I have never exactly been that great with money. It is not a
coincidence that I married an accountant. But, for some reason, the Law and Education SIG of AERA has entrusted the money to me … starting … well,
yesterday. It is a great honor and I am looking forward to filling the
position.

Couple of notes from the AERA Law and Ed. Sig Meeting,
however. First, we did not give out an Emerging Scholar Award this year to the
best graduate student proposal. That is a shame. I won the award last year and
Joseph Oluwole, now at Montclair State, won the award the year before that. It is not only a nice
resume boost, but it is also a bit of cash and the appreciation and
acknowledgement from your future peers. I am really disappointed we were not
able to bestow that award on anyone this year and I hope that does not happen
again, ever! So, all you graduate students out there interested in legal issues
in education, please submit next year and put some time into your proposal.
Next year the award is going up to $300, and, as treasurer, I would really like
to write that check with your name on it.  

Next, there was some concern about proposal quality. While I
am not an expert, I can tell you that proposals for AERA presentations are
expected to be of the highest quality. Of all the conferences I present at, when
I propose to AERA I take the most time in writing the proposal. When submitting
to the law SIG, it is expected that your proposal will have footnotes in proper
Bluebook format (or APA), will have already completed at least some of the
literature review and may even report some preliminary results of the analysis.
Simply submitting an idea with no references and no literature to back it up is
not sufficient for AERA purposes.

I will write more about what we might do online in another
post at a later date, but there is a lot of potential development in this area.

Last, just a shameless plug for the AERA Law and Education
SIG. The SIG currently has 156 active members. Not so many years ago it had
only 30-ish. It is in a period of rapid growth and most of the law people that
are getting professorship jobs around the country right now are members. Just
this year, the SIG placed at least 3 of its young members into Assistant
Professor positions at very nice universities (including me). The Law SIG is
the entity that is producing the future scholars of educational law, probably
more than any other entity. If you are already a member of AERA, the dues are a
grand total of … wait for it … $5. Yep, that is all it costs to be a member of
the Law and Education SIG. So join. Come to the SIG meeting. Submit a proposal.
We are a really, REALLY welcoming group and a great group for young professors
to get started with. Even if you are currently a professor teaching educational
law, you should think about joining. For my money … the most cutting edge
scholarship in educational law right now is being produced by Law and Education
SIG members and I am proud to call myself a member and assume a leadership position in the SIG.