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.   

I'm Still Alive (Very Much So, In Fact)

I need to update some things around here. So here goes: 

Personal Updates: 

1. I'm writing for a new blog at BigThink called Education Recoded. It is sort of a second generation project for me as I am really beginning to find my unique voice. The title I think sort of sums up my intentions there, so read this post as to the great project I'm undertaking. BigThink has a mass audience, so it is a pleasure and honor to write there (I promise I'll keep writing here as well).

2. I have some new model legislation out on virtual schooling. Check that out. Thanks to NEPC and their leaders Kevin Welner and Gene Glass for including me. That was a fun project. I have some more on virtual and supplemental online education coming out soon, so I'll update on that as well. 

Team Updates: 

The CASTLE Directors at UK. This team is rocking! 1. CASTLE. We're rolling now. Scott has a new book out. We have a new policy brief series, the first of which went up last week. Two of our directors are doing consulting work in Cambodia as I post this with additional countries under negotiation. We are hosting 2 outstanding visiting scholars this semester. We are building an outstanding staff. We are on the cusp of launching new programs at UK (couple more approvals to secure). It is going as well as I could have hoped for and we are just getting rolling, so ... smiles. 

2. Law and Policy Group. As I've mentioned on here before, we have an extremely strong education law and policy group at UK and that group is finding their footing and starting to produce results. Our first conference last year was successful, so we are doing a second so if you are in or around Kentucky, come check that out. Also, Neal Hutchens has led the effort to develop a new refereed journal, the Kentucky Journal of Higher Education Policy and Practice and, of course, don't forget the new higher education group blog that is rolling along impressively: HigherEducationLaw.org.  This group is starting to come together nicely. 

Site Updates: 

1. I changed the commenting platform to Disqus. I hate to lose access to all the old comments (I still have access if you need them), but the spamming was killing me and I think Disqus is a better filter for that kind of stuff. Plus, Disqus is a much more powerful platform. You can login with multiple existing web ID's and you can track and reply to comments even across multiple different blogs and platforms. It is a huge improvement, so it was time to pull the trigger on that. 

2. I've disabled much of the page content I had at the top. With all the other stuff already mentioned in this post and in my push toward tenure over the next year or two, I do not have time to keep all of those updated and accurate. So, for now at least, I think it is best to just put those on hold. 

Site Updates

Just a few site updates to tell you about. Nothing major. 

1. Cleaned up the Blog Roll. 
2. Changed the "Job Board" to "Job Advice" (not enough time to check them anymore). 
3. Cleaned up the Editors list a bit - thinking about adding a few more. 
4. I've scaled down the Open Courseware pages. 
5. I've pulled back the "Find Information" section of the site for now. I hope to within the next year announce a replacement that we are working on with the Education Law Association.

That's it. Mostly, my days are consumed with running large scale projects, large writing projects, managing a new crop of graduate assistants, and various other things that take an assistant professor's time. Thus, I can't devote the time to all the different features of the site that I used to be able to (back when no one knew who I was :). 

I'm pleased with the development of the additional editors to the blog and think the best thing to do in the near term is really focus on the quality that they are bringing to you on a daily basis. That's the core asset of this blog and, for the time being, that is what we want to promote. 

As always, let me know your thoughts. 

Class Resources

So, within the past couple days I have received a couple requests from folks about ideas for their school law courses and I have been helping my TA gear up for teaching pre-service teachers about the law. During this time, I was reminded what a good resource the blog is for subject-specific content. I've been building the blog archive now for around a 1/2 a decade, so there are a lot of stories, videos, images, etc. that might be useful in your courses (they certainly are in mine) for generating interest and discussions on these legal topics. I think we school law profs. need to keep in mind that the law is boring to most people and that we really need to liven it up for maximum learning.  

The best way to find these is to use my category archive (under the blog menu above) or the search tool on the right. In fact, since I frequently mention where the event occurred, one good search strategy might be to search for your state and see what comes up. There are over 700 posts in the archive ... I promise there is something you can use in your course if you do a little searching. 

