Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘schools’

“For Their Own Good: Limit Students’ Rights”

Richard Arum (see Nov. 14) writes again about the perverse effects of litigating students’ rights have had on public school education. A 1975 Supreme Court case, Goss v. Lopez, extended due process rights to student discipline, literally making every effort by a school to punish a student for misbehavior a federal case. (Washington Post, Dec. 29) (via Jacobs).

Naturally, teachers and schools respond by under-disciplining rather than risk being told that their discipline was a civil rights violation. But the effects ripple from there. School districts adopt “zero tolerance” policies so that they can’t be accused of abusing their discretion. Private school discipline is a matter of contract, rather than government due process, so the Goss line of cases does not affect them; the result is just another way in which the federal court system has disadvantaged public schools relative to private schools. Wealthier parents substitute away from public schools to private schools, reducing political support for public schools and disadvantaging the schools further. The ones who lose the most? The children from poor families who have no choice but to attend a public school system where lack of discipline makes learning unreasonably difficult.

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Disabled-friendly playground damages claim

“Twin Meadows, designed to be the first playground in [Stamford, CT] where disabled children can play safely, opened in October amid fanfare.” But a few weeks later, two-year-old Konrad Mader collided with a green railing while running towards a treehouse. This is, apparently, the city’s fault for not picking a different color for the railing in the playground. “In her claim, Mader does not specify the amount she is seeking from the city on her son’s behalf, only saying she wants compensation for his medical bills, pain and suffering and a ‘lost wage amount due to his inability to audition or take modeling or commercial jobs while his head heals.'” (Donna Porstner, “Child model, actor seeks compensation after playground mishap”, Stamford Advocate, Dec. 26) (via Bashman).

Update: the corporation counsel for Stamford tells the New York Times “It seems like it’s a fairly obvious guardrail. It’s not like it’s up against bushes.” (Avi Salzman, “Playground Injury Harmed Son’s Career, Mother Says”, Dec. 27) (also via Bashman).

Further update: the mother has publicly backed down in response to public outrage; it remains unclear whether she was bluffing in the first place. (Donna Porstner, “Mother of bruised toddler explains complaint”, Stamford Advocate, Dec. 30). A playground supporter comments on the story. (“Mom at home” weblog, Dec. 26 and Dec. 28).

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Federal Way, WA mainstreaming lawsuit

Six-year-old M.L., born autistic and severely retarded, was not toilet-trained, had no communication skills, and threw frequent temper tantrums that on one occasion resulted in another child being bitten. Federal law, 20 U.S.C. ? 1414, requires public schools, through an extensive and complicated procedure, to make accommodations to “educate” M.L. When the Federal Way School District offered to put M.L. in a special program with other autistic children, his parents protested, though they had not participated in meetings with school officials about the best possible solution. An eight-day hearing before an administrative law judge was held; the ALJ ruled against the parents’ objections. The parents appealed to federal district court. The federal district court ruled that the school district’s proposal complied with federal law. The parents appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The appellate court affirmed the district court decision.

However, a few days ago, the Ninth Circuit withdrew its opinion affirming the case, and asked for additional briefing on the procedures used to make the decision, raising the possibility that it will issue a new opinion requiring the school district to hold more hearings about the appropriate individualized education plan for M.L.

Press coverage of the case has focused almost entirely on the irrelevant issue that the parents were unhappy that some of the regular students were teasing M.L., who was apparently oblivious to the name-calling (which took place for all of five days). (Kathy George, “Judges reconsider teasing case”, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Dec. 22; M.L. v. Federal Way School Dist.).

Read On…

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Canada: nine-year-old’s hockey suit

“Parents may stop helping out on their kid’s teams if a Springbank lawyer successfully sues volunteers within his own son’s league, says the head of minor hockey in Calgary. … Michael Kraik is suing the Springbank Minor Hockey Association because he says his nine-year-old son Alexander was deliberately placed on a weaker team due to favouritism from league officials for their own children.” The suit seeks C$50,000 and names two officials individually. (“Hockey crisis looms”, Calgary Sun, Dec. 19). Update Jan. 11: suit dropped.

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Celebration educational malpractice lawsuit

A Florida appeals court has ruled that a family may sue a school district and a Disney subsidiary that developed the community of Celebration for allegedly false representation in marketing materials that the public school in the area was “cutting-edge.” The family decided that the schools weren’t up to their particular standards, and has chosen a private school. (Kelly Cramer, Miami Daily Business Review, “Parents Can Sue Disney [sic] Over School Sales Pitch”, Dec. 12; Simon v. The Celebration Co. opinion) (via Jacobs).

Read On…

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Anthropologist feud thrown out of court

Over the years, Professors Fikes and Furst have been feuding over their respective scholarship over the Huichol Indian community in northern Mexico, in a dispute reminiscent of the cliche referring to academic politics and small stakes. The two had threatened each other with libel lawsuits, but Fikes went through with his; it was litigated up to the New Mexico Supreme Court, which threw out the case Friday. (AP, Nov. 22; Simon Romero, “A real-life feud springs from peyote’s hallucinations”, Arizona Republic, Sep. 17).

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Lawyer contacted over class reading

The families of two eleventh graders at Vero Beach High have contacted a civil rights lawyer after their English teacher read a selection from a book, “A Land Remembered”, where a character uses a racial slur. (Linda Jump, “Racial slur spurs book ban initiative”, Florida Today, Nov. 17). (via Jacobs, who asks why a teacher is reading to eleventh graders)

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“Judging School Discipline”

The new book Judging School Discipline : The Crisis of Moral Authority argues that the hundreds of lawsuits challenging school disciplinary procedures has undermined the quality of public education. The book claims to examine every case involving student discipline through 1992, and the authors plan to release updated data through 2003 next month. “‘Clearly, just the threat of lawsuits restrains teachers and administrators from taking charge in their classrooms and schools,’ said [Richard] Arum, chair of the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at The Steinhardt School of Education. ‘Rather than reaffirming civil liberties, litigation has prevented schools from enhancing educational opportunities for all.'” (James Devitt, “Richard Arum Argues that Flood of Lawsuits Hinders Education”, NYU press release, Oct. 10).

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Update: College Board resists test-accommodation tide

The College Board finally appears to be halting its years-long slide toward offering extra time and other accommodations to an ever-growing number of test-taking students claiming learning disability (see our earlier coverage going back to Feb. 1999). The last straw came when litigation pressure forced testers to abandon the practice of “flagging” scores on tests taken with accommodations (see Jul. 22-23, 2002 and links from there). Searching for a way to prevent a new flood tide of requests, the Board instituted “a new requirement that students seeking extra time must generally have a diagnosis and a plan for accommodations in school at least four months before taking the SAT.” In addition, it compiled a list of 142 schools which had accounted for a greatly disproportionate share of accommodations requests — a list including many highly affluent public and private schools — and asked those schools to supply greater documentation for the requests. “Faced with such scrutiny, many of the schools that had asked for the most accommodations have pulled back substantially on their requests.” The number of parental appeals has also tripled, suggesting that the Board may need to hire more lawyers than ever (and nervously hope for favorable treatment in the courts) if it wants to make the new harder line stick. (Tamar Lewin, “Change in SAT Procedure Echoes in Disability Realm”, New York Times, Nov. 8).

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