Education Law

Special Ed Appeals Can Be Costly

Two U.S. Supreme Court rulings and an amended law up the ante for parents seeking special education services for their children. The legal precedents are just one obstacle faced by parents, who often face skeptical review hearing officers deciding their administrative appeals when schools deny services, the Wall Street Journal…

Jul 24, 2007 5:49 PM CDT

Facebook Helps Oxford U Enforce Rules

So-called trashings aren’t cricket, under Oxford University rules. But neither is the method the renowned British college is now using to discipline its students for dousing others with champagne, flour and worse in celebration of completing exams, some believe. Disciplinary officials known as proctors have been surfing the Internet, looking…

Jul 17, 2007 8:40 PM CDT

EMU Firings: Rare Clery Act Fallout

Three senior administrators including Eastern Michigan University’s president have been fired and an in-house lawyer has been reprimanded, in response to reports finding that the Ypsilanti institution violated federal law by falsely portraying Laura Dickinson’s death in her dorm room last year as a non-criminal act. In fact, the 22-year-old…

Jul 17, 2007 5:37 PM CDT

ABA to Provide Accrediting Documents

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is asking the ABA to explain how it applies a diversity standard when assessing whether law schools meet accreditation requirements. In a letter obtained by Inside Higher Ed, Spellings said she would approve the ABA as the accrediting body for law schools for another 18 months…

Jun 29, 2007 8:29 PM CDT

Integration Plan B Uses Income

More school districts are likely to consider income as a race neutral way to achieve school diversity in the wake of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision striking down two school integration plans. The 5-4 decision struck down programs used in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., area schools that used race as a…

Jun 29, 2007 5:48 PM CDT

Court Strikes Down Integration Plans

Updated: In perhaps the most-anticipated ruling of the term, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped back into the debate over affirmative action, ruling in a 5-4 decision that two public schools improperly used race as a factor in school assignments, SCOTUSblog reports. The schools have “failed to provide the necessary support…

Jun 28, 2007 5:12 PM CDT

Report: College Concealed Murder, Violating Federal Law

Officials at Eastern Michigan University apparently suspected all along that Laura Dickinson was murdered. And there was good reason to do so. The body of the 22-year-old student was found, naked from the waist down, in her locked dorm room, with a pillow over her head, reports the Los Angeles…

Jun 19, 2007 10:56 PM CDT

Court Watchers Predict a Roberts School Opinion

Supreme Court watchers are looking at the numbers to predict that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. will write a 5-4 majority decision striking down school admission plans in Louisville and Seattle. The formula, according to the Washington Post, is to divide the number of decisions issued this term by…

May 29, 2007 3:56 PM CDT

No Right to Bear Cell Phones

A New York judge has upheld a ban on cell phones at public schools. Judge Lewis Bart Stone said the ban was reasonable and did not violate the Constitution, according to the New York Times. “Neither the state nor federal constitutions include any express constitutional right to bear cell phones,”…

May 8, 2007 2:17 PM CDT

A School Desegregated Is Still Divided

A judge’s ruling in February freeing Little Rock, Ark., schools from oversight has not ended longstanding racial resentments. Fifty years ago, angry whites protested desegregation at Central High School as Army soldiers escorted nine black students into the school for the first time. Now whites are supporting an embattled black…

May 8, 2007 1:17 PM CDT

White House Nixed Student Loan Reform

The Bush administration nixed a 2001 proposal to tighten restrictions on the student loan industry. Since then, the loan industry has come under investigation for paying universities and school officials for loan referrals. The Education Department’s draft 2001 policy shows awareness of the issue and a perceived need to act,…

May 1, 2007 5:12 PM CDT

Conduct Uncensored in 4th Circuit’s Ruling

An “adults only” en banc opinion by a federal appeals court says a college soccer coach’s comments may violate Title IX’s ban on sexual discrimination in public schools. The opinion contains many uncensored examples of coach Anson Dorrance’s alleged comments about his women players’ sex lives and physical appearances, according…

Apr 20, 2007 2:58 PM CDT

Laws Restrict Actions Against Troubled Students

Federal laws generally prevent universities from placing students on involuntary medical leave for mental illness and from informing their parents of their problems without consent, the New York Times reports.

Apr 19, 2007 1:34 PM CDT

Judge Backs Ban of Anti-Gay Shirt

A federal judge in Chicago has sided with a suburban school that banned anti-gay T-shirts. A student wanted to wear a shirt that read “Be Happy, Not Gay” as part of a Christian campaign this week to oppose gay rights issues, the Chicago Tribune reports. The school district thought the…

Apr 18, 2007 3:47 PM CDT

April 20, 1971

School Busing Gets the Green Light

Apr 2, 2007 6:12 AM CDT