education law journal articles

Education law : Journals

• Journal of law & education Devoted exclusively to school law, with emphasis on critical current & emerging issues, serving both the legal & educational professions.
• Brigham Young University Education & Law Journal Articles, review articles, commentary and book reviews covering legal topics within the field of education.

Congressional Research Service

• "Affirmative action" and equal protection in higher education The CRS report home page provides access to all versions published since 2018 in accordance with P.L. 115-141.
• Civil rights at school : agency enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 The CRS report home page provides access to all versions published since 2018 in accordance with P.L. 115-141.
• The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESSA) : a primer The CRS report home page provides access to all versions published since 2018 in accordance with P.L. 115-141; earliest version dated 2019.
• Laws affecting students with disabilities : preschool through postsecondary education The CRS report home page provides access to all versions published since 2018 in accordance with P.L. 115-141.
• Title IX and sexual harassment : education department proposes new regulations The CRS report home page provides access to all versions published since 2018 in accordance with P.L. 115-141
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Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal

The Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal " was started by the School of Education inside the Department of Educational Leadership and Foundations (DELF). Once a joint publication of BYU Law and the DELF, active management has moved back to the McKay School of Education as a peer-reviewed, extra-curricular publication. BYU Law students continue to serve on the Executive Board.

The official repository for future issues is at http://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byu_elj/

Current issue: volume 2019, number 2 (2019).

Frontmatter

Smile, You’re on Camera: a Discussion of the Privacy Rights of Teachers in the Modern Day Classroom Dakota Brewer

Nonprofit College Crash: Enforcing Board Fiduciaries Through Increased Accountability and Transparency in the IRS Form 990 Procedure Patrick R. Baker, Paula Hearn Moore, and Kaleb Paul Byars

Out in Public: Legal and Policy Benefits of Open, Cooperative K-12 Transgender Policy Development Erin Cranor

“More than a Chronological Fact”: Roper v. Simmons as an argument for moving away from Zero-Tolerance Discipline and toward Restorative Justice Elisse Newey

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Library electronic resources outage May 29th and 30th

Between 9:00 PM EST on Saturday, May 29th and 9:00 PM EST on Sunday, May 30th users will not be able to access resources through the Law Library’s Catalog, the Law Library’s Database List, the Law Library’s Frequently Used Databases List, or the Law Library’s Research Guides. Users can still access databases that require an individual user account (ex. Westlaw, LexisNexis, and Bloomberg Law), or databases listed on the Main Library’s A-Z Database List.

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Education Law Research Guide

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Law Reviews & Journals

The following resources for academic publications are useful in conducting a preemption check as well as researching your paper.

Online resources are often the most effective for finding recent journal articles. You can use Lexis or Westlaw to search for and retrieve the full text of many, but not all, law journals. For more comprehensive coverage of interdisciplinary education topics published in legal and non-legal journals, you can use online indexes to get citations and often full text for articles across all legal and non-legal journals available through the Library.

• Lexis Education Law Journals
• Westlaw Education Law Journals

Education Law Journals

This is a non-comprehensive list of journals that focus on both law and education issues.

• Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal
• Education and the Law
• Education Law Journal
• Education Policy Analysis Archives
• The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
• Journal of College and University Law
• Journal of Law & Education

Education Databases

• Academic Search Premier Full-text publications from all academic areas of study, including the sciences, social sciences, humanities, education, computer science, engineering, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, and ethnic studies.
• Chronicle of Higher Education Provides online searchable full text access to the latest issues of the Chronicle and archives back to 1989. Also includes daily news, advice columns, current job listings, and discussion forums.
• ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) Database ERIC is a national information system funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences to provide access to education literature and resources. The database contains more than 1 million abstracts of education-related documents and journal articles going back to 1966. The database includes articles, reports, papers, monographs on education topics, and curricular items. Some 107,000 full-text non-journal documents are accessible electronically in PDF format. The thesaurus can help you do a more precise search. ERIC is available on the Department of Education website for free. Search keywords, then use relevant descriptors. Use quotations for phrase searching.
• ProQuest Education Journals Indexes articles published in over 700 education journals, many articles are available in full text. 1988 - present.
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• © Georgetown University Law Library. These guides may be used for educational purposes, as long as proper credit is given. These guides may not be sold. Any comments, suggestions, or requests to republish or adapt a guide should be submitted using the Research Guides Comments form . Proper credit includes the statement: Written by, or adapted from, Georgetown Law Library (current as of .....).
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Education Law: Getting Started: Books, Articles & More