Some archived stuff I have used recently in my courses include:

1. This crazy church/state cross burning teacher from Ohio (use with religion).
2. The continuing insanity of duct-taping students to chairs or putting kids in cages (use with torts). 
3. Pink dyed hair and student speech (use with student expression). 
4. A Kentucky pat-down over $5 and search review (use with search & seizure). 
5. Great This American Life clip on video cameras in schools (use with search & seizure).
6. For those early-childhood folks - if you want to gross them out (use with teacher/student discipline). 
7. If you want to scare teachers away from abusing students (use with harassment). 

Anyway, that's just a taste of what lies waiting for you in the archives - just a heads up. Have a good weekend everyone. 

Starting School

So, everyone is starting up school again this year. Lots of fresh faces in new places. Good luck to everyone this year. I'm excited about the possibilities, even in our economic state of depression (pun intended?) . 

I'm particularly excited about some of our ed. law colleagues in new positions, so if you know of someone in our field that is starting somewhere new, make sure you send a little note to wish them well. We want to make sure everyone feels welcome and stays committed to improving our education system for our kids. 

In a programming note, you can count on a lot more action here at the blog. I have some new graduate students starting and one of the tasks I am going to request of them is to help generate content that I or others can post on the blog. They might even be doing a bit of their own posting, over time. 

Good to be back, everyone. I've missed interacting with you over the past few months, so let's get it going again. 

Babies and Update

Okay, been a while since I wrote here. Sorry. But, I have a good excuse (or at least some excuse, probably not a good one). 

MY WIFE AND I HAD TWINS!!! I'm so proud of them and they are just fabulous little kids. They are small (they were pretty early), and they will spend a while in the hospital. I don't want to link to it because I don't really want Google moving it up page rankings, but if you want to see pictures of them, check out bathon dot posterous dot com. 

Okay, other news (sorry, it's been pretty wild lately). Kentucky and UK were selected as a CCSSO National Education Innovation Lab. For now, I am the point person on that effort. We'll see what happens, but I am pretty excited about the recognition that we have been building something positive here at UK and that Kentucky is a state where collaboration makes a lot of really interesting things possible. Talking to superintendents lately, I'm very stoked about some specific initiatives that could help change schooling in Kentucky. I can't release much more than that at the moment, but there is a lot boiling underneath the surface.  

As always, I keep cranking out the episodes of Lab Gab, our new show at UK on educational innovation. Here is the latest:

Also, I presented this argument to a group of faculty here at UK on Wednesday regarding policy change because of technology. Tomorrow, Saturday, I am keynoting a conference here where I will attempt to answer the question that I ended with in this presentation.

Remember, you can subscribe to that content as well. Lab Gab can be subscribed to here. And my lectures and legal work can be subscribed to here. Hopefully within the next month or so, I'll have my stuff more readily available at the Kentucky iTunesU store so that you can subscribe on mobile devices.

Also, just some site issues - spammers have figured out how to break down squarespace's defense, apparently, so I have closed the forum for now. Instead, if you would like to discuss something on education law, let me point you to the ELA facebook page. That is becoming a good place for that kind of discussion. So, if you are not a member of that facebook group, then join. Also, the comment spam is also getting quite annoying, so I am considering the implementation of a solution there called Disqus. The problem with disqus is that it will eliminate a lot of the old comments and it also uses a different kind of sign in, wherein you can sign in through your facebook or twitter accounts. Anyway, I wanted to throw that out there for feedback before I implemented. If anyone has a reason that I shouldn't try implementation, let me know.    

Finally, sorry for the absence. We got some great activities going on here at The Edjurist and we have record levels of readership, so I want to keep my commitment to keep fresh content coming all the time. 

Putting it All Together - Education, Technology & Law

Finally this semester I get a chance to pull it all together in writing ... and I'm excited. 

