Historically, private education has been an option mostly for families who could afford the cost or received financial help. Years of research have shown that many families would choose private schools and other educational resources for their children if they did not face insurmountable financial or geographical limitations. Private educational…

Cyberbullying is a phenomenon increasingly affecting students and faculty in K-12 through higher education systems. Cyberbullying in higher education negatively affects institutions and their respective stakeholders. The consequences range from faculty turnover to student suicide. Research related cyberbullying in higher education in online…

This article provides an overview of non-religion-based state constitutional challenges to educational voucher and tax credit/scholarship programs. The first section discusses litigation examining whether education voucher programs violate constitutional provisions requiring the legislature to provide an efficient system of public schools. The…

Sense-making theory involves a sociological/communications science approach to the need of students to make sense of their environment and the information they are seeking to find. With many digital resources to choose from, non-traditional students often have difficulty finding the best resource for their assignments, opting for the easiest path…

In the past 50 years, the share of students enrolled in U.S. Catholic schools has declined from approximately 12% to 3%. In reaction, many urban Catholic schools have closed and subsequently reopened as public charter schools in order to receive governmental funding and to increase enrollment. As public schools, these Catholic- affiliated charter…

In this article, we explain how overly prescriptive, rigid state statutory and regulatory policy frameworks regarding teacher evaluation, tenure and employment decisions outstrip the statistical reliability and validity of proposed measures of teaching effectiveness. We begin with a discussion of the emergence of highly prescriptive state…

Educational leaders have a substantial degree of control over students and generally have a tremendous influence on the decisions that they make. District administrators are already involved in comprehensive efforts to stem sexual harassment, teen violence and bullying; therefore, they may be well positioned to identify and address the problem of…

Fossey's perspectives on legal issues faced by personnel in school districts are too generalized and fail to account for specific problems faced by individual districts and efforts made to cope with them. Illustrates the discussion with examples from the Miami-Dade County Public School System (Florida). (SLD)

Acknowledges the exemplary hiring practices of the Miami-Dade County (Florida) School District, but reiterates that throughout the United States, many professional educators are hired who lack the skills, compassion, and creativity to be in charge of children's education. (Author/SLD)

The present article, a cross-case analysis, analyzes one aspect of the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) that has generated conflict between the U.S. Department of Education and the federal court system. The conflicts arose between the courts' oversight of desegregation and the implementation of the public school choice…

Some board members may not have considered whether e-mail is subject to state statutes ensuring that public business is done publicly. E-mail has great potential for exposing a district to liability. Sample open-meeting and/or public-record laws from several states, including California, Florida, and Virginia, are discussed. (MLH)

The Media and Law section of this collection of conference presentations contains the following 12 papers: "An Analysis of the Role of Insurance, Prepublication Review and Correction Policies in Threatened and Actual Libel Suits" (Elizabeth K. Hansen and Roy L. Moore); "Private Defamation Plaintiffs and Falsity since 'Philadelphia…

Establishment of the new Law and Education Center (LEC) at the Education Commission of the States is announced in this document. It notes that the LEC offers preventive legal assistance to state educational programs and that it will focus on a limited number of specific legal issues. The central topic of this initial newsletter is competency…

The increasing impact of judicial and legislative intervention at all levels of school operations make it necessary for educators to be more aware of their legal rights and liabilities. Few inservice and preservice teacher education programs in Florida provide legal education for teachers, and a study showed that teachers are largely uninformed of…

A sample of 558 communication specialists and nonspecialists was drawn for this study of the future role of mass media in Florida. The Delphi technique was used in four rounds of mail questionnaires, though response rates dropped from 29% of the total sample in round one to 8% in round four. Social, legal, and economic events affecting the future…