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. 

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. 

State Court Funding Symposium

I want to announce to our readers an upcoming event at the Universiy of Kentucky College of Law that has implications for education law.  The event, jointly sponsored by the Kentucky Law Journal, the American Bar Association, and the Center for State Courts, is a symposium on the funding of state courts, many of which are currently in what can best be described as a resource crisis.  Here is a link to the schedule of events on September 23-24, which include Keynote addresses by both Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of the UC-Irvine School of Law and current ABA President (and UK Law grad) Bill Robinson. 

Now, what does this have to do with education law?  Well, two major things.  First, as with almost all categories of law, the majority of education related disputes are resolved in state judicial systems.  A funding crisis in those systems will inevitably lead to a crisis in educational dispute resolution.  Second, as many of you know, to the extent that "education rights" exist in our system, these rights are primarily state constitutional rights.  Where state judicial systems are hampered, the development of these rights is also hampered.  The issue of state court funding is therefore a vital one for those interested in education policy and law. 

I encourage anyone with an interest in these issues of access to justice (and the ability to be in beautiful Lexington, KY this Friday and Saturday) to attend the symposium. 

ELA Proposal Deadline

Just a reminder: The Education Law Association will host its annual meeting for 2011 in Chicago November 9-12.  The deadline for proposals to present at the conference is March 1st (tomorrow).  If you want to submit a proposal, click here, and follow the instructions.  Hope to see everyone in Chicago!

National Education Finance Conference

I am a little late in posting this, but 2011 will mark the inaugural year of the National Education Finance Conference, an annual event intended to allow for "collaboration among legislators, postsecondary education, school district and state agency personnel, professional organizations, and researchers concerned with the importance of equity, adequacy, and efficiency concepts that affect state, local, and federal revenue generation, distribution, and expenditures." 

I have been in contact with the organizers, who include some of the more well-recognized scholars of school finance and education funding litigation, and the conference sounds really terrific.  Best of all, the venue is beautiful Tampa, Florida (one of my former hometowns).  If you have a paper in the works on a school finance-related topic, please consider submitting a proposal to present.  The deadline is January 15th, 2011.  For more information see here. 

Education Technology Law Preconference - Notes

Well, the education technology law preconference session seemed to proceed decently. We covered the hours with a healthy discussion amongst administrators, lawyers and professors and several very difficult legal issues made more difficult by technology. This post just serves as a collection of notes that we talked about during the preconference. 

The powerpoint. (ppt) (pdf) - (these are big files)

Some News Stories We Cited: Charlotte Facebook Issues | Murmer's Butt Art | BullyPolice | 

Some Cases we Used:
Klump v. Nazareth | Doninger v. Neihoff | Requa v. Kent Sch. Dist. | Doe v. Conventry Sch. Bd. | Garcetti v. Ceballos | Price v. NYC Bd. of Educ. (cell phone ban case)

Other Stuff: 
Creative Commons | Foursquare | Twitter | My Twitter Feed | the Example Twitter Feed (Nordeer) |  ELA's Twitter Feed | 

Thanks to all that attended. If you have other questions or want links to other things, just let me know. 

Education Law Association 2010: Vancouver

This is just the first of probably a few posts from Vancouver and the annual meeting of the Education Law Association. Our own Kevin Brady (who promises he will post more post-tenure) was the program chair this year and I think he has done a marvelous job on the program in a tough economy and coastal (read pricy) location. The general session speakers include Stuart Biegel, Robert O'Neil, Russlynn Ali with the Office of Civil Rights, and our good friend Tom Hutton will give the Supreme Court update. An impressive (and left coast leaning) lineup. 

I'll be there personally from tonight (Tuesday) until Saturday ... when the redeye awaits back to Cincy. Tomorrow (Wednesday) I am presenting a 4 hour (ahh!) preconference on educational technology law (which I am still prepping). Otherwise, I have a few meetings here and there, but for the most part I am scott free (no pun intended Bauries :) for the rest of the conference. So, if you are going, find me and let's chat a little. Since it is such an intimate conference, I like to think I know (at least know of) most of the folks that are there. So, if I don't know you ... I want to. Please, say hi. 