It's been tough until now not only because I have been busy with lots of other important stuff, but also because it took a lot of time to learn how to frame the technology argument and embed it within a legal argument. Most folks natural inclination toward law is that it is typically conservative and frequently anti-innovation. And, the natural response to that is anti-law (and that's where I was for a while). But, while that is true in a lot of ways (example), it is not entirely accurate. Many laws may be written in a way that minimizes technology's impact, but underlying those laws are other laws that are in fact quite friendly to technology. And, at the bottom of our legal system, our Constitution is actually quite friendly toward technology, innovation, change, adaptation, etc. It's a document that has survived and prospered for 200+ years now, so I think it can probably handle these latest changes as well. It's just a matter of how we interpret those words in light of our new economy and societal situation. 

The idea is that you can hook up the legal literature (from judges, law professors, legislators, etc.) related to education with the emerging literature on twenty-first century learning and business. It's clear by now that this Internet thing is sort of important. And, that global awareness and competitiveness is essential. So, once you don't have convince people of that so much, then you are free to apply these ideas to the legal literature. In fact, that is where much of the debate is likely to turn in the near future. Once the ideas gain acceptance (and, granted we are not all the way there yet but the Big Fish are close), attention must turn to implementation within the existing legal structure. And, for that, we are going to need some help. And, there you have it. A writing niche for me. 

So, you'll probably be hearing a lot of that argument from me over the coming months and years. 

Rose at 20 - Invite and Thank You's

I want to formally invite all my readers to come to Rose at 20: The Past and Future of School Finance Litigation (don't worry it's free!). Next Wednesday, we are having a little get together in the evening at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, KY to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the Rose v. Council for Better Education lawsuit that lead to the overhaul of the Kentucky school finance system in the Kentucky Education Reform Act. The event is being held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Education Law Association. Please click on either of the images for the full flyer.

Click for BrochureThe local participants include the Governor of Kentucky, Steve Beshear, the President of the University of Kentucky, Lee Todd, the Dean of the UK College of Education Mary John O'Hair, the Dean of the College of Law, David Brennen, Judge Ray Corns, and Debra Dawahare, who represented the vicitorious plaintiffs. Debra still works at Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, who are also sponsoring the event - and, I can't thank them enough for their support! 

As part of the evening as well will be a Kentucky Law Journal Symposium on the impact of the Rose case nationally and the future of school finance litigation. Kern Alexander will moderate the symposium in which Craig Wood, Bill Thro, and William Koski will participate and publish papers in a special issue of the Kentucky Law Journal (look for it next Spring and I'll post when it comes out). 

It will be an absolutely lovely evening of remembrance and I want to thank Scott Bauries, my blogging partner here, for helping to coordinate the event from the law school side. I also want to think Neal Hutchens for being willing to come on board with this event, Dana Daughtee for editing the special issue of KLJ, and Lesley Stout for making KLJ a part of this. I also want to thank the staffs of the two Colleges including Mary Ann Vimont, Judy Griffin, Brad Duncan, and the folks at UK PR. I also want to thank Richard Day of EKU, Wayne Young of KASA and everyone else that helped me gather information about the case.

Also, I want to tell my readers how pleased I was to work with the Education Law Association and how comforting I found Cate Smith's leadership. I think that organization will be in good hands moving forward and if you are a reader of this blog, I do encourage you to consider membership in that organization (and tell them I sent you because I get a discount!).

But, seriously, a lot of people had to work together to pull off an event like this and I was especially pleased with how everything came together.

So, please come out and have a lovely evening.

Welcoming Dr. Hutchens to The Edjurist

Source: UKY COE GraphicsToday is a great day for The Edjurist because I get to introduce our third UK contributor, Dr. Neal Hutchens. Neal is as talented and promising as they come and we're lucky to have him both here at UK and blogging at The Edjurist.

Let's start at the top; Neal was first a high school history and geography teacher - that was before he went to law school and got a J.D. from the University of Alabama School of Law. Then Neal went to Washington. While in D.C. Neal worked as a legislative fellow on the U.S. Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions - and during that time he worked on the latest reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. But, as if that wasn't enough, Neal was also obtaining a Ph.D. in Education Policy from the University of Maryland. Then Neal entered academia at Barry University's Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law where he taught courses such as Constitutional Law. Earlier this year Neal left Barry and joined us here at the University of Kentucky in our Department of Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation. While Neal covers lots of different areas of educational law, his primary focus is higher education law and student and teacher/faculty rights.

