Law Commons^™

Systemic Compliance Complaints: Making Idea's Enforcement Provisions A Reality, Monica Costello

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Since the passage of what is now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ("IDEA") in 1975, this country has recognized the importance of providing appropriate educational services to students with disabilities. When a school district fails to provide these services, an organization can file a compliance complaint with the state's designated education agency to investigate the violation. This Note uses California as a case study and argues that state education agencies should be required to investigate systemic violations, even when the names of affected students are not provided. To effectively protect the rights of students with disabilities and …

A Narrow Path To Diversity: The Constitutionality Of Rezoning Plans And Strategic Site Selection Of Schools After Parents Involved, Steven T. Collis

Michigan Law Review

Justice Kennedy's concurrence in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District Number 1 raised an important and timely constitutional issue: whether the Constitution permits K-12 public school districts not under existing desegregation orders to use site selection of new schools or rezoning plans to achieve racial diversity. Numerous scholars and journalists have interpreted Justice Kennedy's concurrence as explicitly answering the question in the affirmative. This Note argues that the opposite is true. Justice Kennedy's past jurisprudence, as well as his language in Parents Involved, favors the use of strict scrutiny. Indeed, in Parents Involved, Justice Kennedy …

Silencing Chicken Little: Options For School Districts After Parents Involved, Michelle Renee Shamblin

Louisiana Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Political Origins Of Secular Public Education: The New York City School Controversy, 1840-1842, Ian C. Bartrum

Ian C Bartrum

THE ORIGINS OF SECULAR PUBLIC EDUCATION: THE NEW YORK SCHOOL CONTROVERSY, 1840-1842 As the title suggests, this article explores the historical origins of secular public education, with a particular focus on the controversy surrounding the Catholic petitions for school funding in nineteenth-century New York City. The article first examines the development of Protestant nonsectarian common schools in the northeast, then turns to the New York controversy in detail, and finally explores that controversy’s legacy in state constitutions and the Supreme Court. It is particularly concerned with two ideas generated in New York: (1) Bishop John Hughes’ objection to nonsectarianism as …

The Right To Learn Across The Tracks: An Analysis Of School Funding And Integration In Seattle, Houston, Philadelphia, Chicago And Washington, D.C., Erin M. Pollard

Politics Honors Papers

Through examining the levels of integration in public and private schools across the United States, it is clear that the spirit of Brown v. Board of Education was never fulfilled. Students are still learning in an overwhelmingly homogeneous environment. Even in diverse neighborhoods there is a difference: the poor and minority children attend the public schools and the wealthy children attend private school. Thus, the urban public schools remain overwhelmingly minority, while private schools are overwhelmingly white. There is a clear discrepancy between black and white students in terms of size of school and quality of education.

To determine whether …

Student Speech: Whose Speech Is It Anyway And Why Does The First Amendment Care?, Leora Harpaz

Faculty Scholarship

A key feature of First Amendment speech analysis in the public schools focuses on speaker identity. Speaker identity can play a crucial role in designing the First Amendment landscape on a variety of issues including the right of speakers to gain access to public school forums for expression, the right of student editors to control the content of school-sponsored publications, and the right of school administrators to permit religious speech in the public school setting. Courts faced with decisions about whether speech in the public school setting is private or government speech must consider the context in which the speech …

From Pedagogical Sociology To Constitutional Adjudication: The Meaning Of Desegregation In Social Science Research And Law, Anne Richardson Oakes

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In the United States following the case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) federal judges with responsibility for public school desegregation but no expertise in education or schools management appointed experts from the social sciences to act as court advisors. In Boston, MA, educational sociologists helped Judge W. Arthur Garrity design a plan with educational enhancement at its heart, but the educational outcomes were marginalized by a desegregation jurisprudence conceptualized in terms of race rather than education. This Article explores the frustration of outcomes in Boston by reference to the differing conceptualizations of desegregation in law and social science. …

From T-Shirts To Teaching: May Public Schools Constitutionally Regulate Antihomosexual Speech?, Amanda L. Houle

Fordham Law Review

In applying the First Amendment in the public school context, courts are faced with the challenge of balancing the constitutional rights of students against the discretion of schools to control speech and conduct on school grounds. This Note focuses on the specific issue of public schools regulating antihomosexual speech. Evaluating the First Amendment rights of students expressing antihomosexual sentiment through private and school-sponsored mediums, this Note ultimately argues for a comprehensive standard permitting schools to regulate both private and school-sponsored student speech.

Freedom To Err: The Idea Of Natural Selection In Politics, Schools, And Courts, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reflections On Justice Kennedy's Opinion In Parents Involved: Why Fifty Years Of Experience Shows Kennedy Is Right, Kevin D. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Children And Religious Expression In School: A Comparative Treatment Of The Veil And Other Religious Symbols In Western Democracies, Catherine J. Ross

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Whether and how to accommodate students' personal religious symbols worn in public schools are part of a mounting global debate. The competing claims of the body politic and the religious or cultural identity of minority groups came to a head in what the French called the "affair of the veil." This chapter examines the problem of the veil from a cross-cultural perspective, comparing the United States to several other western democracies. The comparison involves both legal and cultural premises. In each instance, the analysis must consider the fundamental values of the body politic, the laws and covenants that govern decision-making, …

Silence At The Schoolhouse Gate: The Diminishing First Amendment Rights Of Public School Employees, Neal H. Hutchens

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Can There Really Be "Free Speech" In Public Schools?, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

The Supreme Court's decision in Morse v. Frederick leaves unresolved many interesting and difficult problems about the authority of public-school officials to regulate public-school students' speech. Perhaps the most intriguing question posed by the litigation, decision, and opinions in More is one that the various Justices who wrote in the case never squarely addressed: What is the "basic education mission" of public schools, and what are the implications of this "mission" for officials' authority and students' free-speech rights. Given what we have come to think the Free Speech clause means, and considering the values it is thought to enshrine and …

Balancing Public School Students' First Amendment Freedoms With The Blackboard Jungle: Are Students In Danger Of Becoming Another Brick In The Wall After Hazelwood?, Daniel Lattanzi

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Student Speech: The Enduring Greatness Of Tinker, Jamin B. Raskin

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The Supreme Court's decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), did for the ideal of freedom in America's public schools what Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), did for the ideal of equality. It made a core value of the Bill of Rights spring to life for young people facing unjust policies and authoritarian treatment at the hands of adult officials in local school systems. In his remarkable opinion for the majority, Justice Abe Fortas upheld thirteen-year-old Mary Beth Tinker's First Amendment right to wear a black antiwar armband to …