Moving the Edjurist & Beginning of Recode.School

About 13 years ago I was sitting in a library research class in law school and learned about this thing called a "blawg" from Frank Houdek, a professor at SIU law. He tasked us to find the blawg for our area of interest ... so I looked for education law. Yeah, didn't find one in 2003. So, I started one and after a couple of iterations, this blog, The Edjurist, was the result. 

It has been a fun ride. For several years, I was the only education law blog, especially after Scott McLeod merged "At the Schoolhouse Gate" into the Edjurist around 2008 when I came on board with CASTLE. After a while, a few more began to emerge and I'm proud that I helped to consult on several of their foundings such as Jim Gerl's outstanding blog on Special Education Law and Neal Hutchens HigherEducationLaw Blog. Later, serious mainstream P-12 education law blogs emerged such as Mark Walsh's at Education Week and Derek Blacks at LawProfsBlog. 

Meanwhile, I was busy trying to earn tenure at UK ... which thankfully I did. I brought on wonderful additional contributors, but we never managed to get the daily feed of content it takes to maintain a healthy blog. Blogging, still, is not a serious activity amongst tenure and promotion committees ... unfortunately. After tenure, instead of having more time for blogging ... I helped to start a new school. Anyway ... you know the story if we are still showing up in your feed. Thanks to those that played along during the decade in which I really kept it active. We broke new ground together into which others have followed ... and for that I'll always be thankful and proud. But ... time moves on.

For the Edjurist ... Kevin Brady (one of our contributors) will be taking the old content and bringing it into his new efforts at his UCEA Center for Leadership in Law and Education at the University of Arkansas. He will announce details about that soon.

For me, the work is changing gears. Please find me now blogging (regularly) at Recode.School. My work will still include law (and technology) but I'm focusing very tightly on recoding the structures underpinning our education system. The foundation of our education system has generally not change for about 100 years, so it is time to tackle an upgrade to our public education system. I hope to be helpful in that effort. So ... if you are reading this ... please be so kind as to pop over there and hopefully add it to your RSS feed.

Thanks again for all the great times and the memories. I loved blogging here and won't ever forget it.   

Auburn Looking for Education Law/Finance Expert

It is late in the typical job cycle for the year, but Auburn University has posted an assistant professor position in education leadership with a focus on education law and finance. The position is such that I think they would hire a new graduate potentially, depending on the pool.  

This would be a great job. I know some of the team members at Auburn and they are a strong program, at a strong university, and only a couple hours from the beach! 

ELA Submission Deadline: March 1

Just a heads up that the ELA submission deadline is this Saturday, March 1. 

Here are the details on the conference and here is the call for papers. 

ELA this year is in San Diego from Nov. 3-7. See you all there. 

School Law Position at Tennessee

For those interested. 

Love to have a great school law person as my southern neighbor. 

Sanity with Zero-Tolerance (Finally)

I hate zero-tolerance policies. Always have. They are just wholly unnecessary, legally silly, probably discriminatory, generally bad for kids and, on top of all that, don't even work. 

So, to my delight, finally zero-tolerance seems to have the worst of it in policy circles lately. Credit to Arne Duncan and the U.S. DOE for releasing new guidance last week that tries to put the brakes on mandatory suspensions and expulsions. I think the Secretary has intelligent things to say in this release video:   

The bottom line is that the law entrusts principals and other school leaders with the discretion to make appropriate decisions toward novel situations amongst kids. These disciplinary decisions can be incredibly difficult with intense lobbying on all sides. Many tears are shed and sleepless nights suffered over how to appropriately discipline kids. But, that is the job. It is a core function of a school leader and the manifestation of the trust provided to that position in our society. To attempt locally to shirk that responsibility through the use of hastily adopted zero-tolerance policies is cowardly. The policy position may appear tough, but it actually speaks to the weakness of the proposer. 

I am glad to see the light at the end of the dark, dark tunnel of zero-tolerance. 

Complying with Copyright Just Got Easier

One of the huge areas of potential copyright violations if you are a techy like me are around images. I post images to the blog, add them into my powerpoints, upload them to sites, ... so available images to use are important to me. All those same uses also apply to our kids and teachers in schools everyday.

On the web, only a few images are available to use without a direct copyright violation though. I usually try to find those images when producing documents, but it can be difficult. Compflight is a great tool and there are others such as the Creative Common search. These search engines take extra time to search and their search functions are not as powerful as core search giants like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. 

Well, Google has made this process easier by adding a licensure limitation on your image search directly on the search page (see image). Here is the procedure:

(1) run a search (such as "education law" below),

(2) go to "Images,"

(3) click "search tools," 

(4) use the "Usage Rights" drop down to select the licensure category. 

