School of One - How does it work legally?

As we start to consider a lot of different models of education, one that is getting a lot of play is the NYC School of One initiative. I have had superintendents bring it up to me and it is getting attention in the blogosphere. Here is their overview video:

Program Overview from NYCDOE Teacher Development on Vimeo.

So, lawyers, what stood out to you? For me, it was this phrase "Individualized Learning Platform."

So, when I was teaching fresh out of undergrad I remember talking to one of the senior special education teachers in my building. We were talking about various issues and at some point I mentioned that I liked the IEP concept in special education and thought one day it will probably become the norm across all of education (remember, I was young and naive - okay, I still sort of am). Anyway, I was not prepared for the scolding that ensued. I got a 10 minute lecture on why that would be a horrible idea, that we would all be swimming in paperwork, that it would be utter chaos. So, I sort of dropped the idea. She made some good points and I was already swimming in paperwork just teaching under Title I, so I sort of resolved to agree with her for the time being. Then in law school, as I worked with the State of Illinois on special education issues, I remember thinking how impossible it would be to implement this for all children. We were barely, and I mean barely, keeping an handle on the special education system as it was, it would have literally shut the system down to add 10 times more students to that kind of system.

So, all this talk about the School of One has sort of brought me back to this issue, especially when they use language like an "Individualized Learning Platform." I want to be able to consider the idea and I want to like it, just like I wanted to like it fresh out of college. But, having now seen the stacks of paperwork and hours of due process for some students, I just can't wrap my head around how implementation of such a system would be possible, realistically. From the video they say technology is helping to bridge the gap, but what I saw was a gaping chasm, is technology really going to bridge that? Even if it does and we have electronic student records and we don't do IEP meetings and whatnot, how are we legally going to deal with a separate curriculum for each kid? I don't even know if it is physically possible, let alone practicable. 

So, help me out here. How are we going to do this? Or can we?

AERA Conference in Denver

If any are you going to the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting in Denver later this week, I want to let you know about the Law & Education SIG sessions. This is where you will be guaranteed to hear about education law issues. Plus, you will be able to meet other people interested in these topics. 

Saturday, May 1st   Special Topics in Education Law Roundtable Session    

            Sheraton, Grand Ballroom Section 2              10:35 a.m. to 12:05 p.m.

 Sunday, May 2nd               Constitutional Considerations in Education Roundtable Session

          Sheraton, Grand Ballroom Section 2                 8:15 to 9:45 a.m.

 Sunday, May 2nd               Special Topics in K-12 Education Law Paper

           Sheraton, Plaza Court 3                                12:25 to 1:55 p.m.

Monday, May 3rd             Special Topics in Higher Education Law Paper

           Sheraton, Plaza Court 2                                2:15 to 3:45 p.m.

Monday, May 3rd             Law and Education SIG Business Meeting and Panel Discussion:

                                       Legal Research and Writing for Emerging Scholars

 Sheraton, Governor's Square 10               6:15 to 8:15 p.m.

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. 

Columbine

I had the chance to visit with Dave Cullen the author of the New York Times Bestseller Columbine who was visiting campus to speak about his book. He spent ten years investigating the story of the April 20, 1999 school massacre. The book evolved from his experience as a journalist who was on the scene within the first hour of the tragedy. 

The book contains the stories of both the killers (Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold) and several of the victims (Patrick Ireland, Cassie Bernall, Daniel Rohrbough, & Dave Sanders), as it dispells many of the common myths about what really happened that day, why the murders occurred, and communicates lessons on healing and forgiveness.

Cullen is meticulous in his research and his presentation of the evidence about the events that day and leading up to the killings. He describes Eric as a psychopath who was intent on killing as many people as possible in order to prove his own superiority and just for the fun of it while Dylan was depressed and suicidal but over time bought into Eric's vision of human destruction. The boys planned the attack for over a year and their primary weapons were bombs not guns. Fortunately the main bombs did not detonate. Cullen explains that the boys were not outcasts or part of a Trench Coat Mafia and that they did not target particular groups of students; rather their intention was to kill as many people as possible. Their rampage ended with their own suicides.

