Education Law Commons^™

The Legacy And Implications Of San Antonio Independent School District V. Rodriguez, Charles J. Ogletree Jr.

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

The Supreme Court's school desegregation case law has been a confusing maze of fits and starts. In 1954, a unanimous Court declared in Brown v. Board of Education that education "must be made available to all on equal terms." Yet, less than 20 years later, the Court found a Texas education financing plan that allowed for significant differences in funding between school districts to be constitutional. This Article examines that decision, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, in more detail. It also discusses the case's legacy and numerous unresolved issues that still impact the Latino community today. Part II …

It Takes A Federalist Village: A Revitalized Property Tax As The Linchpin For Stable, Effective K-12 Public Education Funding, Mildred Wigfall Robinson

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

Public education in the United States is a big business. In the fall of 2011, more than 55.5 million students from kindergarten through 12th grade were expected to enroll in the nation's public schools at a total cost of $599,145,678,000. Though it is a service provided by local governments, its cost is borne by local, state, and, to a more limited extent, federal taxpayers. Providing public education is a massive undertaking and no one level of government can solely bear its cost. Governmental revenue sources, from which allocated shares of expense are presently borne, differ. Local funding is provided predominately …

The Promises And Pitfalls Of Teacher Evaluation And Accountability Reform, Benjamin Michael Superfine

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

This chapter examines the recent wave of laws aimed at enhancing teacher evaluation and accountability, and recommends strategies for moving forward in a way that holds greater promise for providing students with more equal and greater educational opportunities. First, this chapter provides a historical overview of the legal landscape governing the primary functions of the teacher workforce. Second, the major characteristics of this new wave of laws are examined. Third, the strengths and potential pitfalls entailed by these laws are analyzed in light of educational research. Finally, this chapter offers recommendations for improving teacher evaluation and accountability laws in a …

Literacy, Poverty, And Brain Development: Toward A New, Place-Based Educational Intervention, Michael R. Hilton

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

This paper provides an overview of emerging research focused on how living in an area of concentrated poverty can impact brain development and explores some possible applications of this research to education policy. One of the key findings is that state and federal policy-makers may need to adopt programs that integrate educational policy with housing and planning policy in order to protect and fulfill each child's educational rights. In order to impress upon readers the scale of the nation's current educational failures and the need for a significant change in policy, this paper first addresses adult illiteracy in the United …

In Defense Of Idea Due Process, Mark Weber

College of Law Faculty

Due Process hearing rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act are under attack. A major professional group and several academic commentators charge that the hearings system advantages middle class parents, that it is expensive, that it is futile, and that it is unmanageable. Some critics would abandon individual rights to a hearing and review in favor of bureaucratic enforcement or administrative mechanisms that do not include the right to an individual hearing before a neutral decision maker. This Article defends the right to a due process hearing. It contends that some criticisms of hearing rights are simply erroneous, and …

Now Children Learn Better: Revising Nclb To Promote Teacher Effectiveness In Student Development, Chris Chambers Goodman

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

No abstract provided.

The Ohio State University Dispute Resolution In Special Education Symposium Panel, Robert Dinerstein

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Who May Hire Teachers: How Mutual Consent Fits Into The Current Colorado Hiring Framework, Amanda R. Levin

University of Colorado Law Review

In 2010, the Colorado General Assembly passed the Ensuring Quality Instruction through Education Effectiveness Act (S.B. 191). The law ties teachers' job security to the performance of their students, among other things, and changes the way that teachers and principals are evaluated. One crucial aspect of the law, and the subject of this Comment, is the mutual consent provision. This provision provides principals with the power to ensure the effectiveness of their teachers within their own schools by means of allowing them to oversee the hiring process of teachers. The mutual consent provision states that teachers can only be hired …

The Absence Of Parenting Students’ Rights: How And Why Title Ix Tolerates Discriminatory Attendance Policies, Elizabeth M. Hady

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article examines the gaps in Title IX protections for parenting students, particularly female students, and highlights how societal stigma and discursive frameworks undermine their rights. It argues that while Title IX prohibits sex discrimination, its implementation often fails to address the unique challenges faced by parenting students, especially mothers, who are disproportionately affected by rigid attendance policies and discriminatory attitudes. The analysis emphasizes the role of "contamination discourse," which stigmatizes teenage mothers as irresponsible and a threat to societal morals, further eroding their legal protections and perpetuating inequality in education.