So, we can all look forward to Dr. Hutchens' posts - they promise to be outstanding.

Some Catching Up: Rose Event Details & New Website

I want to do a little catching up today. I had an extremely busy, but productive, summer. But, lately that has left little time for blogging as I have been traveling around the state and my college coordinating projects. And, I want to make some of those public:

First, I am coordinating an event in conjunction with the Education Law Association in Louisville, Kentucky on October 21 in the evening. The event is tentatively called "Rose at 20: The Past and Future of School Finance Litigation" and will be held in the Brown Hotel's Gallery Ballroom in Louisville. More details will follow, but I'll leak a little secret on the blog that a very high ranking Kentucky official is planning to be in attendance and speak at the event. We also have a lot of other dignitaries on board as well as several experts on school finance both in Kentucky and around the nation (Kern Alexander, Craig Wood, William Thro, Bill Koski, to name a few). The Kentucky Law Journal is doing a special issue for the occasion. And, Scott and our new colleague Neal Hutchens (who I hope to have another announcement about coming soon) have been helping out on the event. Anyway, you'll hear lots more about it in the near future, but thanks to Richard Day for helping to publicize it already.

Second, if you have been following my twitter feed, you'll know I have been working on a new University of Kentucky, College of Education website. It is in public beta right now (and we have said to be careful about releasing it to the public for the next month - but I think I earned the privilege of announcing it here), so there are still some tweaks that need to be made. Anyway, leading that effort was a challenging and rewarding experience, but it took a ton of time this summer. The biggest website I have built to this point was the one you are looking at, so the COE site was a couple magnitudes of scale bigger. But, I do a lot of talking about technology leadership, so I thought I should do some for my own college. I am starting a new blog for our department that is going to serve as sort of news and events source, so for those followers in Kentucky, that may be worth putting in your feed. 

Otherwise, things have been consistently busy. I taught special education law for the first time this summer and it was a blast. I tried out some complicated simulations of IEP, MD and Due Process hearings and the students seemed to enjoy it (although they were probably too competitive). This semester I am back to teaching my regular education law course to a new cohort of principal candidates, so I am glad to be back to my comfort zone. I am debating whether to put my course up on iTunes, so if I do, I'll pass that along as well.

And, all of that above is sort of my excuse for not paying as much attention to this space as I normally do. But, I plan to remedy that immediately. I am going to bring on new contributors, new content, new features, new EdjuristTV episodes ... just to basically be your online source for information on law and education.      

Congrats to Dr. Bauries (and UK)

Just got word from Scott, I mean Dr. Bauries, that his dissertation has been successfully defended. He is a newly minted Ph.D. from the University of Florida Department of Educational Administration and Policy with Dr. Craig Wood as his chair - one of the nation's leading school finance experts. Please join me in congratulating Scott, as writing and defending a dissertation is a once in a lifetime experience.  

THREE. That's now the number of J.D./Ph.D.'s in education policy here at the University of Kentucky, as we also just hired Dr. Neal Hutchens, who is a top flight scholar in higher education law and policy. Unless proven otherwise, we are going to say that we are the only place on the planet that can boast such a collection of educational law scholars - and, even though I am part of this deal, I simply cannot wait to see the kinds of projects that such a collection is likely to spurn. 

Some more ed. law blogs

The Ed. Law Blogosphere continues to grow. That is not to say we haven't lost a few along the way, but nevertheless it is nice to continually see new folks around the country trying their hand. 

So, here are some I want to point out to you. All of them have existed for a while, but I wanted to be sure that I featured them as I add them to my blogroll. 

I have been enjoying a great conversation with Nancy Willard and Mike Tully the last couple of days (which should eventually be posted in the blogosphere somewhere), so I want to point out their blogs: 

Substantial Disruption is Mike Tully's blog. Mike cut his blogging teeth on the old At the Schoolhouse Gate, the previous CASTLE ed. law blog. - Mike links to a lot of good articles on various speech and bullying issues.  