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Introduction

Education Law is the term used to describe the application of the law in the school or educational setting. This branch of law includes federal and state statutes, regulations, and case law. Education in the United States is generally decentralized, with state and local governments largely responsible for educational standards (for a recent exception, see the federal  No Child Left Behind Act ).  

Education Law encompasses a wide variety of legal issues, including civil rights, disability, discrimination, separation of church and state, employment law, criminal procedure, freedom of speech and expression, and civil liability. Education Law topics of recent interest include charter schools ,  homeschooling , drug testing , and bullying .

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Online catalog.

Search UB's Libraries' Catalog for books, e-books and other materials.

• Libraries' Catalog (UB Libraries) with filters

Try these and other subject searches in the Online Catalog:

Children with disabilities - Education - Law and Legislation - United States

Educational Law and Legislation - United States

Educational Law and Legislation - United States - Cases

Special Education - Law and Legislation - United States

Students - Legal status, laws, etc. United States

Teachers - legal status, laws, etc.

Universities and Colleges - Law and Legislation - United States

Encyclopedias

• Encyclopedia of Education Law by Russo, Charles J. Call Number: Online / Electronic Book: in Gale Virtual Reference Library Publication Date: 2008
• Deskbook Encyclopedia of American School Law Call Number: KF4114 .D46 Publication Date: 1989 - 2008

Treatises, Hornbooks & Nutshells

• Higher Education Law Policy and Perspectives by Alexander, Klinton W. Call Number: Online in Ebook Library Publication Date: 2010
• Public School Law: Teachers' and Students' Rights by Cambron-McCabe, Nelda H., McCarthy, Martha M. Call Number: KF4119.M38 2004 Publication Date: 2004
• From Schoolhouse to Courthouse: the Judiciary's Role in American Education by Dunn, Joshua M.; West, Martin R. Call Number: KF4119 .F76 2009 (Lockwood) Publication Date: 2009
• Special Education Law by Guernsey, Thomas F. Call Number: KF 4210.G84 2008 Publication Date: 2008
• The Law of Schools, Students, and Teachers in a Nutshell by Kern, Alexander Call Number: Study Aids: KF4119.3 .A43 2009 Publication Date: 2009
• Education Law Stories by Olivas, Michael A. Call Number: KF4119 .E277 2008 Publication Date: 2008
• Law and American Education: A Case Brief Approach by Palestini, Robert H. and Karen F. Call Number: KF4118 .P35 2006 Publication Date: 2006
• We the Students: Supreme Court Cases For and About Students by Raskin, Jamin B. Call Number: KF4150 .R37 2008 Publication Date: 2008
• Search & Seizure in the Public Schools by Rossow, Lawrence F. Call Number: KF9630 .Z9 R67 2006 Publication Date: 2006
• College and School Law : Analysis, Prevention, and Forms by Prairie, Michael Call Number: KF4225 .P73 2010 (+ CD ROM in Koren) Publication Date: 2010

The Complete IEP Guide: How to Advocate for Your Special Ed Child - Siegel, Lawrence M. Call Number: Reference KF4209.3.Z9 S57 2009. Publication Year: 2009

A Guide to Special Education Advocacy: What Parents, Clinicians, and Advocates Need to Know - Cohen, Matthew . Call Number: Online in Ebrary. Publication Year: 2009

School Law - New York State School Boards Association . Call Number: KFN5648 .A73 H3

Education Law Journals

• Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal (also available on HeinOnline and in print at the Law Library)
• Journal of Law and Education (also available on HeinOnline and in print at the Law Library)
• ELA Notes/Education Law Association (available in print at the Law Library)
• Yearbook of Education Law (Education Law Association) "...analyses of the previous year's federal and state court decisions that affect private and public elementary and secondary schools and higher education".

