- Cafeteria nudge dud: questions raised on efficacy of USDA Smarter Lunchrooms Movement, launched in 2010 [Caitlin Dewey, Washington Post; Elizabeth Nolan Brown/Reason]
- “Florida Legislator Wants to Make It a Crime to Leave Your Kid in the Car for Just One Minute. But Why?” [Lenore Skenazy] “Dad Teaches Kids to Ride the Bus. But CPS Says He Can Never Leave Them Alone, Ever.” [same, Canada; more] “Court Upholds Dad’s Conviction for Making 8-Year-Old Son Walk Home Alone” [same, California]
- Judge: Arizona lawmakers not free to end Mexican-American studies program in schools if motivated by animus [Michael Kiefer, Arizona Republic]
- “Former Los Altos baseball player sues coach after being benched, claims bullying” [Hayley Munguia, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Calif.]
- Oft-told story of residential schools as ruin of Native American life might admit of some complication [Naomi Schaefer Riley, Education and Culture, reviewing Dawn Peterson, Indians in the Family: Adoption and the Politics of Antebellum Expansion]
- New York initiative on suspensions likely to make schools less safe [Max Eden, New York Post] “Another Obama Policy Betsy DeVos Should Throw Out” [Jason E. Riley, WSJ]
Posts Tagged ‘school discipline’
Schools roundup
- Georgia sheriff mass-frisks 900 students at a high school. Is that legal? [Scott Greenfield, Lowering the Bar]
- Federal judge dismisses “clock boy” discrimination suit against Dallas-area school district [CBS News]
- Ilya Shapiro on Gloucester County v. G.G., the transgender school bathroom Title IX case [Federalist Society]
- Social worker on public reaction against Named Person program in Scotland: families “had wanted a single point of contact for parents,” but Scottish government instead created “point of contact about parents” [No2NP campaign, earlier]
- “In places like New York City, schools have made it more difficult for principals to suspend disruptive or threatening students. The results? Increased violence, drug use, and gang activity, according to the Manhattan Institute’s Max Eden.” [Hans Bader/CEI, Eden paper, related on national policy]
- Rethink your assumptions about Betsy DeVos’s appointees [Erica L. Green, New York Times] More on appointee Candice Jackson [George Leef, Martin Center, earlier]
Schools roundup
- Judge Neil Gorsuch on education law issues [Clint Bolick and Marty West, Education Next] And if you haven’t read Gorsuch’s dissent in the “burping student” case, A.M. v. Holmes — among his most famous opinions — it’s here;
- Tables for sharing food at cafeterias: “‘It’s the same objections every single time,’ he said. ‘There’s this myth that they’re going to get sued.'” [Michael Melia, AP/Yahoo]
- “Why heroin and classroom sex aren’t enough to get teachers fired anymore” [Julia Marsh, New York Post]
- “…a story of the pitfalls that await teachers who make extended efforts to aid troubled students.” [Andrew Marra, Palm Beach Post]
- St. Paul, Minn. saga of school discipline and “disparate impact,” cont’d [Katherine Kersten, earlier here, here, and here]
- “I first found ‘Free Range Kids’ from the Overlawyered site” — one commenter’s tale of the fate of children’s books at a local library after CPSIA came in [Free-Range Kids]
Schools roundup
“Why police were called to a South Jersey third-grade class party”
“A third grader had made a comment about the brownies being served to the class. After another student exclaimed that the remark was ‘racist,’ the school called the Collingswood Police Department, according to the mother of the boy who made the comment.” Police calls seem to be a frequent occurrence in the local schools: “Superintendent Scott Oswald estimated that on some occasions over the last month, officers may have been called to as many as five incidents per day in the district of 1,875 students.” [Philadelphia Inquirer]
Feds now second-guess preschool suspensions. How’d that happen?