Now, this is not a fool proof method in that Google is not guaranteeing the license.  To be safe you need to independently check the license, but it is a great time saver and a really good step by Google during this Copyright Week to make the world a slightly more functional place (even if this doesn't address the core issue of the broken copyright system). 

Finance Conference RFP Deadline Tomorrow

Just a heads up that the deadline for submissions to the National Education Finance Conference is tomorrow, Jan. 15. The conference this next year is in Louisville, which of course is awesome for me. I've thus proposed a retelling of Bruce Baker and my brief on virtual school finance. 

Anyway, if you are interested in education finance, particularly from a legal perspective, it is can't miss conference. 

Copyright Week

Today is the start of Copyright Week, as sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a host of other digitally interested organizations such as Creative Commons and Wikimedia, as well as other organizations interested in more open information such as the American Library Association. Here is a press release on the start of it. 

Whether or not you follow along this week, you should be aware that even as the Internet has made information more openly available than ever before in human history, many interests, specifically Hollywood, are pushing to make information increasingly protected behind copyright law. Congress has a tendency to want to listen more to Hollywood than well, common sense, so copyright law is only becoming more strict. Schools are sort of left in the middle of this and the result is that many teachers and students are technically criminals for copyright violations.  

If you want a basic introduction to copyright and education, here is a short article I did last year on it from T.H.E. Journal. 

Open Records & Academic Freedom in the Chronicle

The Edjurist's dear friends (Neal, Jeff & Karen) have a fascinating op ed. in the Chronicle of Higher Education today on the controversial request for university professor email and other documents by a conservative advocacy organization. 

Some thoughts of theirs: 

The problem with the unfolding episode in North Carolina isn’t the desire to challenge Nichol’s views and assertions. The problem is using an open-records request as a strategy to suppress debate. A law intended to add transparency and openness to government operations has been used to harass and silence.

Be sure to check out more thoughts from Neal, Jeff, Karen & their team at our sister blog, HigherEducationLaw.org. 

SnapChat is Sending Images to the Government

Our kids really need to know that. Like now. Our younger teachers do as well. In your next legal training on anything related to social media, you should mention this. I teach a pre-service law course starting next week; I am definitely going to mention this in there. 

I'm not a user of snapchat myself, but I know that many of our students are heavy users somewhat on the premise that whatever they send will go away quickly. Well, no so much. 

Details here. H/T: Bethany Smith

Education Law Job Guide

I ran across this very nice guide on the Education Law field from Harvard Law and thought it was worth passing along to those that might have interest in a future career in education law. 

ELA Private School Law Conference

Had a wonderful time today at the Private School Law Conference in Lexington that was sponsored by the Education Law Association. Huge Kudos to Bill Thro and Cate Smith for helping to make this possible. Ralph Mawdsley, Charlie Russo, myself, and Bryan Beauman of Sturgill Turner were the presenters. Trinity Christian Academy hosted the event at their lovely facility.

I was really glad to see this event because we do not, as a field, do enough for private, independent, and religious schools. The laws really are quite different from public schools, so we need to do more. Hopefully this is a great start and something that can be sustained.

Ed. Law Scholar Assumes Deanship of Harvard Graduate School of Education

James Ryan officially began his duties as the new Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education a few days ago. You can see the release naming him the new Dean here. His podcast upon starting the job is here. 

I am really excited to see his promotion and wish him the best of luck (frankly I am sort of happy to see HGSE finally employ a full-time law scholar). He is just the next in a long line of education law scholars assuming very high level leadership positions within the field of education in the United States ... and I think that is a very positive thing for all of us. Hopefully James will provide leadership not only to HGSE but to education colleges broadly who frequently look to Harvard for precedence. 

Cone of Shame

This happened last year and I somehow missed it: teacher permits "cone of shame" on students -- which is essentially a dog collar with a cone attached when the students misbehaved. Brought to my attention again by @sjciske. 

 Apparently, she was just transferred and not fired. Being a science teacher saved her. 

By the way, I'm not sure what is happening in Pasco County, FL, but they certainly seem to make the education law news a lot. 

New Education Law Blog

It is not that often that I get to announce a GREAT new outlet for education law news and resources, but today I do in the form of the Education Law Prof Blog. The blog is part of the Law Prof Blog network and is written primarily by Derek Black of the University of South Carolina Law School and LaJuana Davis of Samford University with occassional posts by Areto Imoukhuede of Nova Southeastern Law School. You absolutely must add it to your readers (and, remember, Google Reader is going away soon, so please switch to Feedly). 

I feel like this blog was the exact blog that I expected to exist way back in 2004 when I first searched googled "education law blog" and found nothing (and this started this one). I am glad that we finally have a presence at that law professor level (besides with this blog) and I hope that education law continues to be taken more seriously by those in the legal academy. 

