Education Law Commons^™

Accessibility Of Medical School To Students With Physical Disabilities, Shelby A. Cowan

Senior Theses

This thesis is an exploration of perceived and institutional barriers to matriculation into medical school for students with physical disabilities. Factors such as the lived admissions experience, available accommodations and supportive resources, and legal considerations surrounding a student's disclosure of their disability are examined; however, future work is needed to better access this population of students and empower them to become physicians and use their unique perspective to benefit patients.

Rights To Nowhere: The Idea's Inadequacy In High-Poverty Schools, Claire Raj

Faculty Publications

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”) successfully opened the schoolhouse doors to millions of students with disabilities. But more than forty years after its enactment, the law has proven largely inept at confronting the educational inequities faced by the many students with disabilities attending underfunded, high-poverty public schools. This shortcoming is inconsistent with common conceptions of the IDEA: Advocates and policymakers alike treat the IDEA’s rights and privately enforceable remedies as strong, meaningful tools. This Article theorizes that the IDEA’s under-appreciated failures are overlooked because they are the products of the law’s internal structure, undue judicial deference to schools, …

Education: Constitutional Democracy's Predicate And Product, Martha Minow

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Diversity's Distractions Revisited: The Case Of Latinx In Higher Education, Rachel F. Moran

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Beware Of Educational Blackmail: How Can We Apply Lessons From Environmental Justice To Urban Charter School Growth?, Preston C. Green Ii, Chelsea E. Connery

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

School District Secession In Mobile County, Alabama: A Case Study Of Adaptive Discrimination And Threats To Multiracial Democracy, Sarah Asson, Erica Frankenberg

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of Who Funds And Who Benefits From The Carolina Education Lotteries, Mary Reagan Crosby

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Testing The Limits: Asian Americans And The Debate Over Standardized Entrance Exams, Vinay Harpalani

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Case Study Of Private School Choice And Education Litigation In South Carolina: Safe Grants And Adams V. Mcmaster (S.C. 2020), Lyndsey Katherine Ebener

Senior Theses

The ideology behind private school choice endures in South Carolina. Arguments for parental choice have resurfaced periodically throughout the state’s history, particularly in moments of “crisis.” The current “crisis” moment is the COVID-19 pandemic, which created a perfect storm for the private school choice movement to gain momentum. When Governor McMaster received South Carolina’s emergency education relief funds, he capitalized on this movement with his proposed SAFE Grants program. His intention was for the SAFE Grants program to provide support through one-time tuition grants to low-income families who have children in private schools. Governor McMaster’s announcement incited an overwhelming media …

The Corridor Of Shame: An Immersed Analysis Of South Carolina Schools, Darren R. Burton

Senior Theses

This research project discusses school funding instruments of rural and urban schools in South Carolina and uncovers its effect on student academic achievement. Educational achievement is assessed based on report card datasets between 2018 and 2019, containing South Carolina Assessment of State Standards (SCPASS) score data and South Carolina College and Career Ready Assessment (SCREADY) score data. This research project uses a comparative analysis to evaluate each group’s performance in the subjects of English Language Arts and science. The statistical analysis tools that this research project uses include analysis of variance (ANOVA), linear regression analysis, and Microsoft Power BI. The …

The Title Ix Paradox, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

When Christine Blasey Ford explained to the Senate Judiciary Committee why she had not reported her sexual assault at age fifteen, she captured the struggle of many children who must decide whether to make such reports: “For a very long time, I was too afraid and ashamed to tell anyone the details.” Thousands of sexual assaults happen to children in school each year. Title IX, a potentially powerful civil rights law, should protect them. Title IX’s main purpose is to protect individuals from sex discrimination, including in the form of sexual harassment and assault, in public schools. Yet Title IX …

Educational Gerrymandering: Money, Motives, And Constitutional Rights, Derek Black

Faculty Publications

Public school funding plummeted following the Great Recession and failed to recover over the next decade, prompting strikes and protests across the nation. Courts did almost nothing to stop the decline. While a majority of state supreme courts recognize a constitutional right to an adequate or equal education, they increasingly struggle to enforce the right. That right could be approaching a tipping point. Either it evolves, or risks becoming irrelevant.