Deals Or No Deals: Integrating Transactional Skills In The First Year Curriculum, Lynnise E. Pantin

Faculty Scholarship

This article joins a growing body of scholarship on the pedagogy of transactional law and skills. This article challenges the traditional pedagogy of teaching law students to think like a lawyer and argues that law schools should shift the analytical framework of a litigation-dominated model, which is typically taught in the first year, to a model that incorporates transactional skills teaching into the first year law school curriculum. This approach will (1) create a greater balance of skills taught in the first year and (2) address the mandate to train more practice-ready lawyers. This article argues that the best place …

Tenure, The Aberrant Consumer Contract, James J. White

Articles

This symposium concerns asymmetric contracts, usually contracts where one party has great power and the other has little. The papers deal generally with contracts between consumers who get a “take it or leave it” offer and corporations such as Hertz, Microsoft, Verizon, and General Motors who draft the contracts according to their wishes. In almost all of these asymmetric contracts the stronger (corporations) writes the terms and presents them to the weaker (consumers) for signing without negotiation. Indeed the corporate agent with whom the consumer deals (e.g., the person at the Hertz desk) has no authority to change the contract …

Advocates, Federal Agencies, And The Education Of Children With Disabilities, Eloise Pasachoff

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The aim of this essay, prepared for a symposium on dispute resolution in special education held at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law in February 2014, is to highlight ways that advocates for children with disabilities can use federal agencies to improve the implementation and enforcement of federal laws protecting children with disabilities in schools—that is, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Act as it relates to schools.

One can spend a lot of time engaging with the contemporary public conversation about the law surrounding …

Agency Enforcement Of Spending Clause Statutes: A Defense Of The Funding Cut-Off, Eloise Pasachoff

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article contends that federal agencies ought more frequently to use the threat of cutting off funds to state and local grantees that are not adequately complying with the terms of a grant statute. Scholars tend to offer four arguments to explain—and often to justify—agencies’ longstanding reluctance to engage in funding cut-offs: first, that funding cut-offs will hurt the grant program’s beneficiaries and so will undermine the agency’s ultimate goals; second, that federalism concerns counsel against federal agencies’ taking funds away from state and local grantees; third, that agencies are neither designed nor motivated to pursue funding cut-offs; and fourth, …

Exclusion, Punishment, Racism, And Our Schools: A Critical Race Theory Perspective On School Discipline, David Simson

Articles & Chapters

Punitive school discipline procedures have increasingly taken hold in America’s schools. While they are detrimental to the wellbeing and to the academic success of all students, they have proven to disproportionately punish minority students, especially African American youth. Such policies feed into wider social issues that, once more, disproportionately affect minority communities: the school-to-prison pipeline, high school dropout rates, the push-out phenomenon, and the criminalization of schools.

Before such pervasive racial inequality can be addressed effectively, the social and the psychological mechanisms that create racial inequality in the first place must be examined. This Comment offers insights from the field …

Inhibiting Intrastate Inequalities: A Congressional Approach To Ensuring Equal Opportunity To Finance Public Education, Joshua Arocho

Michigan Law Review

What is the purpose of the international law on armed conflict, and why would opponents bent on destroying each other’s capabilities commit to and obey rules designed to limit their choice of targets, weapons, and tactics? Traditionally, answers to this question have been offered on the one hand by moralists who regard the law as being inspired by morality and on the other by realists who explain this branch of law on the basis of reciprocity. Neither side’s answers withstand close scrutiny. In this Article, we develop an alternative explanation that is based on the principal–agent model of domestic governance. …

Steubenville And Beyond: The Constitutional Case For Comprehensive Sex Education, Kelly E. Mannion

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article argues that states are constitutionally required to provide comprehensive sex education to minors, as it is essential for their ability to exercise their constitutional rights to privacy, liberty, and autonomy. The denial of adequate sex education constitutes an undue burden on these rights and fails to meet legal standards for rationality and pedagogical interest. The right to receive information under the First Amendment, combined with the liberty right in sexual and reproductive choice under the Fourteenth Amendment, compels recognition of a state duty to provide such education.

