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Undue Process

Some educators tire of teaching in the shadow of lawsuits
Caroline Hendrie
Teacher Magazine, May 1, 2004

Coverage of Common Good's November 2003 forum, "Is Law Undermining Public Education?," appeared in a recent edition of Teacher Magazine. The article provides an excellent, concise summary of the forum, which was co-hosted by the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies.

From the article:

"The threat of being sued has always been in the back of modern educators' minds--a small voice warning them not to stray too far onto potentially litigious ground. But during the past few years, the field of education has come to resemble a legal minefield, and educators' caution has metastasized, becoming outright paralysis.

That's the conclusion of a bipartisan legal-reform group crusading against the 'legal fear' that organizers say diverts schools' attention from the mission of educating children."

The article relays some of the participants' most insightful arguments:

Deborah Wadsworth, Senior Advisor to Public Agenda, noted that while "litigation in the realm of public education really does have an exceptionally honorable history . . . [,] it is also true that excessive litigation has teachers and principals literally walking on eggshells."

David Schoenbrod, Professor of Law at New York Law School, argued that "we need something like a school litigation reform act."

And Alan D. Bersin, Superintendent of San Diego City Schools, summed of the problem effectively, calling litigation "the anaconda in the chandelier that stares down and makes you refrain from saying what you would otherwise say. . . . We've created a due process system that defeats progress rather than serves it."

Click here to access CG's forum, including the agenda and speaker bios.

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Printed from http://www.cgood.org/