In the past, courts have focused almost exclusively on the adequacy and equity of funding for at-risk students, demanding that states provide more resources. Courts have failed to ask the …

When Legislatures Become The Ally Of Academic Freedom: The First State Intellectual Diversity Statute And Its Effect On Academic Freedom, Patrick M. Garry

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Does Sex Discrimination Include Gender Identity, Courts In The Fourth Circuit Weigh In On The Question, Rena M. Lindevaldsen

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Equality Opportunity And The Schoolhouse Gate, Derek Black, Michelle Adams

Faculty Publications

Public schools have generated some of the most far-reaching cases to come before the Supreme Court. They have involved nearly every major civil right and liberty found in the Bill of Rights. The cases are often reflections of larger societal ills and anxieties, from segregation and immigration to religion and civil discourse over war. In that respect, they go to the core of the nation’s values. Yet constitutional law scholars have largely ignored education law as a distinct area of study and importance.

Justin Driver’s book cures that shortcoming, offering a three-dimensional view of how the Court’s education law jurisprudence …

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. …

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. …

Free Appropriate Public Education After Andrew F. V. Douglas County School District (2017), Terrye Conroy, Mitchell Yell

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Breaking The Norm Of School Reform, Derek Black

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Lawyer Wellbeing As A Crisis Of The Profession, Cheryl Ann Krause, Jane Chong

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Preferencing Educational Choice: The Constitutional Limits, Derek Black

Faculty Publications

Rapidly expanding charter and voucher programs threaten a new education paradigm in which access to traditional public schools is no longer guaranteed in some communities. In some instances, choice programs are phasing out traditional public schools altogether. The most harmful effects of choice, however, occur at the local level, not the state level. Thus, this Article does not challenge the general constitutionality of choice programs. Instead, the Article identifies limitations that state constitutional rights to adequate and equal education place on choice policy.

First, states cannot preference private choice programs over public education. This conclusion flows from the fact that …

The Privacy Of The Public School, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

This Article compares the liability of the public schools with that of families for harms to children in their care. Families serve as an apt vehicle for comparative analysis because families’ and schools’ responsibilities for children overlap substantially. Despite these overlapping responsibilities, however, the law allows schools to evade liability for harms to children and penalizes families for the same or similar harms.

Drawing on feminist theory on privacy and the public/private divide, this Article argues that the limits of public school liability mean they have privacy. Feminist theorists identify privacy as freedom from regulation and intrusion into decision-making. Public …

The Privacy Of The Public School, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

This Article compares the liability of the public schools with that of families for harms to children in their care. Families serve as an apt vehicle for comparative analysis because families’ and schools’ responsibilities for children overlap substantially. Despite these overlapping responsibilities, however, the law allows schools to evade liability for harms to children and penalizes families for the same or similar harms.

Drawing on feminist theory on privacy and the public/private divide, this Article argues that the limits of public school liability mean they have privacy. Feminist theorists identify privacy as freedom from regulation and intrusion into decision-making. Public …

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 …

A First Amendment Deference Approach For Reforming Anti-Bullying Laws, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the anti-bullying laws and their response to the problem of bullying in light of both the nature of the problem itself, the interventions the laws call for, and the laws’ First Amendment implications. Bullying has many varied, negative consequences, some tragic, and is widespread. Yet, the anti-bullying laws disproportionately focus schools’ responses to bullying on school exclusion, meaning suspending, expelling or otherwise excluding students who bully from school. This is so even though social science literature has found school exclusion ineffective and sometimes counterproductive as a method for addressing bullying. What is more, because much of bullying …

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 …

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 Constitutional Challenge To Teacher Tenure, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

In 2012, education reformers theorized a novel constitutional strategy to eliminate tenure. They argued that tenure leads to the retention of ineffective teachers, and that ineffective teaching deprives students of the constitutional right to education embedded in state constitutions. This theory immediately caught hold, with a California trial court striking down tenure in 2014 and litigation commencing in other states weeks thereafter.

The outcome of this litigation movement will determine both the future of the teaching profession and the scope of the constitutional right to education. To date, however, no high court or scholar has thoroughly analyzed the theory. This …

Reforming School Discipline, Derek Black

Faculty Publications

Public schools suspend millions of students each year, but only five percent of suspensions are for serious misbehavior. School leaders argue that these suspensions ensure an orderly educational environment for those students who remain. Social science demonstrates the opposite. The practice of regularly suspending students negatively affects misbehaving students as well as innocent bystanders. All things being equal, schools that manage student behavior through means other than suspension produce the highest achieving students. In this respect, the quality of education a school provides is closely connected to its discipline policies.

Drawing on the connection between discipline and educational quality, this …

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 …