Education Law Commons^™

The Rise And Fall Of School Vouchers: A Story Of Religion, Race, And Politics, James Forman Jr.

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article examines why school vouchers have failed to garner the support that so many assumed would follow the Court's decision in Zelman. The explanation, I suggest, concerns religion, race, and politics. The original rationale for vouchers was what I call the "values claim"-vouchers protected the right of parents to send their child to a school that reinforced their values. Originally promoted by Catholics, the values claim was adopted by evangelical Christians concerned about the secularization of public schools after the 1960s. Although the values claim was central for most of the history of the voucher movement, in the decade …

The 2006 Winthrop And Frances Lane Lecture: The Unintended Legal And Policy Consequences Of The No Child Left Behind Act, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Education And Labor Relations: Asian Americans And Blacks As Pawns In The Furtherance Of White Hegemony, Xiaofeng Stephanie Da

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Asian Americans and Blacks have been, and continue to be, racialized relative to each other in our society. Asian Americans and Blacks have come to occupy marginalized positions as the polarized ends on the economic spectrums of education and labor relations, with an expanding "Whiteness" as the filler in the middle as Whites manipulate the differing interests of both subordinated groups to align with White (the dominant group's) interests. Although Whites purport to champion the interests of one subordinate group over the other, in reality the racialization of Asian Americans and Blacks in our country is rooted in the preservation …

French Headscarves And The U.S. Constitution: Parents, Children, And Free Exercise Of Religion, Christina A. Baker

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note examines the 2004 French law banning conspicuous religious symbols in public schools, highlighting its roots in France's unique secularist tradition (laïcité) and its implications for religious freedom. It contrasts this approach with the U.S., where the First Amendment would likely prevent such a ban, emphasizing the importance of protecting religious liberty to safeguard broader societal freedoms. The analysis underscores the differing legal and cultural frameworks between France and the U.S. in balancing secularism and religious expression.

Service Pays: Creating Opportunities By Linking College With Public Service, Ganesh Sitaraman, Elizabeth Warren, Sandy Baum

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

If college is to be the gateway to security and success, then a new financing mechanism is essential, one that lets students take responsibility for the cost of their own educations without burdening their families unduly, forcing them into career choices that push them out of public service, or mortgaging their futures. Our Service Pays proposal is designed to give every student who wants to work hard a means of paying for college - and to give young people an economically viable option to engage in public service for a few years after college. After describing the high costs of …

Do Charter Schools Threaten Public Education? Emerging Evidence From Fifteen Years Of A Quasi-Market For Schooling, James Forman Jr.

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Supporters of public education have long feared that charter schools will threaten the public system, both by 1) creaming off the most advantaged students and 2) undermining political support for the public system. These fears have not been borne out. Blacks are disproportionately in charters, whites are disproportionately in traditional public schools, and Hispanics are fairly evenly distributed between the two. Looking at class measures, poor students are distributed fairly equally between the two types of schools. And turning to other measures of privilege, the evidence does not point strongly in either direction. My conclusions are not without qualification. The …

Disparate Impact Discrimination: The Limits Of Litigation, The Possibilities For Internal Compliance, Melissa Hart

Publications

No abstract provided.

Students And Workers And Prisoners - Oh, My! A Cautionary Note About Excessive Institutional Tailoring Of First Amendment Doctrine, Scott A. Moss

Publications

First Amendment free speech doctrine has been called "institutionally oblivious" for ignoring how different institutions present different legal questions. This Article analyzes a little-discussed phenomenon in the growing literature about institutional context in constitutional law. With certain institutions, the situation is not institutional obliviousness but the opposite: extreme institutional tailoring of speech doctrine. The burden of proof ordinarily is on the government to justify speech restrictions, but in three institutions--public schools, workplaces, and prisons--courts allow heavy speech restrictions and defer to government officials. Even if these institutions need to restrict speech unusually often, why do we need different doctrine--institutionally tailored …

Calling For Stories, Nancy Levit, Allen Rostron

Faculty Works

Storytelling is a fundamental part of legal practice, teaching, and thought. Telling stories as a method of practicing law reaches back to the days of the classical Greek orators. Before legal education became an academic matter, the apprenticeship system for training lawyers consisted of mentoring and telling war stories. As the law and literature movement evolved, it sorted itself into three strands: law in literature, law as literature, and storytelling. The storytelling branch blossomed.

