disabilities. …

Abandoning The Federal Role In Education, Derek Black

Faculty Publications

In December 2015, Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which redefined the role of the federal government in education. The ESSA attempted to appease popular sentiment against the No Child Left Behind Act’s (NCLB) overreliance on standardized testing and punitive sanctions. But in overturning those aspects of the NCLB, Congress failed to devise a system that was any better. Congress simply stripped the federal government of regulatory power and vastly expanded state discretion. For the first time in fifty years, the federal government lacks the ability to prompt improvements in student achievement and to demand equal resources for …

Averting Educational Crisis: Funding Cuts, Teacher Shortages, And The Dwindling Commitment To Public Education, Derek Black

Faculty Publications

Recent data shows that two-thirds of states are funding education at lower levels than in 2008. Some states are 20% or more below levels of just a few years earlier. The effect on schools has been devastating. States are only exacerbating the problem by reducing teachers’ rights and benefits. These attacks, combined with funding decreases, have scared many prospective teachers away from the profession. The net result is an extreme shortage of teachers nationwide. When the school year began in 2015, a large number of public schools opened without enough certified teachers to fill classrooms, relying instead on substitutes and …

The School To Prison Pipeline's Legal Architecture: Lessons From The Spring Valley Incident And Its Aftermath, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the 2015 Spring Valley High School incident – the high-profile arrest of a Columbia, South Carolina high school student for “disturbing schools” in which a school resource officer threw her out of her desk – to identify and illustrate the core elements of the school-to-prison pipeline’s legal architecture, and to evaluate legal reforms in response to growing concern over the pipeline.

The Spring Valley incident illustrates, first, how broad criminal laws transform school discipline incidents into law enforcement matters. Second, it illustrates how legal instruments that should limit the role of police officers assigned to schools (school …

Taking Teacher Quality Seriously, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

Although access to quality teachers is one of the most important aspects of a quality education, explicit concern with teacher quality has been conspicuously absent from past litigation over the right to education. Instead, past litigation has focused almost exclusively on funding. Though that litigation has narrowed gross fundinggaps between schools in many states, it has not changed what matters most: access to quality teachers.

This Article proposes a break from the traditional approach to litigating the constitutional right to education. Rather than constitutionalizing adequate or equal funding, courts should constitutionalize quality teaching. The recent success of the constitutional challenge …

Beyond The Schoolhouse Gates: The Unprecedented Expansion Of School Surveillance Authority Under Cyberbulling Laws, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

For several years, states have grappled with the problem of cyberbullying and its sometimes devastating effects. Because cyberbullying often occurs between students, most states have understandably looked to schools to help address the problem. To that end, schools in forty-six states have the authority to intervene when students engage in cyberbullying. This solution seems all to the good unless a close examination of the cyberbullying laws and their implications is made. This Article explores some of the problematic implications of the cyberbullying laws. More specifically, it focuses on how the cyberbullying laws allow schools unprecedented surveillance authority over students. This …

Dark Sarcasm In The Classroom: The Failure Of The Courts To Recognize Students' Severe Emotional Harm As Unconstitutional, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

Sometimes the very people who are supposed to teach, nurture, and protect students in public schools — the students’ teachers, principals, coaches, and other school officials — are instead the people who harm them. Public school officials have beaten students, causing significant physical harm. They have also left students suffering from depression, suicidal ideation, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. When school officials cause such severe harm to students, all the federal courts of appeals to consider the issue have concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment at least in theory protects them, regardless of whether the form of the harm is emotional or …

Disability History: Humanity Worth Defending, Darren W. Minarik, Timothy Lintner

Faculty Publications

The authors consider the potential impact of teaching disability history and awareness in social studies classrooms. Social studies educators are encouraged to use disability history to move the concept of disability beyond Individualized Education Program (IEP) labels and medical pathology, allowing students to study and better understand the evolving social and cultural context of disability. An examination of disability “models” and the historical evolution of disability language is followed by strategies and resources for incorporating disability history and awareness in the social studies classroom. Ohio social studies educators are encouraged to support a Disability History and Awareness week or month …

Education's Elusive Future, Storied Past, And The Fundamental Inequity In Between, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Middle Income Peers As Educational Resources And The Constitutional Right To Equal Access, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

Concentrated poverty in public schools continues to be a leading determinate of the educational opportunities that minority students receive. Since the effective end of mandatory desegregation, advocates have lacked legal tools to address it. As an alternative, some advocates and scholars have attempted to incorporate the concerns of concentrated poverty and racial segregation into educational litigation under state constitutions, but these efforts have been slow to take hold. Thus, all that has remained for students in poor and minority schools is the hope that school finance litigation could direct sufficient resources to mitigate their plight. This Article offers another solution. …

“Hometown History” Setting For Interdisciplinary Planning, Bridget Coleman, Lauren Stephens, Timothy Lintner

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Middle-Income Peers As Educational Resources And The Constitutional Right To Equal Access, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

Concentrated poverty in public schools continues to be a leading determinate of the educational opportunities that minority students receive. Since the effective end of mandatory desegregation, advocates have lacked legal tools to address it. As an alternative, some advocates and scholars have attempted to incorporate the concerns of concentrated poverty and racial segregation into educational litigation under state constitutions, but these efforts have been slow to take hold. Thus, all that has remained for students in poor and minority schools is the hope that school finance litigation could direct sufficient resources to mitigate their plight. This Article offers another solution. …

Leaving The Lecture Hall: Conducting Hf/E Outside The Classroom, C. B. Fausset, K. R. Bujak, K. A. Kline, Jenay Beer, C.-A. Smarr, A. E. Adams, S. E. Mcbride, J. S. Burnett

Faculty Publications

Georgia Tech HF/E students initiated and managed a multisemester project to experience the nuances of conducting HF/E outside the classroom setting. This article focuses on the lessons learned beyond the classroom: project management, team coordination, communication with non-HF/E team members, application of research methods, and integration of data to prioritize and guide design changes. The goal of this article is to help guide other HF/E students and educators when implementing similar projects by providing the lessons we learned from this experience.