New Publication Opportunity

Information Age Press has a new publication opportunity for peer-reviewed chapters in a book to be titled "Law & Educational Inequality: Removing Barries to Educational Opportunities." The effort is lead by our friends Susan Bon, Kevin Brady, Karen Miksch & Jeffery Sun. The deadline for chapters is August 15 and publication is expected early next year. More information about the opportunity can be found in this call for papers. 

A Nice Video on Overcoming Bullying

I am a sucker for this kind of stuff. Passion. Art. Poetry. Combined into a beautiful message for kids that are facing challenges. There should be more of this. 

h/t Jayson Richardson

We Need Fewer Guns

Today, I was moved by the testimony of former Representative Giffords, "Too many children are dying. Too many children." You owe it to this country to at least listen to that video (click the link). 

I am a hunter. I grew up with guns, I still enjoy shooting, and I personally own a shotgun for that purpose. My own child went deer hunting just two weeks ago and I was proud of him. Most of my family and friends are gunowners and hunters as well, so they are likely to disagree with what I am about to say. So be it. 

We need fewer guns. Because "too many children are dying."

That's the long and short of this. Too many children are dying. We must respond and there is only one reasonable path. We need fewer guns.

Guns beget guns beget guns and a society with more guns is not safer, it is more dangerous.  

Not only are children dying from random acts of insanity at schools like those in Connecticut, Colorado, Kentucky, Virginia, and just about everywhere else ... but too many kids are killing themselves as well. There is too much unnecessary death and the always present tool seems to be the gun. 

I work with schools. I am deeply saddened by what I have seen these last ten years. Now, armed police roam the halls between our classrooms. Children not only learn to read these days, they learn to live in environments constantly patrolled by gun barrels. They learn to live in fear. That should be embarassing to us as a country. Children are in the presence of guns more frequently in the United States than in any third world country. It is compulsory in the United States for kids to spend their days watched by guns. I am embarassed at that reality.  

Now, serious people all over the country talk of arming principals or teachers. We should be disgraced at the thought. Anyone that advocates for giving educators guns but won't consider limiting assault rifles has a serious detachment problem from sanity. 

Guns beget guns beget guns. There is no solution to more guns except for more guns. Someone did actually define that cycle as insanty, once. So, our current national policy toward guns and kids is definitionally insane.  

Our poor schools do not know how to respond, except only to join in and try to stay ahead in this vicious cycle. I work with school leaders. I know what a difficult position they are in. So difficult, in fact, that reasonable school leaders have even started purchasing their own assault rifles for their office, so that in a shootout they will not be outgunned, I suppose. Where does this end? Metal detectors, surveillance cameras, police controlling our school hallways ... we have already given up so much that we cannot get back and for what? The children keep dying. Some cry out liberty and freedom in this debate, but where is our children's liberty? We have deprived them of their liberty, even of their lives, in our disillusionment that owning an AK makes us free. 

I don't care whether guns kill people or people kill people or whatever nonsense cliche you want to throw around to avoid the painful truth. Dead kids lie in graves that should be playing in schoolyards. Far, far too many of them. 

"Too many children are dying." We need fewer guns. 

Texas: Legal to Force Students to Wear RFID Chip at School

A district court judge in San Antonio upheld the expulsion of a student at a magnet school for refusing to wear a RFID chip (radio frequency identification: the technology that allows for geographic tracking at all times, like the thing you can have implanted in your dog). Not surprisingly, the ACLU jumped into the case on the part of the student, arguing that this violated the students privacy and is an unacceptable step toward a surveillance society. 

The school argued that this is all harmless and that the chips were only used to locate students that are not in the classroom, but still in the school building (they said it cannot work outside the school building and would not be given to third parties). The district was convinced they were losing over a million dollars a year in state revenue because students were in hallways and not in classrooms. Further, as a magnet program, the student can return to their home school if she did not like the policy. 

A lively discussion already developed on twitter, but let's continue the conversation (with longer arguments) in the comments. I will put my thoughts in the comments also. 

So, pick a side. Are you okay with this policy and this ruling? 

H/T: This came from Jon Becker's twitter feed with the hashtag #SchoolLawWTF attached. Appropriate. 

Ed. Law Blog Highlight: Education Law Insights

Here is another option for you consumers of education law blogs: Education Law Insights. It is written by Jackie Wernz and Brian Crowley of Franczek Radelet, a firm based in and serving clients throughout Illinois. 

You can also follow along with Jackie's twitter feed at @EdLawInsights

They have been blogging for a few months now and are producing some really informative posts, relevant to those beyond Illinois as well. It is certainly worth adding to your RSS reader. 

Thanks for putting out this information and keep up the great work!