Education Law

Some Book Reviews

Posted on December 28, 2009
I have meant to get some of these reviews up a while ago, but I have been struggling to keep my blogging time lately (the wife and I are expecting twins in May 2010 and I have been busy trying to get ahead on my research). Anyway, I'll sort of do short reviews here and if you have specific questions, leave a comment and I can go in more detail...

Making it Cool Because It is Necessary

Posted on December 21, 2009
A nice quote from a NY Times article on computing education: Hybrid careers ... that combine computing with other fields will increasingly be the new American jobs of the future, labor experts say. In other words, the nation's economy is going to need more cool nerds...

New Adequacy Suit in Florida

Posted on December 11, 2009
A new state constitutional challenge based on educational adequacy has been filed as Case No. 2009 CA 004534 in the Circuit Court for the 2nd Judicial Circuit, Leon County, Florida.   The plaintiffs, a collection of advocacy groups, parents, and students, seek a judicial declaration that the education system in Florida fails to meet the constitutional command that "Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education," pursuant to "a paramount duty of the state to make adequate provision for the education of all children residing within its borders...

Rose at 20 - The Symposium

Posted on December 09, 2009
This is the third and final installment in the Rose series from the Rose at 20 event we held in cooperation with the University of Kentucky (ed & law) and the Education Law Association. The prior two installments are here (the players) and here (the Governor)...

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Cert. Grant in Christian Legal Society Case

Posted on December 08, 2009
Yesterday, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, the 9th Circuit case out of UC-Hastings College of the Law arising from the denial of student activity funds to a campus religious group.  The Christian Legal Society is an organization open to all members to the UC-Hastings community, but only members who affirm that they are both Christian and heterosexual can vote or hold office...

A New CASTLE Blog: 1 to 1 Schools

Posted on December 08, 2009
Excited to pass along word of the latest of the growing CASTLE blogging stable: 1 to 1 Schools. Scott McLeod has all the details here and I can say that I met Nick Sauers (the main author who is also a former principal) and was very impressed by him so I look forward to some great information...

Databases and RSS Feeds - Extending Information Flow

Posted on December 01, 2009
Spent some wonderful time today with our education librarian, Brad Carrington. I had a specific purpose related to our College's dissertations, but we stumbled onto an area that I think can be really helpful in the future ... query-based rss feeds from educational datasets...

Rose at 20 - The Players

Posted on November 30, 2009
This is the second installment (first here) of the Rose at 20 videos from the ELA conference in Louisville. See here for details and thank yous. In this video, Debra Dawahare, the counsel for the plaintiffs and Ray Corns, the district court judge, tell their stories about the case and reflect on its impact and the future of school finance in Kentucky...

UCEA Flavor

Posted on November 29, 2009
Sorry I didn't post much during #UCEA09, but Internet access was spotty (at best) and there really was only a couple law sessions. Anyway, to get a little flavor of the conference, you can check out the videos Scott McLeod shot. It's a good way to get a sense of the conference and, if you are intrigued, we're in New Orleans next year (during Halloween ...

The Debate over Higher Education Costs in California

Posted on November 26, 2009
California's budget has reached crisis, and it is slouching toward catastrophe, by the looks of it.  At AERA last Spring, I learned that California's budget shortfall at that time was larger than the actual budgets of many of the other states...

Rose at 20: Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear

Posted on November 24, 2009
Over the course of the next couple weeks, I'll be releasing the videos from the Rose at 20 event in Louisville celebrating the Rose v. Council for Better Education case. This event was a partnership between the UK College of Education, College and Law, Kentucky Law Journal, and the Education Law Association, with funding provided by Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs...

Freedom of the Press IS Freedom of the Internet

Posted on November 23, 2009
When most people think of "freedom of the press" in the First Amendment, I think they think of a freedom that is associated with news reporters (those folks that work for newspapers, radio, TV, etc.). I don't think that is what the founders meant. The words press and media and other terms nowadays refer to specific elements of news reporting (because of their historically close association as users of that technology) ...

Copyright and Lesson Plans - A Rejoinder from Tom H.

Posted on November 23, 2009
Tom Hoffman at TuttleSVC, a longtime friend of the blog, has taken the copyright post on teachers selling lesson plans to the logical next level of whether this information is even capable of being copyrighted at all. It is a good post and I encourage you to continue our ongoing conversation on this issue over there...

Case law and Article Searches on Google Scholar

Posted on November 19, 2009
The good news of the week for my education school professor colleagues, and for practitioners in the field who do not have unlimited access to Westlaw or Lexis, is that Google Scholar now allows you to search for both case law (federal and state) and articles through the familiar Google interface...

Edjurist TV: Episode 7 - Education Law in South Africa, A Conversation with Rika Jobert and Jean Van Rooyen

Posted on November 17, 2009
Had the marvelous opportunity a couple weeks ago to sit down and chat with Professors Rika Jobert and Jean Van Rooyen, of the University of Pretoria's Department of Education Management and Policy Studies. We chatted about educational law, leadership issues, finance issues, preparation issues, etc...