Bmi Trajectories During The Transition To Older Adulthood: Persistent, Widening, Or Diminishing Disparities By Ethnicity And Education?, Katrina M. Walsemann, Jennifer A. Ailshire

Faculty Publications

Previous research has produced inconsistent results on whether education and ethnic disparities in BMI persist, widen, or diminish over time. We investigate how education and ethnicity, independently and conditionally, influence BMI trajectories during the transition to older adulthood. Employing random coefficient modeling, we analyzed 8 biennial waves of data (1992-2006) from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative longitudinal study of individuals born between 1931 and 1941. After adjusting for health behaviors and health status, education and ethnic disparities in BMI persisted for most groups, but narrowed between high-educated white men and both low-educated Hispanic men and high-educated black …

Education And Levels Of Salivary Cortisol Over The Day In Us Adults, Jennifer B. Dowd, Nalini Ranjit, D. Phuong Do, Elizabeth A. Young, James S. House, George A. Kaplan

Faculty Publications

Background - Dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is hypothesized to be an important pathway linking socioeconomic position and chronic disease.

Purpose - This paper tests the association between education and the diurnal rhythm of salivary control.

Methods - Up to 8 measures of cortisol (mean of 5.38 per respondent) over two days were obtained from 311 respondents aged 18-70, drawn from 2001-2002 Chicago Community Adult Health Study. Multi-level models with linear splines were used to estimate waking level, rates of cortisol decline, and area-under-the-curve over the day, by categories of education.

Results - Lower education (0-11 years) was associated …

Teachers As Language-Policy Actors: Contending With The Erasure Of Lesser-Used Languages In Schools, Kara Brown

Faculty Publications

On the basis of an ethnographic study of the Võro-language revitalization in Estonia, this article explores the way teachers function as policy actors in the broader context of the school. As policy actors, the language teachers' appropriation of regional–language policy helps simultaneously to reproduce and challenge existing ideologies in the school environment. I explore the teachers' understandings of their power and freedom to inform their navigation of the circumscribed choices offered in a post-Soviet educational system. [language, anthropology of policy, teachers, Baltic]

The Boys Like Action And The Girls Like Emotion, Timothy Lintner

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Copyright And Education: Lessons On African Copyright And Access To Knowledge, Tobias Schonwetter, Jeremy De Beer, Dick Kawooya, Achal Prabhala

Faculty Publications

The African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) project is a pan-African research network of academics and researchers from law, economics and the information sciences, spanning Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda. Research conducted by the project was designed to investigate the extent to which copyright is fulfilling its objective of facilitating access to knowledge, and learning materials in particular, in the study countries. The hypotheses tested during the course of research were that: (a) the copyright environments in study countries are not maximising access to learning materials, and (b) the copyright environments in study countries …

Examining Costs Of Diversity, Eboni S. Nelson

Faculty Publications

Although the Supreme Court struck down the voluntary race-based student-assignment plans employed in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. ] and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education as violative of the Equal Protection Clause, many school officials will seek refuge in Justice Kennedy's concurrence and continue their pursuit of racially diverse student bodies. This Article questions the wisdom of such a pursuit and urges school officials to pursue measures other than racial diversity to provide equal educational opportunities to minority students.

The Article begins with a discussion of the social, democratic, and educational benefits commonly …

Educating At The Crossroads: Parents Involved, No Child Left Behind And School Choice, Danielle R. Holley-Walker

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Actually, We Are Leaving Children Behind: How Changes To Title I Under The No Child Left Behind Act Have Helped Relieve Public Schools Of The Responsibility For Taking Care Of Disadvantaged Students' Needs, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

This article calls attention to the changes to Title I under NCLB that do a disservice to disadvantaged students. Under NCLB, Title I has shifted from its original focus on meeting the needs of disadvantaged students. These changes have removed almost any responsibility at all for taking care of the needs of disadvantaged students so they can learn in school, something this article terms ‘dynamic caretaking.’ It calls for revising Title I to require this kinds of dynamic caretaking in order to improve disadvantaged students’ access to education in public schools.

An Evening Teacher Certification Program Designed For Adult Learners, Timothy Lintner, Susanne Brown

Faculty Publications

As more and more teachers leave the classroom, states are looking to actively recruit the returning adult learner into the teaching profession. This study examines an innovative teacher certification program in South Carolina whose goal is to do just that. Issues such as planning and scheduling are presented that offer insight into the design and delivery of this unique and responsive certification program. Though this program is unique to South Carolina, it is applicable to all who seek to recruit the adult learner.