Well, another edition of AERA is in the books - rather,
online at ERIC. Here are a few comments and notes:

1. The Moscone Center was a great venue for the event. It housed a vast
majority of the sessions and meetings. Surrounding hotels did have to pick up
some of the slack, but when they did, their facilities were excellent as well.
If you are in San Francisco
anytime soon be sure to check out the 2nd floor lobby of the Marriott. It was
stunning.



2. As the law is concerned, there were not too many sessions, and I hope for
more next year. There were good presentations on Title IX, the Fourth
Amendment, Affirmative Action, and especially on religion. There were at least
3 presentations on religion that are worth checking out from the law SIG
sessions. All the presenters seemed to conclude this years shakeup in the
Supreme Court will lead to significant changes in the tests being applied to
issues under the Establishment Clause.



3. The Law and Education SIG
business meeting was especially informative. Not only were there great
presentations (although this Edjurist wishes Gary Orfield would have spoke more
as his wisdom and penchant toward action was clearly visible), but the content
of the business meeting itself was interesting. First, there are significant
numbers in the SIG, 135 paid members. Further, because of the new AERA system
for dolling out sessions, a high number of law proposals will lead to a higher
number of sessions. So Edjurists of the world need to get their proposals in on
time and think about multiple proposals.



4. For the current graduate and law students out there, there will be an annual
award, the Emerging Scholar
Award, for the best student proposal. This year it went to Joseph Oluwole,
a student a Penn State. Congrats. For all others, get the
submissions in next year. You can only win if you are accepted and write the
paper.



5. Next year, I would love to see the Edjurist population challenged more. I
missed the Christopher Edley presentation (if any readers saw it please
trackback with some comments), but the law SIG presentations, while very
informative, did not challenge the Edjurist population to examine any problems
and propose legal solutions. Having attended ELA and UCEA this is something
we generally need to do more of across all these presentation opportunities.



Well, that is it for now. Comments are welcome.