Nancy Willard's Weblog, from the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use. Nancy's posts are usually lengthier posts that examine an issue in depth and correspond with her consulting work around the country. 

Also, the state specific ed. law blogosphere continues to expand. The latest entrant, and one I am sort of excited about, is the Northwest Education Law Blog, which is published by a team from the Williams Kastner law firm that serves Portland, Seattle and surrounding markets. I am excited to have an ed. law blog representing the Northwest because quite a few good cases come out of there. 

And finally, we have Jeff Marcus, who is blogging on N.Y. related special education law issues at Developments in Special Education Law. He pulls largely from special education hearing officer decisions, which is sort of an untapped area of education law in general. 

As always, if I have left anyone out, just let me know here at the blog or you can contact me. My searching of the blogosphere is not what it used to be, so don't feel bad pointing out your work to me. 

Introducing Rich Haglund – Guestblogging on Time (in Law and Education)

Just wanted to make readers aware of our next series here at the Edjurist, Time in Law and Education, which will be authored by Rich Haglund. Rich is currently the General Counsel to the Tennessee State Board of Education and he has also worked for the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office on education issues. Rich is also co-editor of the School Law Reporter, the monthly case summary publication from the Education Law Association. Rich additionally founded Athademic, a participating organization in the Open Source Teaching Project. Rich got his B.A. from Boston University and his J.D. from Vanderbilt. You can learn a little about Rich (and about what a State Board of Education General Counsel does) in this interview.

The series will address how schools use time with recommendations about how it can be used more effectively. Rich also will make comparisons between how time is used and compensated in law as compared to the educational system. I got a preview of the series and it should stimulate some thought amongst Edjurist readers, especially in how some of his recommendations would play out from a legal and policy standpoint. Should be a great series.

My 2008 Blog Book: Is It Worthless For Tenure?

2008 Blog Statistics

I was preparing some university evaluation criteria and I was thinking of ways to include the blog, as it is a big part of what I do. Because it is hard to make comparisons between online writing and traditional publications, I thought I would try to get a word count. At least that would give me some comparative figure because I know my typical educational journal article is about 8,000 words and my typical law journal is about 10,000 words.

Last year I wrote around 110,000 words on the blog in 252 entries (I took a few off for the entries that Scott wrote and some automatic text my blog editor generates).  

I got the word count by copying all the entries into Word. And, since I was in Word, I went ahead and generated all the statistics, which you can see in the top image. So, for the sake of comparison, I also provided the same statistics for my dissertation (the bottom image). Obviously, the statistics sort of speak for themselves here. In terms of the number of words, last year I wrote 3 dissertations. Dissertation StatisticsMy actual dissertation, plus two more dissertation's worth of text on the blog. Or, we could say that I wrote about 12 journal articles worth of words. And, this is not even counting the videos I made this year. 

So, I figure my blogging activity in 2008 is at least worth about a book. In fact, I went ahead and prepared that book (in case anyone calls me out on it) and I am officially going to publish it here. (Go ahead, download it - you can read it on your Kindle).

The Edjurist: 2008 Blog Book (Word)

The Edjurist: 2008 Blog Book (Adobe)

You'll find links embedded in those so that if you want, you can link back out of those documents to the Web. In effect, its a more interactive book than normal (even if it does have substantially less organization and/or coherence). 

Anyway, the point here is not to brag on all the writing I do on the blog, it is to point out the absurd world of tenure and evaluation reviews that fail to take this into account in anyway whatsoever. Realistically, I can put the blog as "other writing" if I'm lucky and "service" if I'm not -- either of which really count very little. What counts is journal articles ... 12 of them, in fact, over 6 years. Oddly, remember, that is about the word count equivalent to what I wrote on the blog this year. 