The stories of the events that day provide a vivid picture of the chaos that was taking place both inside and outside of Columbine High School--the parents desperately searching for their children, the teachers and administrators grasping to understand what was happening and trying to shepherd the students to safety, and the police attempting to contain the danger and apprehend the killers.

I was enthralled as I listened to the book, in part because it is so well written, but more so because I felt compelled to find out the answers to the questions of what happened and why and what can we do to prevent something like this from ever happening again? It was such a senseless tragedy. I walked away with a lot of answers about exactly what happened and some reassurance that there were warning signs in both boys that significant trouble was brewing. Eric had a website that contained a hit list and spewed his hatred towards the whole world. Both boys were in trouble with the law for theft and vandalism. They actually kept journals and created videos that chronicled their plans. But some of the biggest lessons in the book are about forgiveness and healing and the fact that healing happens faster and more completely when the victims forgive the perpetrators. Ultimately, Cullen advises that we shouldn't rush the healing after something of this magnitude happens.

The book was so interesting, I had to include it in Edjurist. If you really want some legal lessons, the tragedy did spawn a lot of legal action. Here are some of the key legal outcomes:

• Mark Manes & Phillip Duran received prison terms for their roles in securing weapons for the boys.
• A $2.53 million settlement was reached between the families of Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold and the families of the victims. $1,568,000 came from the families' homeowner policies. Read the story in the New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/20/us/2.53-million-deal-ends-some-columbine-lawsuits.html?pagewanted=1
• Jefferson County Sherriff's Office and Jefferson County School District were able to claim government immunity in the lawsuits against them. However, the lawsuit by the family of teacher Dave Sanders was allowed to continue and was eventually settled. See CBS News at www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/11/27/national/main319250.shtml

Education as a Fundamental Right?

Last week, I had the opportunity to moderate a panel at the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change’s annual conference, which was on education this year.  My panel was entitled “May it Please the Court: Legal Challenges and Remedies to Address Deficiencies in Public Education.”  I know, simple topic to cover in 90 minutes.  Anyway, there were 3 speakers and 2 of the 3 primarily advocated for a constitutional amendment making education a fundamental right.  I have discussed this topic in my course as well, providing a copy of the proposed amendment text submitted in Congress in 2009.  As I listened, I was somewhat surprised to find myself wondering, “What’s the point?”  After all, I am critical of the outcome in San Antonio ISD v. Rodriguez allowing for large funding disparities in part because education was deemed to be merely an important right, not a fundamental one.  But, I found myself thinking that maybe the constitutional amendment discussion was a distraction from in the trenches education reform that would impact students.

The conference included other panels on classroom, school, and district restructuring and reform plans; it included in depth descriptions of innovative teacher training and teacher evaluation initiatives; it included an exploration of the role of charters in expanding the availability of quality education.  Each of these other panels seemed to be truly making a difference, but the quest for a constitutional amendment struck me as so divorced from the real life impact on students as to be nearly irrelevant.

One panelist, Lynn Huntley (president of the Southern Education Foundation), made a somewhat compelling case that the quest for the amendment was more important than the amendment itself.  By proposing a constitutional amendment, the argument goes, advocates are able to garner attention in order to make noise about the educational inequities that exist and, having made noise, propose other solutions with substantial impact on reducing disparities.  Another panelist, Gary Williams of Loyola Law School (CA), argued that a movement akin to that which overturned Plessy v. Ferguson should be undertaken in order to overturn Rodriguez.  Inspiring, intriguing, even tempting.  But to what end?  When we get to “education as a right” in class, my students almost universally express dismay at the thought of having educational decisions being trapped in courtrooms indefinitely even as they recognizing the moral import of classifying education as a fundamental right.  It seems that the long-running legislature-to-court tennis match that happens in state courts where state constitutions provide an affirmative right to some form of education would be replicated on a national scale.  Very messy.  Messiness, of course, is not a reason not to pursue something (like overturning Plessy for example), but the drawbacks of messiness should not be ignored.

Anyway, as is probably evident, I have mixed feelings about this education as a fundamental right thing.  What do others think?  Am I missing something?  [note the irony of my criticism of the amendment path as a distraction from in-the-trenches reform ending with a question inviting others to distract themselves from in-the-trenches reform by commenting on the amendment path – sorry]