How exactly did the Obama administration come to have the power to ban suspensions of preschoolers? [Hans Bader, CEI]
Schools roundup
- California appeals court says state’s teacher tenure law doesn’t violate Equal Protection Clause, similar suits pending in NY, Minn. [ABA Journal, Neal McCluskey/Cato, earlier on Vergara case]
- Maryland to local school district: no, families can’t opt out from standardized tests, we might lose federal funds [Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, Frederick News-Post]
- Teachers fearful as disorder spreads in St. Paul, Minn. schools [Joanne Jacobs, background on feds’ role]
- Somerset County, N.J.: “It’s ‘harassment’ for a sixth-grader to criticize vegetarianism to a vegetarian classmate” [Eugene Volokh]
- UK agency reverses decision to downgrade rating of pre-school for not teaching cultural diversity [Guardian]
- Schools have rules, but only up to a point: “NY moves to allow illegal immigrants to teach in public schools” [Malia Zimmerman, Fox News]
Schools roundup
- Libertarians warned about this: New Jersey’s broad “anti-bullying” law used to silence 15 year old student’s political tweets [Robby Soave, Reason]
- “New proposal would put armed, retired cops in New Jersey schools” [NJ.com]
- Chapters ostensibly agreed, though their leeway to refuse not clear: “University of Alabama quietly testing fraternity brothers for drugs” [Al.com]
- About time Congress noticed: Sen. James Lankford asking questions about Department of Education’s Dear Colleague letter [FIRE]
- Schools vigilant against danger of grandparents reading aloud to class without background checks [Lenore Skenazy]
- No helicopters in sight: German preschool/kindergartens send kids as young as three to camp in woods [WSJ]
- Los Angeles and New York City school officials got same anonymous threat, but only L.A. closed schools [Ann Althouse]
Schools roundup
- New Jersey arbitrator’s ruling: “Teacher Who Was Late to Work 111 Times in 2 Years Will Keep His Job” [AP/Time]
- Claim: feds’ Title IX regs on campus discipline and sex were OK, but colleges went overboard [Sam Bagenstos, Washington Monthly; my different view; Scott Greenfield] Related on OCR power: David Savage and Timothy Phelps, L.A. Times;
- Bon temps rouler: Louisiana public universities claim $274 million in damages from the BP/TransOcean gulf spill [AP/Insurance Journal]
- Washington Supreme Court flexes muscle on school finance case, fining state $100,000 a day until it falls in line with higher spending [Seattle Times]
- Not a parody: major in social justice rage at Washington State U. [one syllabus, another via Daily Caller] Hounding of Nobelist Tim Hunt in a British university milieu not so different from ours [Jonathan Foreman, Commentary]
- “Disparate Impact in School Discipline: What Does the Public Think?” [Education Week] “How Eric Holder’s Disparate Impact Crusade Leads To Quotas” [Hans Bader, Daily Caller]
- “Want Safer Kids? Send Them Into Traffic” [Lenore Skenazy on pedestrian safety practice for little ones]
School and childhood roundup
- Why campus trigger culture and offense bans aren’t just anti-intellectual and a foretaste of wider speech regulation, but fail at specific therapeutic goal of reducing psychological upset [Greg Lukianoff/Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic cover story]
- Newtown shooting advanced existing trend toward a regular police presence in schools; consequences may include escalation of low-level discipline [ACLU of Pennsylvania report “Beyond Zero Tolerance,” pp. 28-34]
- “Scottish Government’s named person scheme criticized by experts who will implement it” [The Courier (Dundee), earlier]
- “Kids Dig for Worms, Sell to Fishermen. Town Says Not So Fast: That’s Illegal!” [Cornwall, Ont.; Lenore Skenazy]
- “British Universities See Ethics Committees as ‘Easy and Convenient’ Censors” [Zachary Schrag, Institutional Review Blog]
- “His son’s school requires student athletes to carry their own insurance, a move that many other schools also have had to make because of the rising costs from lawsuits.” [Charleston, S.C.-area Palmetto Business Daily] “NYC has paid nearly $20M from playground injuries since 2010” [Reuven Blau, NY Daily News]
- Mom in famous Silver Spring, Md. “free range kids” episode is writing book, solicits stories of unattended kids and CPS abuse