Equal Opportunity To Parent: The Case For Offering Teenage Moms And Dads Family Leave In Secondary Schools, Jaryn Haskell Saritzky

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note addresses the systemic exclusion of teenage fathers from discussions on teenage pregnancy and parenting, leading to unequal educational policies. It advocates for policy reforms to ensure equal treatment and support for all parenting students, emphasizing the need to challenge gender stereotypes and comply with legal protections.

Learning To Litigate: University Patents In The Knowledge Economy, Jacob H. Rooksby

Law Faculty Publications

Over the nearly two de cades since the publication of Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University (Slaughter and Leslie 1997), the model of academic capitalism has become one of the more widely cited conceptual frameworks in the global literature on higher education. Works in the academic capitalist canon have relied on the two basic understandings of the theory of academic capitalism and the new economy, as articulated by Slaughter and Leslie (1997), Slaughter and Rhoades (2004), and Rhoades and Slaughter (2006). Rhoades and Slaughter (2006) summarize these two conceptual strands as “the increasing engagement of higher education institutions …

Universitytm: Trademark Rights Accretion In Higher Education, Jacob H. Rooksby

Law Faculty Publications

Colleges and universities are no strangers to intellectual property. In a higher education environment increasingly challenged by dwindling state appropriations and stagnant or declining tuition revenue, the pressure is on for colleges and universities to generate revenue via new channels. The commercialization of intellectual property has proven to be a popular, albeit imperfect, vehicle in furtherance of these efforts. Although there is no shortage of both legal and higher education commentary focusing on the treatment of patents and copyrights by institutions of higher education, trademark activity by colleges and universities largely has escaped attention. ...

Should States Ban The Use Of Non-Positive Interventions In Special Education? Re-Examining Positive Behavior Supports Under The Idea, Elizabeth Shaver

Akron Law Faculty Publications

In the 1980s and 1990s, behavior analysts vigorously debated ethical concerns about the use of certain behavioral interventions to address severe behavior of disabled children. In 1997, while that debate was still ongoing, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was amended to require educators to consider the use of “positive behavioral interventions and supports,” among other strategies, to address problem behavior that impedes a disabled child’s learning. Since 1997, the “positive behavioral interventions and supports” framework has shifted focus, but IDEA’s language essentially has stayed the same. In addition, some states have enacted poorly-worded statutes or regulations in order …

Montana's Rural Version Of The School-To-Prison Pipeline: School Discipline And Tragedy On American Indian Reservations, Melina Healey

Scholarly Works

American Indian adolescents in Montana are caught in a school-to prison pipeline. They are plagued with low academic achievement, high dropout, suspension and expulsion rates, and disproportionate contact with the juvenile and criminal justice systems. While these are typical of the school-to-prison phenomenon as it also appears in poor minority communities across the country, the rates and the disproportion for American Indians in Montana are particularly acute. Even more disturbing, many American Indian students in Montana are also the victims of another heartbreaking trend related to the school-to-prison pipeline — alarming levels of adolescent suicides and self-harm. The tragic situation …

The First Thing We Do, Jorge R. Roig

Scholarly Works

There is currently a concerted effort to dumb down America. In the midst of this, the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar recently agreed to propose that tenure for law professors be eliminated as a requirement for accreditation of law schools. This article analyzes the arguments for and against tenure in legal academia, and concludes that the main proposed justifications for eliminating tenure are highly questionable, at best. A lawyer is more than a legal technocrat. Lawyers are policy makers and public defenders. They are prosecutors and activists. And the development …