Let's have a great conference everyone! 

Call for Papers--AALS Education Law Section

The Education Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools has distributed the following Call for Papers for the upcoming Annual Meeting in San Fransisco.  Note that selection comes with publication in the Michigan State Law Review.  Here's the Call:

Call for Papers Announcement

The AALS Education Law Section will hold a program during the AALS 2011 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California on Immigration and Higher Education.  The panel description is as follows:

Many students attend U.S. colleges and universities who are not U.S. citizens, and many of those students become faculty in the U.S.—especially in the STEM disciplines. The citizenship of these individuals gives rise to numerous legal issues. This panel will address several of these issues both in the U.S. and abroad, including: whether undocumented students in the U.S. should pay in-state or out-of-state tuition as disputed in current litigation in California and Kansas; how universites in the EU operate in terms of out-of-country tuition; and also the licensing of professionals across national borders.

The section invites interested scholars to submit proposals for papers to be included in a symposium to be published in the Michigan State Law Review during spring/summer 2011. One or more papers also may be selected for presentation during the program at the Annual Meeting.

Submissions should be sent via e-mail to Professor Emily Gold Waldman at ewaldman@law.pace.edu by October 15, 2010. Members of the Section’s executive committee will review the submissions and applicants will be notified of the committee’s decision by November 15, 2010.

Eligibility:

Faculty members of AALS member and fee-paid law schools are eligible to submit papers. Foreign, visiting and adjunct faculty members, graduate students, and fellows are not eligible to submit.

Registration Fee and Expenses:

Call for Paper participants will be responsible for paying their annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses.

Time and Date of Panel:

AALS Education Law Section

Immigration and Higher Education

Friday, January 7, 2011, 10:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

2011 AALS Annual Meeting

San Francisco, California

I presented at this conference last year, and it was a great experience.  I encourage all of our law professor readers to send in a paper!  Hat tip to Kristi Bowman, President of the Education Law Section.  

A P20 Presentation to KASA with Dean Mary John O'Hair

Dean O'Hair and I presented on P20 to the Kentucky Association of School Administrators last Thursday at the Galt House in Louisville. As always, I recorded it for later viewing and, remember, you can subscribe to all my lectures on my iTunes channel. 

Michigan education summit

I attended the Education Town Hall meeting sponsored by the Center for Michigan this morning. It was very interesting. There were three panels of speakers to discuss the main issues facing Pre-K Education, K-12 Education, and Higher Education in Michigan. The panelists were asked to focus on three big-picture questions: performance, funding and affordability, and innovation. Not surprisingly, all three panels thought that the state needs to make education funding a priority and direct more, not less, funds into it.

The Pre-K panel (Jack Kresnak & Judy Samelson) touted an investment in this segment of education as having a high return on investment. When the audience had a chance to vote, they agreed by saying that if they could only invest in one sector of education, the money would go here. Michigan currently does not have universal public pre-k education.

The tenor of the K-12 panel (Mike Flanagan, David Hecker, Christine Johns, Tim Melton, & Dan Quisenberry) was much more contentious with Michigan's Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan encouraging schools to Reduce, Reform, and Reimagine, Representative Tim Melton saying that Michigan's schools need to face the hard reality that our state has lost a lot of jobs and therefore a lot of income, David Hecker advocating for paying for quality teachers and the need to negotiate any changes in teacher contracts, and other speakers pushing the need to train students to participate in the global economy by teaching 21st century skills.

The Higher Education panel (Marilyn Schlack, Nikki Searle, Lou Anna K. Simon, & Cynthia Wilbanks) didn't have a coherent theme. The University of Michigan's representative made the argument that research institutions play a crucial role in innovation and creativity, vital aspects of the economic development of our state. Michigan State University's president discussed its Shaping the Future initiative that has been cutting costs and increasing the effectiveness of the university. The student representative from Grand Valley State University made a plea for more money for higher educational institutions in light of the plight of students trying to make ends meet with high tuition costs.