Now, I will absolutely grant that most of what I write on the blog is not as high quality as what I write in law and education journals. Also, even though people comment when I am wrong, the peer review aspects of blogs in no way equal the peer review quality in journals. So, there is certainly a differential in worth between 10,000 words in a blog and 10,000 words in a peer-reviewed journal. However, those 10,000 words in a blog are not worth nothing, as is essentially the case presently in tenure committees around the country.   

I have obviously thought a lot about what to do about this problem (this is an educational law problem after all) and I really think evaluation and tenure documents need to include a distinct category for electronic publications. Just as no two peer reviewed journals are created equal (my stuff in no way is equivalent to what comes out of the medical school), no two electronic publications are created equal. Just as readership statistics are rarely considered in peer reviewed evaluations, I don't think readership statistics should play that large of a role in considerations of electronic publications. I am not against them being included, but we judge the quality of these journal articles by reading them, and we should do the same for electronic publications. Just as respected peers judge the quality of a tenure & promotion applicant's print materials, they can do the same for electronic materials. Drs. McLeod, Becker, Brady, Gibbs, Upstead, and many others, including practitioners in both education and law, can speak to the quality of this blog and their opinions can and should be considered in evaluating my contributions to the field.  

Luckily, I am the co-chair of the Technology Committee here at the College of Education and I think that this topic is going to be high on my agenda (once we get the new website up and running). I don't think we need special consideration for electronic publications, we just need some consideration because clearly some blogs (perhaps this one - hard to ignore 100,000 words in one year - that's a lot of google searches answered!) are contributing substantially to the field and should be considered in tenure and promotion decisions.   

Site Upgrades: Contibutors and Series

Just an announcement of a couple new features on the site. First, it looks like Scott Bauries is going to be sticking around and posting some, so he has officially been promoted to a "contributor." You can see the new list of "contributors" in the far sidebar under the search box. Hopefully that list will grow some in the future, so if you have a serious commitment to education law and would like to be consistent contributor like Scott, contact me. 

Also, like I have said before, one of my goals is to do more scholarly series here at the site. This goal fits with my associations with CASTLE, NASSP and of course the University of Kentucky, who is highly concerned with my level of "scholarship." With that in mind I have created some links to what I am calling The Scholarly Series. Links to these series are in the near sidebar about 1/2 way down. For instance, Scott just finished his series on e-discovery in education, so there is a link to it there. Hopefully, this will be a good way for you to reference back to the important scholarly works that are coming out of this blog.

That's it. As always, thanks for reading ... Justin.  

NASSP Principal's Online School Law Guide

Today The Edjurist is announcing a new relationship with The National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP). I was invited a couple months ago to join an effort to build an online school law guide for principals. Well, yesterday that effort officially went live and is now available. About half of the modules are currently complete and the rest will be completed shortly. To access the modules themselves you have to be a member of NASSP, but you can view the overview without being a member. Here is the video introduction Jon Becker and I made about the Online School Law Guide.

The Edjurist blog is an important part of this relationship because this will be the place where NASSP principals can go for continuing information on education law and it serves as a place where principals can engage in a discussion on legal issues that affect them. I have added a link to the Online School Law Guide to the sidebar, so feel free to click over any time and access the materials.

Few Positions for Ed. Law Professors

It's a Monday in the heart of the academic job season. The number of leadership positions posted at the Chronicle today? Zero.*

On a normal Monday in November the past few years I would say there would be at least 10-15 postings if not more. But, this is not a normal year. The academic job market is down substantially across the entire ed. leadership field -- a field which has been one of the hottest in all of education for a long time. I think it is a combination of the economic circumstances + the weakening of the leadership field in general (things like this) that account for the drastic decrease. This has of course translated into a low number of positions available for ed. law faculty across the country. I am sure I missed some, but I think I have the majority at my job board and while it may look like a lot, when you consider the different specialties and the different ranks, any given potential ed. law professor is probably looking at around 2-3 jobs that mentioned law as a desired expertise to choose from in total across the country. Now, of course, there are more positions that don't specifically articulate law as the expertise area that still hire law-type people, but nevertheless, there are still many fewer jobs this year for education law specialists.

