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The information on this site does not constitute legal advice and is for educational purposes only. If you have a dispute or legal problem, please consult an attorney licensed to practice law in your state. Additionally, the information and views presented on this blog are solely the responsibility of Justin Bathon personally, or the other contributors, personally, and do not represent the views of the University of Kentucky or the institutional employer of any of the contributing editors.

Entries from February 1, 2008 - February 29, 2008

Thursday
Feb072008

Special Education Dispute Resolution Series at the Special Education Law Blog

Just wanted to point all of you to the special education dispute resolution series of blog posts at the Special Education Law Blog. Jim Gerl and I have worked together in the past and I really respect his knowledge on special education law having long served as a due process hearing officer and now a consultant to states on special education due process issues.

Here are the posts in the series:

1. Dispute Resolution: When Parents and the School Disagree  -  This post provides a basic overview of IDEA and the possible resolution mechanisms it contains.

2. Dispute Resolution Methods: Part II  -  This post outlines changes to the dispute resolution process brought about by the IDEIA 2004 revisions and the subsequent regulations and OSEP interpretations.

3. Dispute Resolution Methods: Part III  -  This post talks about the changes to the mediation option of dispute resolution under IDEA.

4. Dispute Resolution Methods: Part IV  -  This post begins to address the due process hearing itself, including the qualifications of hearing officers and the statute of limitations.

5. Dispute Resolution Methods Part V  -  This post continues on the due process hearing itself, including notice of a hearing, amending the complaint/raising new issues, and pro se (unrepresented) parents.

6. Dispute Resolution Methods Part VI  -  This post continues on the due process hearing itself, including the new stay put provision and the IDEIA 2004 procedural/substantive rulings issue.

7. Dispute Resolution Methods Part VII  -  In this final installment, Jim provides a tie between IDEA and NCLB, throws in a lot of miscellaneous issues and provides links to additional resources.

Wednesday
Feb062008

Nebraska Legislature Passes Anti-Bullying Bill

The Nebraska Legislature has passed an anti-bullying bill, which will be sent to the governor. The Lincoln Journal Star has a small story on it. If passed, Nebraska would join over 30 other states in taking legislative action to try to stop bullying in K-12 schools. You can find a link to the laws in other states here.

Wednesday
Feb062008

ELA Deadline Time Again

For all you out there that REALLY love educational law ... the ELA conference submission deadline is coming up on Feb. 15, so you have less than 10 days to get those proposals in. This years conference is at the Sheraton Gunther in San Antonio, a nice hotel I have been in before (their breakfast buffet was not the best, however, and there is not a lot of open seating space for those cool conversations we get to have with other educational law scholars and practitioners) from Nov. 19-22. I am happy that the ELA convention is back on U.S. soil (and I get to check out the riverwalk again) and it also does not conflict with UCEA, which is 2-3 weeks prior to ELA this year in Orlando. I am debating whether to submit a proposal on integrating educational technology into educational law instruction, or whether to submit a proposal on why I think Morse v. Frederick was a pro-student case (ELA likes you to submit only 1). I will make my decision in the next couple days, but if you think one route is better than the other let me know.

Monday
Feb042008

Kill all the School Boards? ... Maybe. Nationalize Education? ... Maybe Not.

I read this article a week or so ago when my Atlantic Monthly came and I almost wrote a critique of it then, but I also listened to this interview on NPR the other day and I needed to point out what I see as a serious flaw in his argument. Here is the article ... it is not bad and raises some interesting questions so it is worth the read.

First, Kill all the School Boards ... by Matt Miller.

But, here is a couple of quotes to give you the gist if you are not in for reading the whole thing:

When you look at what local control of education has wrought, the
conclusion is inescapable: we must carry Mann’s insights to their
logical end and nationalize our schools, to some degree.

and ...

[Local Control] has spawned several crippling problems:
  1. No way to know how children are doing.
  2. Stunted R&D.
  3. Incompetent school boards and union dominance.
  4. Financial inequity.
I am not going to argue with the connections he makes between local control and the problems he mentioned above, although I do think there are ways for local entities to engage in such research and R&D as technology becomes more available and if it becomes a central component of preparation programs. But, on points 3 and 4 ... yeah, you are going to have some of that with local control. But, based on those critiques (alone) this is his solution:

I asked Marc Tucker, the head of the New Commission on the
Skills of the American Workforce (a 2006 bipartisan panel that called
for an overhaul of the education system), how he convinces people that
local control is hobbling our schools. He said he asks a simple
question: If we have the second-most-expensive K–12 system of all those
measured by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
but consistently perform between the middle and the bottom of the pack,
shouldn’t we examine the systems of countries that spend less and get
better results? “I then point out that the system of local control that
we have is almost unique,” Tucker says. “One then has to defend a
practice that is uncharacteristic of the countries with the best
performance.

“It’s an industrial-benchmarking argument,” he adds.

Horace Mann wouldn’t have used this jargon, but his thinking was
much the same. In his time, the challenge was to embrace a bigger role
for the state; today, the challenge is to embrace a bigger role for the
federal government in standards, funding, and other arenas.

Okay? Um, wait a second ... how did we get from problems of local control to national standards? Especially when the author himself acknowledged that Horace Mann was interested in a bigger role for the state? Just because Finland has a centralized control system over education does not mean the U.S. should. New York is very different from New Mexico. Probably more different than Northern Finland is to Southern Finland. Sure, you can cite OECD countries for examples of national control working ... but the U.S. is a much larger country than many of these places. The U.S. has 28x the landmass of Finland (list of country landmass). You know who has a similar landmass to Finland? New Mexico (list of state landmass). Maybe New Mexico would be a good place to locate the major authority over schools in New Mexico? But, what makes it harder for New Mexico to serve that role is a decentralization of power both above and below them. They are getting mandates like NCLB from above and board decisions to ban books from below. It makes it sort of difficult for New Mexico, even if it wanted or had the capacity to, to function in a role similar to that of Finland.

Let's just not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Are there problems with local control? Yes. Does that mean we need national standards? No. Each of problem 1-4 listed above (if they are problems) can be equally if not better solved at the state level. When you are dealing with a landmass as large as the U.S. and a diversity in population and community desires as diverse as there is in the U.S. (compare Oregon and Idaho, for instance, and those states are neighbors), a centralized set of national standards can not be responsive to local needs. Alternatively, there is some truth to the point that local control cannot be responsive to issues of equity and research. Perhaps there is a happy medium somewhere in between local control and national standards ... oh yeah, that's right, there is ... the states. Perhaps that is why Horace Mann proposed a bigger role for states in the first place.      

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