Re-Visiting Homosexuality In Cameroon: Effective Advocacy On The Path From Homophobia To Dignity And Equality, Jean Cedric Ndzomo

Master's Theses

Cameroon, one of the countries in the world that continues to criminalize homosexuality, has been on the news recently due to the torture and murder of young journalist and gay activist, Eric Ohena. This paper examines the discrimination faced by the LGBTI community in Cameroon by exploring the origins of homophobic violence, the role played by Cameroon's legal system, and the struggles of LGBTI Cameroonians in their fight for a better life. The analysis includes a review of the work by scholars on colonialism and sexuality in Africa, and questions the roots of violence and abuse against the LGBTI community …

Copyrights In Faculty-Created Works: How Licensing Can Solve The Academic Work-For-Hire Dilemma, Glenda A. Gertz

Washington Law Review

Many copyrightable works of university faculty members may be works-for-hire as defined under current U.S. copyright laws. Copyrights in works-for-hire are treated differently than copyrights in other works with respect to ownership, duration, termination rights, and requirements for transfer. Ambiguity over whether a specific faculty-created work is a work-for-hire creates legal uncertainties and potential future litigation about the initial ownership of the copyright, length of the copyright term, and termination rights which could impact all future transfers and licensing. Many universities have attempted to define ownership of faculty-created works through university policies. These policies are ineffective to alter the presumption …

Members Only: Undocumented Students & In-State Tuition, Angela M. Banks

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

How (And Why) Nclb Failed To Close The Achievement Gap:Evidence From North Carolina, 1998-2004, Roslyn Mickelson, Jason Giersch, Elizabeth Stearns, Stephanie Moller

The Bridge: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Legal & Social Policy

Recent state and national policy changes for public education are premised upon the idea that high-stakes tests can improve student outcomes and close achievement gaps. Opponents maintain that such policies fail on both counts. Using a unique longitudinal dataset from North Carolina, we find that high-stakes tests have failed to close achievement gaps associated with social class and race, and that the persistence of these gaps is related, at least in part, to academic tracking. Such findings add to the questions being raised about such policies as No Child Left Behind.

Off Sunset Boulevard: Students, Homelessness And Disability In Los Angeles- Idea, Mckinney Vento And The Void In Between, Remy Krumpak

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

Homeless youth with a disability must overcome many barriers to receive the meaningful, individualized education they are legally entitled to. Over the last two decades, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the McKinney-Vento Act have begun to acknowledge the challenges that exist for this population. These laws require school districts to identify homeless youth with a disability, allow them immediate enrollment and access to special education services, and free transportation to school. This article examines the Los Angeles Unified School District as a case study for policy implementation. In analyzing the success of the policies as implemented, this article …

Charter School Authorizers, Reed Greenwood, Gary W. Ritter

Policy Briefs

Two types of charter schools exist in Arkansas: open-enrollment charter schools, which operate independently of any district, and district conversion charter schools, which operate within an existing school district. Charter schools have more autonomy on certain rules and regulations than traditional public schools; however, charter schools are held accountable for academic results and fiscal matters, as defined by the charters contract. Charter schools are approved and held accountable by a charter authorizer. In the 2013 General Assembly, a law passed to change Arkansas’ charter authorizer from the State Board of Education to a newly created panel within the Department of …

Academic Freedom And Professorial Speech In The Post-Garcetti World, Oren R. Griffin

Seattle University Law Review

Academic freedom, a coveted feature of higher education, is the concept that faculty should be free to perform their essential functions as professors and scholars without the threat of retaliation or undue administrative influence. The central mission of an academic institution, teach-ing and research, is well served by academic freedom that allows the faculty to conduct its work in the absence of censorship or coercion. In support of this proposition, courts have long held that academic freedom is a special concern of the First Amendment, granting professors and faculty members cherished protections regarding academic speech. In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the …

“Appropriate” Decisions Under The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, Perry A. Zirkel

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.