I don't have historical data to determine whether this is an anamoly or a trend. My feeling is that it is a little of both. This is a particularly bad year, but also in general the number of research positions in colleges of education and in particular departments of education leadership is declining. I will try to keep an eye on it the next few years to get more of a sense of the trends. 

But, anyway, tough year to be on the market. Looks like everything that is going to be posted, is posted, and what's there is just not very enticing. Good luck to anyone on the market this year.

*UPDATE: Some positions have posted now. The Chronicle is apparently behind as their positions usually post at 1 am. Nevertheless, the point of the post remains the same.

Heard Enough From Me?

I am introducing a new feature here today: Edjurist Contributors. The contributors will be multi-post authors, thus, they are more than just guest-bloggers and deserve a term appropriate to their role. The contributors bring additional specialized knowledge to the blog and its audience, as I think you will quickly realize from our first contributor who I describe below. As this blog has matured over time, it has begun to fill a scholarly niche and has moved beyond me just posting random ed. law news stories and has become more a place for learning and discussion. Rest assured I will continue to post news when I come across it (or it is sent to me), but we are going to try to do at least one mid-week scholarly post per week that is geared toward professional development and discussion. I think that fits well with our new association with CASTLE and the recent broadening of the Edjurist site over the past few months.

So, today we are introducing our first Contributor: Scott Bauries. Scott currently is an Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law and I am glad to have him as a colleague at UK. Soon enough, we will be calling him Dr. Scott Bauries as he is close to finishing his Ph.D. - which, like me, will be his second doctorate after his Juris Doctorate. His degrees are both from the University of Florida. Scott has been a federal law clerk for the Eleventh Circuit. Scott also worked for McGuireWoods, a very prestigious national law firm. But before Scott engaged in his legal career, he was a high school English teacher in Florida. Among his many specialties are school finance and civil procedure. In his first series of posts, he is going to address the e-document discovery requirements of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that seem to have caused some confusion about what electronic communication schools need to be permanently storing for future litigation, especially in light of new Web 2.0 activities. Sounds fun, eh? So, please join me in welcoming Scott by reading and commenting on his posts in this series.

Finding Free Educational Law Information

It has always bothered me that we train teachers and administrators in our school law classes to use tools they won't have access to when they leave our programs. We are better off providing them some knowledge of free legal resources instead, even if those resources are not as stellar as Lexis or Westlaw. On top of that, the vast majority of the educational law consuming public also does not have access to these pay-per-use databases.

So, I put together a 5 min. free educational law research instructional video that I hope you will find helpful. Feel free to use this in your educational law courses or to recommend this video or the techniques in it to your educational law instructors. I think even experienced researchers will find some new tools in this video.

Academic Job Season Begins - Education Law Job Board

Labor day unofficially marks the beginning of the academic job season in higher  education. Today, for instance, around 20 educational administration jobs were posted at the Chronicle. 

Since the job season has begun, I have started an educational law academic job board. There are multiple aspects to this page. First, is the job list. There are priority jobs and other jobs. The priority jobs are jobs that are sent directly to me for advertising on this board. These priority jobs will also get posted on the blog, usually in the Friday snippets. People that want to advertise such positions can contact me. The "other jobs" are educational law oriented positions I came across on my own. I am not promising I will find them all, but I hope to find a lot of them because I want to get a sense of the number of academic educational law positions available each year and begin tracking that over time. I will list the university with a link to the search description, the level of the positions (Assistant - Full) and other notes, such as whether J.D. only is acceptable.

Now, I am only linking to positions that specifically state they are interested in having someone with a specialty in law. But, many other positions are more general in nature and may consider a law person. For instance, Vanderbilt posted a couple positions today but did not specify law, even though I know from past conversations they may be interested in a law person if one applied. So, those of you on the job market are encourage to conduct your own searches and seek out particular universities that interest you. Thus, at the bottom of the page, I provide a primer on finding academic positions related to educational law and link to a lot of the academic job boards. Specifically, in obtaining my academic position, I found the UCEA Job Search Handbook to be particularly helpful and I encourage you to use it.