Education Law Commons^™

After Unitary Status: Examining Voluntary Integration Strategies For Southern School Districts, Danielle R. Holley-Walker

Faculty Publications

This Article provides empirical data on student assignment plans that are currently being used by Southern school districts that have recently attained unitary status. As the facts of Parents Involved in Community Schools demonstrate, Southern school districts will likely continue to be at the forefront of the struggle over voluntary integration efforts. Many Southern school districts are being released from desegregation orders that allowed the district to use race-conscious remedies to address previous de jure racial segregation. Without those court orders, the school district is faced with a choice about whether to continue to make racial integration a priority and …

In Loco Parentis In The Public Schools: Abused, Confused, And In Need Of Change, Susan P. Stuart

Law Faculty Publications

In loco parentis is a common law doctrine that has been used to characterize the on-campus relationship between a school and its students, but its abuse has led to such absurd cases as Safford Unified School District No.1 v. Redding. Although waning in higher education, the doctrine is experiencing a resurgence in elementary and secondary schools. As originally conceived, the doctrine was used primarily to justify and defend student disciplinary actions: the school stood in the shoes of the parent and had authority to discipline, almost at will. The doctrine, however, never seemed to have a corollary in the …

First Amendment Protection Of Teachers' Instructional Speech: Extending Rust V. Sullivan To Ensure That Teachers Do Not Distort The Government Message, Emily White Kirsch

Cleveland State Law Review

The emergence of political activism in the 2008 presidential election extended throughout the country and even to where partisan politics have no place: the public school classroom. In 2004, the New York City Board of Education enacted a regulation that prohibited teachers from wearing any material supporting political candidates or organizations. During the 2008 election, teachers who wanted to wear partisan political buttons in the classroom while teaching claimed that the regulation violated their First Amendment rights. Although the Southern District of New York ultimately held that the teachers had no First Amendment claim, the court's decision, which involved sorting …

High Hopes Hamstrung: How The “Trial De Novo” For Termination Of Tenured Teachers’ Contracts Undermines School Reform In Oklahoma, N. Georgeann Roye

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Religion, Science And The Secular State: Creationism In American Public Schools, Gene Shreve

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article examines the current debate whether creationism may be taught in American schools given the constraints of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The author considers some of the social and political consequences of the U.S. Supreme Court's leading cases. The article concludes by questioning whether the Supreme Court has succeeded in justifying its restrictive decisions in this controversial area.

Federalizing Public Education, Thomas Kleven

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

The Parent As (Mere) Educational Trustee: Whose Education Is It, Anyway?, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The purpose of this Article is two-fold. First, the Article argues that the parent’s right to educate his or her children is strictly circumscribed by the parent’s duty to ensure that children learn habits of critical reasoning and reflection. The law has long recognized that the state’s duty to educate children is superior to any parental right. Indeed, the “parentalist” position to the contrary rests on an inflation of rights that is, in fact, a radical departure from longstanding legal norms. Indeed, at common law the parent had “a sacred right” to the custody of his child, and the parent’s …

When Students Speak Away From School How Much Does The First Amendment Hear?, Leora Harpaz

Faculty Scholarship

Controversies arising over the extent of the First Amendment speech rights of public school students while at school are resolved by an analysis of the familiar quartet of major decisions of the United States Supreme Court: Tinker, Fraser, Kuhlmeier, and Morse. While these decisions have not removed all uncertainty over the scope of student speech rights, they at least have divided these cases into distinct categories and identified the standard to be applied within each category. The wide range of judicial views on the issue of when student off-campus speech can be the basis of discipline by school authorities makes …

Getting Beyond Religion As Science: "Unstifling" Worldview Formation In American Public Education, Barry P. Mcdonald

Washington and Lee Law Review

Since ancient times, Western civilization has witnessed a great debate over a simple but profound question: From whence did we come? Two major worldviews have dominated that debate: a theistic worldview holding that we, and the world in which we live, are the purposeful product of a supernatural creator; and a materialistic worldview holding that we are the product of unintelligenta nd random naturaflo rces. This debate rose to the fore with Darwin's publication of his theory of evolution and the development of the modern scientific establishment. In America, it initially took its most conspicuous form in efforts by creationists …

No Boy Left Behind? Single-Sex Education And The Essentialist Myth Of Masculinity, David S. Cohen

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Can Courts Repair The Crumbling Foundation Of Good Citizenship? An Examination Of Potential Legal Challenges To Social Studies Cutbacks In Public Schools, Eli Savit

Michigan Law Review

In the wake of No Child Left Behind, many public schools have cut or eliminated social studies instruction to allot more time for math and literacy. Given courts' repeated celebration of education as the "foundation of good citizenship," this Note examines potential legal claims and litigation strategies that could be used to compel social studies instruction in public schools. This Note contends that the federal judiciary's civic conception of education leaves the door slightly ajar for a Fourteenth Amendment chrallenge on behalf of social studies-deprived students, but the Supreme Court's refusal in San Antonio v. Rodriguez to recognize education as …

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 …

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 …

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.