School IT Departments ... Concerns

Posted on November 17, 2009
As I am working here in KY to modify our schools for the information economy, increasingly I am becoming concerned that school IT departments might be more of the problem than the solution. I know that is heresy (especially given my large IT based readership), but I am starting to really have some concerns...

University Presidents Should be Rock Stars

Posted on November 17, 2009
Time this week compiled a list of the top 10 university presidents. Gordon Gee, an education law alum, was the feature story and the list also included another alum, Mark Yudof.  I loved the story, I loved the list, and I hope they keep it up. Picking a top 10 of anything, of course, is going to be mostly arbitrary...

Vamos a Cuba Case Denied Cert.

Posted on November 16, 2009
Good, I think. It was too political and would have made for bad precedent. Plus, it is just not that complex of a case. A school board has the right to prohibit a book as long as they follow procedures and do not discriminate. In this case, the factual accuracy of the book was questioned and (rightly or wrongly) the school board decided to follow their procedures to prohibit it from their school...

Teachers Selling Lesson Plans - What Legal Issues?

Posted on November 16, 2009
The big story making rounds over the weekend was the N. Y. Times story on teachers across the country selling their lesson plans online to make themselves a profit. Lots of local papers ran it in their Sunday edition, including my local paper.  So, why not? I've weighed it over the weekend and I can't come up with a really good reason to legally ban it, not to mention I don't think there is any existing legal issues...

The Future of Education Law Information

Posted on November 11, 2009
Lots of current events have caused me to consider what the future of education law information will look like. I'm the new technology chair for ELA, Scott B. has been appointed to West's Education Law Reporter Board, Mark Walsh (who has a redesigned site) and I have been talking lately, and lots of other thought provokers...

School Technology Leadership and the P-20 Continuum - Paducah

Posted on November 09, 2009
I was invited to speak at the SACS/AdvancedED Western Kentucky Conference this past Friday and I want to post the video and sources to that presentation. The presentation was an extension on the presentation I gave at the school law conference, with a vastly different theme at the end...

A Sexting Discussion

Posted on September 29, 2009
A friend of mine in the twittersphere, Jeremy Brueck, did an interview with a school law attorney on the issue of sexting and I think there is some very good information in there. I think the point made that the law is slow to respond to this is a good one - and judges just sort of responding willy nilly does seem to be the standard...

Private Suits against Fake Facebook Profiles

Posted on September 26, 2009
Here is a story that I sort of like out of Chicago. A parent of a boy that was profiled as a gay racist on facebook is suing the four creating students on various tort claims including intentional infliction of emotional distress and defamation (follow the link for the lawsuit)...

Step Away from the Chalk ?.

Posted on September 25, 2009
A graduate student at the University of Arizona was arrested this week after writing on school sidewalks (and perhaps other campus property) using, oh my, chalk.  Check out the story at the student daily paper, the Arizona Daily Wildcat.  According to news accounts, the chalk drawings merited a 911 call to report the incident and analysis by university police officers of surveillance tape to identify the offending student (perhaps the university CSI team also dusted the student's hands for chalk residue)...

Presentation Materials - Web 2.0 Presentation

Posted on September 25, 2009
I gave a presentation today to Instructional Systems Design students here at UK and these are the materials I used and some extra resources.  Title: Implications of Web 2.0 on Educational and Training Organizations Videos: Ray Kurzweil - How Technology Will Transform Us Information Revolution Did You Know 3...

"National" Standards--First Draft

Posted on September 22, 2009
The Common Core Standards Initiative has released its first draft of the proposed "national" (NOT "federal") standards for language arts and math.  The draft standards are here, and the CCSI has requested that interested parties provide comments on the draft...

Students Don't Know Constitutional History ...

Posted on September 22, 2009
.. because their teachers don't know Constitutional history.  Oklahoma study finding only 3% of high school students would pass U.S. Citizenship test and only 25% can name our first President.  I get my students who are mostly practicing teachers and always start from scratch because I feel like I need to...

We're Making Waves

Posted on September 16, 2009
Okay, small ones. Teeny ones. The kind of waves that result from, say, a spider walking on water. But waves nonetheless.  Latest is that the Five Freedom's Project quoted The Edjurist and Scott B. in particular on the issue of national standards in their monthly newsletter...

American University Law Review Symposium on Tinker

Posted on September 16, 2009
Our readers may be interested in a recent symposium issue on the Tinker case, which has its 40th anniversary this year, in the American University Law Review.  I was particularly interested in an article by Professor Kristi L. Bowman, of Michgan State University College of Law, entitled The Civil Rights Roots of Tinker's Disruption Tests...

Twitter Primer for Professors

Posted on September 16, 2009
UCEA today decided to e-mail all the professors in their organization (all professors of education leadership) about their new Twitter page and encouraged them to sign up. And, lots of folks did (Welcome all). But, now what?  So, since I get asked a lot anyway about Twitter, I decided to do a little post as a primer for professors using Twitter...

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