What struck me the most about this series of panels was the divergent views on how serious Michigan's economic situation is and how it will affect our public education system. Some speakers, most notably Rep. Tim Melton and President Lou Anna Simon, are actively engaged in re-working the system to grapple with Michigan's harsh economic reality. The figures that were given during the event said that we have lost 1 million jobs in the state and that we've fallen from in the top 10 in per capita income to 38th. Other speakers, the ones asking for more money without seriously considering how to use the current funds more effectively, seemed stuck in the past, hoping that somehow more money for education will materialize as it always has. Although that would be nice, I don't think that is going to happen. So, when asked what structural changes should be made to Michigan's education system, the audience said that teachers' health care and pension costs should be addressed (i.e. cut) first. I think this is a difficult choice but one that is going to have to be seriously considered in Michigan.

ELA Proposal Deadline 2010 - Last Reminder

Photocredit: poyangThis is just the final reminder to submit your proposals for the Education Law Association Conference this weekend as they are due Monday. I talked with The Edjurist's own Kevin Brady today, the outstanding program chair for this year, and he said he was pleased with the submissions so far. He said he was especially pleased with the number of law professors submitting as well as the number of higher education law proposals, including quite a few from attorneys. That's due to a lot of effort on Kevin's part, AALS's Education Law Section, Cate Smith, Rob Garda, and others, but I also think we here at the blog, especially Scott Bauries, had something to do with that.

Vancouver looks amazing and I can't wait to get there. Talking with Brad Colwell, ELA's President this year, he said they were building time into the conference during the day to enjoy the city, which I can't wait to experience. So, package deal here, boost the vita, fun with friends and a amazing city to visit. 

Last thing, subscribe to ELA's Facebook Group and Twitter Feed. 

ELA Proposal Deadline 2010

The Education Law Association's annual conference for 2010 is in Vancouver -- that's right, Olympic-central at the moment. Anyway, if you want to go and get it paid for by your university, district or firm, you probably need to submit a proposal (guidelines) and the deadline for that is March 1.  The awesome thing about ELA is that they don't require long proposals - so, submit several. ELA will choose only one, but given that the conference is in Vancouver, the economy is down, and the intimate group that ELA always has been, you have a very good chance at success. I hope to see you there (preferably also in the Vancouver bars after the sessions!). 

Rose at 20 - The Players

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. At the beginning, our new Deans of the Education and Law school introduce themselves.

Rose at 20: Debra Dawahare, Esq. and Judge Ray Corns from UK College of Education on Vimeo.

Again, thanks to Brad Duncan for doing the recording.

UCEA Flavor

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 ... yeah! - hoping my wife will let me go!). 

Pictures from ELA 09

Here is the Flickr slideshow from the Education Law Association Conference in Louisville. Many of the photos in the red and green ballroom are from the Rose at 20 event that we sponsored. You can click on the photo to get the information on it.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

ELA Decompression

Well, ELA is over for another year and I thought I would decompress for a minute with some broader thoughts.

1. Everyone seemed to enjoy Louisville. I think it held up quite well for a conference city. I was a little surprised, but happily so. 
2. The General Sessions lacked a little umph this year. Most years I enjoy the generals more than the breakouts at ELA, but this year the opposite was true. Charles Rose was a big name, but dry speaker. Kevin Brady is the conference chair next year, so I'll be sure to send him some names - and you can too if you are an ELA attendee. He should bring some fresh ideas.
3. The breakouts were pretty good this year. I enjoyed several of them and learned a good deal. I do still hold the position that this one was the best session I attended. 
4. I got a wealth of new responsibilities this year. I am the new Chair of the Technology Committee for ELA. Not really sure what that means outside of planning a few webinars, but I'm looking forward to seeing how ELA can expand. I look forward to working with David Doty (@canyonsdave) on these issues. David is also in line to be President of ELA in a couple years, so congratulations (there is not a better person to integrate some tech. in the organization than him - he is a very impressive fellow).
5. Cate Smith, the new executive director, did well in her first conference. I think everyone has a quiet confidence in her. ELA's staff, though, Jody and Judy, were perhaps even more impressive as a lot of planning for this event probably fell to them during the transition. 
6. There were a LOT of students there this year. I was so pleased to see that. It really speaks well for ELA's future. We need to find a way to continue to encourage student participation. Maybe reserving a few additional sessions for students to present or bringing back some student only oriented activities. Anyway, encouraging signs.
7. I'm looking forward to the leadership of Brad Colwell. Brad and I go way back, and he is more than a competent leader. We chatted a little and he even entertained the idea of making the School Law Reporter public. That's the kind of outside the box thinking that will take ELA to new places. Plus, a little SIU representing ... and that always pleases me.
8. Vancouver next year. That could be painful for the organization, but at least it will be beautiful.