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. …

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 …

A Thousand Humiliations: What Brown Could Not Do., Bryan L. Adamson

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

While Brown v. Board of Education sought to integrate the public school system, fifty years later many public schools remain racially identifiable. African American and Latino students attend schools which are overwhelmingly comprised of minorities. Some racially isolated schools even experienced a rise in their minority student population after the decision in Brown. While the decision narrowed racial disparities in schools, such disparities remain distressing. Data shows a large disparity in the number of higher educational degrees earned by African American and White individuals. Additionally, wage earnings of African Americans are significantly smaller compared to White wage earnings. Educational outcomes …

Equal Access To Public Education: An Examination Of The State Constitutional And Statutory Rights Of Nonpublic Students To Participate In Public School Programs On A Part-Time Basis In North Carolina And Across The Nation, John Plecnik

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article argues that private and homeschool students in North Carolina have a state constitutional and statutory right to participate in public school programs on a part-time basis. This right is based on the North Carolina Constitution's explicit acknowledgment of nonpublic education and guarantees of equal protection and equal access to public schools. This right is also based on state statutes that mirror the wording and spirit of the state constitution's guarantees. Since the North Carolina Supreme Court has held that equal access to public schools is a fundamental right under the state constitution, this right can only be restricted …

Litigated Learning, Law's Limits, And Urban School Reform Challenges, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article assesses the likely efficacy of litigation efforts seeking to enhance equal educational opportunity by improving student academic achievement in the nation's urban public schools. Past education reform litigation efforts focusing on school desegregation and finance met with mixed success. Current litigation efforts seeking to improve student academic achievement promise to be even less successful because student academic achievement involves variables and activities located further from the reach of litigation than such variables as a school's racial composition and per pupil spending levels. Moreover, efforts to improve student achievement in the nation's urban public schools--especially high poverty schools--face additional …

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.

Beyond The Schoolhouse Gate: Do Student First Amendment Rights Apply To Classroom Assignments?, Leora Harpaz

Faculty Scholarship

While it has long been apparent that the First Amendment protection for freedom of expression limits the discretion of public school teachers and administrators, it has been assumed that those limitations do not constrain equally all aspects of a school's operation. One area that has seemed somewhat immune from First Amendment free speech oversight has been the pedagogic choices made by schools in defining their own educational objectives. Public schools have been permitted to select curricular materials for use in their classrooms and have been able to evaluate whether students have fulfilled course requirements without concern that they may be …

(Still) Constitutional School De-Segregation Strategies: Teaching Racial Literacy To Secondary School Students And Preferencing Racially-Literate Applicants To Higher Education, Michael J. Kaufman

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, the Supreme Court declared that it will continue to scrutinize race-conscious educational decisions to insure that they are narrowly-tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest. This Article develops a strategy for enhancing racial diversity at all levels of American public education that can survive that rigorous constitutional scrutiny. The Article shows that school districts may prove that assigning a meaningful number of racially diverse students to their secondary schools is narrowly-tailored to achieve their compelling educational interest in teaching racial literacy. The constitutionality of this race-conscious educational …

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 …

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 …

New Hampshire’S Claremont Case And The Separation Of Powers, Edward C. Mosca

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "Court decisions involving the adequacy of public education raise some obvious separation of powers problems. These include the institutional competency of courts to determine what level of education is adequate and how much funding is necessary to reach that level, and the authority of courts to enforce such judgments. This article will examine these problems through New Hampshire’s serial education funding litigation, the Claremont case. [. . .]

I will start by briefly reviewing the history of education funding litigation because this context is essential to understanding the Claremont case. I will then undertake a limited review of the …

Does Changing The Definition Of Science Solve The Establishment Clause Problem For Teaching Intelligent Design As Science In Public Schools? Doing An End-Run Around The Constitution, Ann Marie Lofaso

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection in 1859, it sparked some of the most contentious debates in American intellectual history, debates that continue to rage today. Although these debates have numerous political ramifications, the question posed in this paper is narrow: Does the Establishment Clause permit a particular assessment of current evolutionary theory – intelligent design (“ID”) – to be taught as science in American elementary and secondary public schools? This article shows that it does not.

To understand current disputes over whether and how to teach the origins of life …

The Paper Wars: First Amendment Challenges To School Material Distribution Policies, Leora Harpaz

Faculty Scholarship

Public schools are faced with an array of requests seeking permission to distribute material on school property. These requests may come from students, teachers or outside organizations. To respond to these requests, some school districts have adopted written policies to guide their determinations while others lack formal policies and respond on an ad hoc basis. Whether based on formal or informal policies, in deciding whether to permit distribution school officials typically take into account a variety of factors including the content of the material, the identity of the individual or group seeking permission and the time, place or manner of …

Lex-Praxis Of Education Informational Privacy For Public Schoolchildren, Susan P. Stuart

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Too Much, Too Little: Religion In The Public Schools, Jay D. Wexler

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.