Over the last few decades, storytelling became a subject of enormous interest and controversy within the world of legal scholarship. Law review articles appeared in the …

Re-Imagining Public Enforcement Of Title Ix, Julie A. Davies, Lisa M. Bohon

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

A Comprehensive Approach To Truancy For Baltimore City: A Roundtable Discussion, Barbara A. Babb, Gloria Danziger

All Faculty Scholarship

The University of Baltimore School of Law Center for Families, Children and the Courts (CFCC), one of three centers of excellence within the School of Law, is a national leader in promoting family justice system reform. CFCC’s mission is to create, foster and support local, state, and national movements to integrate communities, families, and the justice system in order to improve the lives of families and the health of the community. CFCC’s Truancy Court Program (TCP), created in 2004, exemplifies these goals through the operation of a court-school-CFCC partnership that leverages the stature, authority, and expertise of each of these …

Rethinking Student Press In The 'Marketplace Of Ideas' After Hosty: The Argument For Encouraging Professional Journalistic Practices, Jacob H. Rooksby

Law Faculty Publications

On February 21, 2006, the Supreme Court denied certiorari to Margaret L. Hosty, Jeni S. Porche, and Steven P. Barba, former student editors and staff writers of Illinois’ Governors State University (“GSU”) student newspaper, the Innovator. By denying their petition, the Court effectively ended the trio’s five-year legal battle in which they sought 42 U.S.C. § 1983 relief from Patricia Carter, Dean of Students at GSU. The students had argued that Dean Carter’s actions, which effectively required that they submit prospective issues of the Innovator to her office for administrative approval before going to press, violated their First Amendment …

Be Careful What You Ask For: Educacion Para Todas/Os, The Perils And The Power, Jessica Solyom, Jeremiah Chin, Kristi Ryujin

Articles

Demonstrations supporting human and civil rights, while often romanticized as a phenomenon of the past, are becoming more pervasive today, reflecting the continued forms of discrimination and oppression undocumented workers, individuals, and families experience. In the past few years, Utah residents have been engaged in their own battle to determine the level of support the state is willing to extend students of color interested in attending institutions of higher education. On the "frontstage" many of the state's universities echo a rhetoric of support for diversity. Some even go as far as to outline their commitment to diversity as part of …

A Gendered Update On Women Law Deans: Who, Where, Why, And Why Not?, Laura M. Padilla

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

The Architecture Of Inclusion: Interdisciplinary Insights On Pursuing Institutional Citizenship, Susan Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

Structural inequality has captured the attention of academics, policymakers, and activists. This structural reorientation is occurring at a time of judicial retrenchment and political backlash against affirmative action. These developments have placed in sharp relief the mismatch between structural diagnoses and the dominant legal frameworks for addressing inequality. Scholars, policymakers, and activists are faced with the pressing question of what to do now. They share a need for new frameworks and strategies, growing out of a better understanding of institutional and cultural change.

I am honored that the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender has used the publication of The …

The Nondischargeability Of Student Loans In Personal Bankruptcy Proceedings: The Search For A Theory, John A. E. Pottow

Articles

In fiscal year 2002, approximately 5.8 million Americans borrowed $38 billion (USD) in federal student loans. This was more than triple the $11.7 billion borrowed in 1990. As a rule of thumb, tuition has been increasing at roughly double the rate of inflation in recent years. This troubling trend of accelerating tuition, coupled with the fact that real income has stagnated for men and increased only modestly for women over the past two decades, means that more and more students are going to need to turn to borrowed money to finance their degrees absent a radical restructuring of the postsecondary …

High Poverty Schools And The Distribution Of Teachers And Principals, Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, Jacob L. Vigdor, Justin Wheeler

Faculty Scholarship

Although many factors combine to make a successful school, most people agree that quality teachers and school principals are among the most important requirements for success, especially when success is defined by the ability of the school to raise the achievement of its students. The central question for this study is how the quality of the teachers and principals in high-poverty schools in North Carolina compares to that in the schools serving more advantaged students. A related question is why these differences emerge. The consistency of the patterns across many measures of qualifications for both teachers and principals leaves no …

Blackthink's™ Acting White Stigma In Education And How It Fosters Academic Paralysis In Black Youth, Kimberly Jade Norwood

Scholarship@WashULaw

Black students who attend school regularly, participate in the classroom experience — by either participating in class and/or turning in homework, take “AP” classes, and who perform well on tests are, not uncommonly, accused of “acting white.” This happened to me as a child, it has happened to my children and it has happened to black youth I have interviewed throughout the country. This Article explores the practice within the black community of blacks who attack — verbally and sometimes physically — other blacks simply because the latter perform well in school. The Article explores the ironies of this attack …