2024 marked another year of considerable legislative progress by charter school supporters across the country. Advocates notched significant policy wins from coast to coast, including in red, blue, and purple states. This report provides highlights from this year's state legislative activity across the country, organized into the following…

This report argues that the Michigan state constitution's "Blaine Amendment," a provision which prevents parents from drawing on state funding to go outside the public school system, is superseded by the United States Supreme Court's 2020 ruling in the case Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. The report discusses a legislative…

Over the years, as states have sought to incorporate more inclusive and relevant academic standards and curriculum for K-12 students, they have interpreted ethnic studies in both broad and narrow terms. While most states use the term ethnic studies to describe their efforts to incorporate the knowledge and perspectives of traditionally excluded…

This paper provides insights into an initiative that offers graduate and professional students from across the University of Michigan the opportunity to participate in multi-disciplinary, problem-based classes that foster creative thinking, teamwork, and development of transferrable skills. The paper describes how, in order to improve student…

This article provides information about the value of a core course in business law and why it remains essential to business education. It goes on to identify highly ranked undergraduate business programs that require one or more business law courses. Using "Business Week" and "US News and World Report" to identify top…

Faculty unions outside Michigan have reason to be concerned with its passage of legislation barring unions from collecting fees from workers who do not join them. But the experiences of faculty unions in states that adopted such laws years ago suggest that while the measures can be a major hindrance to their work, they are not a death blow.…

The purpose of this article is to discuss how a community agency based in Washtenaw County, the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigration Rights (WICIR), emerged in response to increasing punitive immigration practices and human rights abuses toward the Latino community. The article discusses how WICIR is engaged in advocacy, community…

Michigan's former governor, John Engler, was naturally attracted to charter schools. He had seen for too long how school districts treated students as their property and the state as an endless funding source, and he wanted that to change. Engler saw the chartering strategy as a politically viable means for gaining leverage over school districts…

The Supreme Court's members generally are too decorous to exclaim "I told you so." But U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy stands perched on the edge of an I-told-you-so moment, thanks to the court's decision to take up a challenge to a race-conscious college-admission policy that poses some of the same questions he had accused…

The author reports on the ruling of a divided appellate court that held that the state law unconstitutionally made it harder for minorities to seek preferences than for other groups. The court struck down a voter-passed ban on the use of race-conscious admissions by Michigan's public colleges, holding that the measure had unconstitutionally put…

It's a long, long way from Bay Mills Community College, near the shores of frigid Lake Superior, to Detroit. But distance, time and demographics aside, the school and the city are united by Bay Mills' status as the nation's only tribally controlled college that authorizes quasi-public schools, known officially as public school academies. And it's…

A small community in southwest Michigan has been witness to a significant cultural divide within its school system. An influential church has permeated school leadership and in many cases has overstepped the proverbial "wall separating church and state." A fairly high-profile case saw the Sixth Circuit Court enjoin the district to remove…

Trying to understand marriage laws for individuals with disabilities can be frustrating. People looking for a clear-cut answer may turn to the Constitution. Different states address marriage laws differently. Most states consider the nature and severity of the individual's disability and the role of his or her guardian in the decision to marry.…

University administrators who have distance learning programs under their charge are on the horns of a dilemma. Given the growing litigiousness of copyright holders and the unsettled state of the law, it has become very difficult to establish failsafe administrative rules to guide faculty and student use of copyrighted materials. But the use of…

This year, across the nation, state legislators and powerful corporate interests with financial ties to universities and influence over them have launched an unprecedented number of attacks on law school clinics. As universities increasingly seek to educate students through service-learning courses, law school clinics may be the bellwether for…