On the heels of the Newsweek story, the Education Gadfly, a weekly newsletter
from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, discusses legal fear and Common Good's
work in education.
American society is groaning under a tide of litigiousness, and education is
one of the fields most profoundly affected by it. "Legal fear"--the paralysis
caused by frivolous lawsuits--has deprived "teachers and principals of the freedom
to use their own common sense and best judgment. Thanks to judicial rulings and
laws over the past four decades, parents can sue if their kids are suspended for
even a single day--for any reason--without adequate 'due process.'"
It has also tied the hands of administrators seeking to do what's best for the
greatest number of students, as in the case of the serial vandalizer who was expelled
from a public school after a $40,000 graffiti spree. The lad's mother hired psychologists
who diagnosed attention deficit disorder--and the courts ordered him returned
to school on grounds that the system had failed to prove that his previously undiagnosed
malady hadn't been a factor in his behavior. Besides the financial costs--New
York City alone spends $550 million a year on legal settlements--this regimen
rends the fabric of trust necessary to keep civil society strong.
The authors of this long article (in three parts; only one deals with education)
advocate tort reform, a greater reliance on arbitration, and also removing disputes
about student discipline from the courts completely, relying instead on parent-teacher
committees to provide oversight of administrators who would otherwise be free
to use their common sense to protect the rights of other children in the classroom.
There's also a fine profile of Philip Howard and his group, Common Good, which
last month kicked off a new initiative in legal reform for America's schools with
a Brookings Institution conference (See http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/gadfly/issue.cfm?id=122#1533). Howard is fighting the good fight on tort and legal reform.