In sum, I am excited about the future of ELA. There have been times in the past few years when I questioned whether ELA could reinvent itself for the next generation, but I think the changes of the past year and the events of this conference have answered a lot of those questions for me. Now, though, the challenge is to move past the potential of new leadership toward real, lasting changes. It is not going to be easy, but it can be done and I think there are a core group of people interested in pursuing that objective.

LiveBlogging ELA - No Substitute for Networking ... I'm Talking to You Students

Got to talk to a lot of students at ELA today. Writing "students" and talking to them really gives me a weird feeling because just a year or two ago I was one of them. Now firmly and comfortably on the other side, I can admit that I was feeling a lot of the same feelings and asking myself a lot of the same questions (as in, what in the hell compelled me to come to this embarrassing thing?). 

But, like them, I came. I didn't know anyone (but my professor or two) and for the most part I sat quietly in rooms in the corner hoping that no one would really notice me or that I was not getting in any of these "more important" people's way. I did it. I been there. I've sat in my hotel room (not the conference hotel but some cheap Days Inn down the street) some nights with pizza and the TV instead of going out with all the "cooler" people. I watched conversations happen from a distance wondering if anyone would bother to include me. It's frustrating. It's embarrassing. It's humbling. I could think of about a million other things I would rather do than attend an academic conference as a student.

But, students, you are learning and that learning cannot be replaced in any other fashion. It's one thing to know the name Martha McCarthy or Kern Alexander or Charlie Russo or so many others. You can even see their pictures, right? You can read their papers. But, you can't get a sense of the person until you see them. Not just when they are presenting. But, watch them interact in the hallways. Or chair a session. Or at a different table in the restaurant. Their lives were and are no different than yours. You are on that same trajectory - you just haven't had the time to let the line rise from the axis. And, sure, they are doing more important things than you right now, but it's the "right now" clause in that sentence that really matters, not the "important things" clause.

In the academic world, everyone lives in small communities. I don't care if you are Diane Ravitch, every academic lives in a small world. On the entire planet, there are certainly less than 500 people teaching educational law as a career. And, 500 is not that many, especially because there are only about 200 that are really active members of the community at any given time. And, the really crazy thing, the thing I think it takes some students a while to realize, is that we really, really, really care about that community. Think about it. I'm devoting the best years of my working life to educational law. If you don't think I care about that at a deep, fundamental level, your missing the boat. If you have something to offer that community, even a little thing, I will bend over backwards to help you help us.

So, students, as you are sitting the corner of the presentation rooms don't think I didn't notice you. I did. You being at this conference tells me that you have something to offer. And, sure, I probably didn't read your name tag. I might not know your name yet. But, I saw you. I saw your face. I saw you learning. I saw you caring about this community. I thought to myself that person might have something to offer. And, next year, when I see you again, I am going to remember that I saw you last year. I'll wonder to myself which university your at. What your studying. But, our paths may or may not cross. I still may not know your name, but now I am in interested in you. I'm curious what you have to offer. I may ask a friend about you. And, next year (these things take time so you must be persistent), I'm going to make it a point to introduce myself. Ask if you are finishing up or what your dissertation topic is. You have shown me on multiple occasions that you care about this community - and, now, I want to make you part of it as quickly as possible. We'll help you find jobs. We'll help you get pubs. We'll take you out with us to have drinks at the bar - and, now, you'll have a network connected to the broader network, which is connected to the broader community, which is making an impact in changing our world for the better.

