Overlawyered » testing

Schools roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 11:54:46 +0000

Students respond to L.A.’s “healthful” school lunch initiative with a loud “yuck” [L.A. Times, Michelle Malkin/NRO]
L.I.: School suspends students for “Tebow” kneeling in hallway [Newsday]
“Growing number of college students asking for wiggle room with their academic workloads due to mental health issues.” [WSJ]
Proposal to address “learning disability” tangle: give all test-takers extra time [Ruth Colker, SSRN, see p. 126] A.D.H.D. diagnosis and the academic struggle for advantage [Melana Zyla Vickers, NYT "Room for Debate"] “Pediatrician Group Seeks to Boost ADHD Diagnoses” [Sullum]
Will distance technology defeat the teachers’ union? [Larry Sand, City Journal]
Time to repeal Maryland’s awful “maintenance of effort” law on school funding [WaPo, Baltimore Sun] Contra: MSEA, PDF.
French-language cops: “Montreal schools move to scan playground chatter” [Ottawa Citizen]

Tags: Canada, colleges and universities, disability & schools, labor unions, obesity, schools, testing

Schools roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Feds require Dayton police department to lower hiring standards

Walter Olson — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 13:16:51 +0000

“The [U.S. Department of Justice] has forced other police departments across the country to lower testing standards” on the grounds “that not enough black candidates were passing.” [WKEF (auto-plays video) via Perry]

Tags: Ohio, police, testing

Feds require Dayton police department to lower hiring standards is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

May 26 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 26 May 2010 11:16:41 +0000

Oh dear: Elena Kagan praised as “my judicial hero” Aharon Barak, ultra-activist Israeli jurist flayed by Posner as lawless [Stuart Taylor, Jr./Newsweek] Kagan and executive power [Root, Reason]
More on efforts to get feds to redesign hot dogs and other choking-risk foods [NYT, earlier]
Amid brouhaha over Rand Paul views, Chicago firefighter-test case provides reminder of how discrimination law actually plays out in courts today [Tabarrok, MargRev]
So please, Ken, tell us what you really think of this Mr. Francis (“Girls Gone Wild”) and his nastygrams [Popehat]
More on SEIU’s tactic of sending mob to banker’s home in suburban Maryland [Volokh and more, earlier]
“Intensive Parenting Enforced: Parents Criminal Liability for Children Skipping School” [Gaia Bernstein, ConcurOp on a California bill]
Julian Ku unimpressed with United Nations officials’ claims that Arizona immigration statute violates international civil rights law [Opinio Juris] Plus, a complaint to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights [Kopel, Volokh] Ilya Shapiro analyzes statute’s constitutionality [Cato]
Bill moving through Congress would force states, localities to accept unionization, arbitration for public safety workforces [Fox, Jottings] And here comes the giant federal bailout of union pension funds [Megan McArdle]

Tags: Arizona, discrimination law, Elena Kagan, fire departments, immigration law, international human rights, Israel, judges, labor unions, nastygrams, testing

May 26 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Man Sues for Extra Time on LSAT, Claiming ADHD”

Walter Olson — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:03:47 +0000

“A prospective law school student who alleges he has a disability filed a suit in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Texas, seeking a court order to force the Law School Admissions Council to provide him with accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act for the Law School Admissions Test.” [Texas Lawyer via ABA Journal]

Tags: disability & schools, law schools, testing, Texas

“Man Sues for Extra Time on LSAT, Claiming ADHD” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“We were getting people with 60 hours of college credit who were reading at a third-grade level. What do you think you’ll get if you have no screening process?”

Ted Frank — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:50:19 +0000

So asks Charlie Roberts, who ran the testing division for the Chicago Police Department from 1995 to 1999, upon learning that the city is simply going to give up on testing because of the threat of lawsuits. (Fran Spielman and Frank Main, “Police may scrap entrance exam”, Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 6.) The problem is exacerbated by the EEOC’s Four-Fifths Rule—of dubious constitutionality after Ricci—which holds that any selection process that results in a selection rate for any race, sex, or ethnic group less than four-fifths of the most successful group is “adverse impact” that “constitutes discrimination unless justified.” 41 CFR § 60-3.

Tags: Chicago, discrimination law, disparate impact, EEOC, police, testing

“We were getting people with 60 hours of college credit who were reading at a third-grade level. What do you think you’ll get if you have no screening process?” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Suing to Get More Time on Exams”

Walter Olson — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:04:36 +0000

A suit against Princeton is the latest in a long succession to make headlines. [Kerr, Volokh]

Tags: colleges and universities, disability & schools, testing

“Suing to Get More Time on Exams” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Should prison guards be strong?”

Walter Olson — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:26:33 +0000

The U.S. Department of Justice is ramping up its “disparate-impact” enforcement in an action against the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, according to Roger Clegg at NRO.

Tags: discrimination law, testing

“Should prison guards be strong?” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Critical lab value? Gotta page the doc

Walter Olson — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:47:41 +0000

We’ve often touched on the subject of lab testing and defensive medicine, but as Happy Hospitalist points out [Oct. 11], ordering needless testing is by no means the only way the various parties endeavor to avoid liability. Another is the superfluous communication of not-really-urgent abnormal test results, sometimes on a doctor’s pager at 4 a.m.:

Unfortunately, patient safety is rarely an issue. It’s a giant game of shifting liability. The lab documents they notified the nurse–>lab off the hook if something bad happens. The nurse notifies the doctor —> nurse off the hook if something bad happens. Doctor is left with a critical value called 10 or 20 times a day, interrupting the entire flow of patient evaluations and discharges. Every time, I must stop what I’m doing and answer a page for a critical lab value, I lose valuable face time with patients. And it all adds up over the course of a day. I wouldn’t have a problem with the system, except that critical thinking has been removed from the equation. The nurse is not allowed to make judgments as to whether a phone call is warranted or not.

As a default protocol of calling all critical lab values, the liability is shifted up the educational food chain, landing ultimately on the physician’s lap. Often times a nurse is not allowed to not call a critical lab value. The problem is, what the hospital has defined as critical, does not apply to the vast majority of critical lab values reported. What’s considered critical by hospital standards, is a normal or chronic value for [that particular] patient.

Whole thing here.

Tags: defensive medicine, hospitals, testing

Critical lab value? Gotta page the doc is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

U.K. medical student: multiple-choice exams unfair to disabled

Walter Olson — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:48:37 +0000

“Naomi Gadian, 21, from Manchester, claims that multiple choice testing discriminates against people with dyslexia” and is suing Britain’s General Medical Council and her college, the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry in Plymouth, under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, the U.K. equivalent of the Americans with Disabilities Act. (“Dyslexic medical student takes legal action against multiple choice exams”, Plymouth Herald, Jul. 30).

Tags: colleges and universities, disability & schools, medical, testing, United Kingdom

U.K. medical student: multiple-choice exams unfair to disabled is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system