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 Judging School Discipline: The Crisis of Moral Authority
Richard Arum
Harvard, January 2003
Common Good Education Advisory Board Member Richard Arum dissects the impact of litigation on school discipline and
student achievement, revealing how lawsuits have undermined the moral authority
of educators.
Book Description:
Reprimand a class comic, restrain a bully, dismiss a student for brazen attire--and
you many be facing a lawsuit, costly regardless of the result. This reality for
today's teachers and administrators has made the issue of school discipline more
difficult than ever before--and public education thus more precarious. This is
the troubling message delieverd in Judging School Discipline, a powerfully reasoned
account of how decades of mostly well-intended litigation have eroded the moral
authority of teachers and principals and degraded the quality of American education.
Judging School Discipline casts a backward glance at the roots of this dilemma
to show how a laudable concern for civil liberties forty years ago has resulted
in oppressive abnegation of adult responsibility now. In a rigorous analysis enriched
by vivid descriptions of individual cases, the book explores 1,200 cases in which
a school's right to control students was contested. Richard Arum and h is colleagues
also examine several decades of data on schools to show striking and widespread
relationships among court leanings, disciplinary practices, and student outcomes;
they argue that the threat of lawsuits restrains teachers and administrators from
taking control of disorderly and even dangerous situations in ways the public
would support.
Click here to read about the review published by Urban Education.
Click here to read the London Times Educational Supplement review.
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