That's how it works. You need to be bold, but more importantly you need to be persistent. Inclusion in the network is earned through sustained humility and random flashes of brilliance. There is simply no substitute for networking of this capacity if you want to join the community. So, while you may be on your flight back wondering what it was worth, rest assured you were noticed and you were networked.  

Liveblogging ELA - Charles Rose's Conservative General Session

Small "c" conservative. But, conservative nevertheless. I would imagine that the General Counsel to any organization (Rose is the General Counsel to the U.S. Department of Education) is probably not your most motivational speaker, but Charles' presentation was, let's say, fact filled. He seems the kind of guy you charge with a huge project, and trust that it will get done. He has a lot of details and impresses me with the depth of his knowledge on education.

But, that said, I am not walking out excited about the federal government's role in education. Rose almost seemed content to keep the status quo and let innovation happen outside the DOE framework with some support through grants and whatnot. Now, constitutionally, you could argue that is the right position for the federal government. But, right now they are sitting on billions of dollars that could fundamentally alter the basic structure of our education system. But, that kind of change takes leadership and part of leadership is inspiration.

Now, you probably wouldn't think a bunch of lawyers really need inspiration, but, honestly, we need more inspiration than others because of our inherently conservative positions (protecting schools usually involves keeping the status quo). The Gen. Counsel of the DOE should be seen as one of our leaders. The potential power inherent in a room full of educational lawyers is enormous - but, Rose made little effort to tap into the large potential pool of resources and change.

Anyway, it was an informative presentation and I look forward to seeing what the US DOE can do with the current President, Secretary and Congress.  

Liveblogging ELA - Support for Pre-Service Law Grows

The last couple of years, several scholars, such as Dave Schimmel in this article, have argued that pre-service teachers need more exposure to legal and ethical issues before they hit the classroom. Well, at this conference I am seeing that support grow amongst representatives of Professional Standards Boards. Representatives of 2 Professional Standards Boards were in the last session I attended and both articulated support for a more formalized ethics and legal effort in pre-service. 

This is a very good sign and I was highly encouraged. While they articulated that they could not mandate classes that College of Education must offer, they would certainly highly support such an offering. Now, Colleges of Education move very slowly, but if Standards Boards are willing to openly express support for a ethical and legal component in pre-service, then I think Colleges of Education will slowly but surely respond. 

So, the task before us is to consolidate this open support for such a component by having these Professional Standards Board personnel publish this desire as openly and widely as possible. 

Liveblogging ELA

Well, the sessions have started, so let the blogging begin. I'll call it liveblogging, but it is sort of contemporaneous-blogging when I steal away a few minutes here and there. In this post, I want to sort of set the scene, report on the Rose session last night and give some initial thoughts.

Setting the Scene:
We are at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, which is a lovely old hotel. This is very much ELA's tradition and I like it. We get to stay in some of the best hotels in the country at low conference rates - which is just a good deal. There seems to be lots of bars and restaurants close, so that's good also. I think attendance is down a little because of the economy, but there are still a lot of people here and a very full slate of presentations. In fact, the conference extended a little this year into Wednesday night and until late Saturday evening.

Report on Rose at 20:
It went really well, and, again, thanks to everyone that helped. Governor Beshear came and spoke about education reforms in Kentucky and the impact of the Rose case. I think meshing the national scholarly audience and the local practitioner audience went as well as could have been expected. I think the practitioners were a little confused by the scholars and the scholars a little confused by the practitioners, but that seems to be the nature of the beast. Either way, I am getting very positive comments, so I am going to take it as a victory and move on. Really, I am just glad its over - it took a lot of my time and energy lately.

Initial Thoughts:
I think the thing I am excited about the most so far is the new make-up of the leadership of ELA. I really like Cate Smith as the new director. Brad Colwell will be a good President and I like the new incoming Board members. I am especially happy for Susan Bon from GMU and Tom Hutton who just left NSBA. I think they both bring a lot of good ideas to the table. I am excited to see what comes of that new energy.