See more education law journals at UB.

Find Articles

Search these legal periodical indexes to identify relevant articles. Be creative with your search terms. Try very general as well as specific searches.

Online Legal Periodical Indexes: ​​​​​​​

• LegalTrac (also Westlaw * and Lexis*, but known as Legal Resource Index (LRI))(1980 - present)

Online Indexes with Quickest CURRENT coverage:

• Current Index to Legal Periodicals (CILP) on Westlaw * only (most recent 8 weeks)
• SSRN (Social Science Research Network)(2000s-present) Working papers, accepted papers

Indexes in paper format:

• Index to Legal Periodical Literature K 9 N319 (ref)(1888-1939)
• Index to Legal Periodicals K9 N32 (Ref) (1926-1994)
• Index to Legal Periodicals & Books K9 N32 (Ref) (1994-present)
• Annual Legal Bibliography K 38 H365 (Ref) (1960-1981)
• Subject Compilations of State Laws KF 240 S795 (Ref) (1960 - present) Identify law review articles and books that cite to state statutes on specific topics. Also on HeinOnline.

Search Multiple Periodical Indexes at once

• (over 360+ UB subscription databases searched at once from ONE SEARCH BOX) Everything  Search

You can also find relevant articles and other scholarly information by searching other online databases (subject listing) available at UB.  

Recent Law review Articles

• Terry Jean Seligmann, Sliding Doors: The Rowley Decision, Interpretation of Special Education Law, and What Might Have Been, 41 J.L. & Educ. 271 (2012).
• Nancy Vinsel, Drinking and Driving School Buses: Zero Alcohol Tolerance for Public School Bus Drivers, 41 J.L. & Educ. 271 (2012).
• Matthew Beatus, Layshock Ex Rel. Layschock v. Hermitage School District, 56 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 785 (2011/2012).
• Scott Farbish, Sending the Principal to the Warden’s office: Holding School Officials Criminally Liable for Failing to Report Cyberbullying, 18 Cardozo J.L. & Gender 109.
• Maren Hulden, Charting a Course to State Action: Charter Schools and §1983, 111 Colum. L. Rev. 1244 (2011).
• Lesley Lueke, High School Athletes and Concussions, 32 J. Legal Med. 483 (2011).
• Mary Kenyon Sullivan, Long-Term Suspensions and the Right to an Education: An Alternative Approach, 90 N.C.L. Rev. 293 (2011).

Subject Guide

• Georgetown Law Library - Education Law Research Guide
• Legal Information Institute: Education

Audio Visual Materials

• Board of Education v. Earls by Voices of American Law Call Number: Law Koren AV Center / 3 Day: DVD KF228 .B63 B63 2005 Tecumseh, Oklahoma high school student, Lindsay Earls, was upset by her school district's policy of testing all students involved in extracurricular activities for illegal drug use so she challenged it in court. The case was testing whether drug testing of students in extracurricular activities violates the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
• United States v. Virginia by Voices of American Law Call Number: Law Koren AV Center / 3 Day: DVD KF228 .U5 U56 2010 Steeped in history and tradition, the Virginia Military Institute remained all-male long after the state’s other public universities became coeducational. VMI’s leaders and alumni believed that a single-sex environment was essential to the school’s spartan "adversative" educational method. When a female high-school student complained to the U.S. Department of Justice about VMI’s policy, the DOJ filed a lawsuit claiming that the Equal Protection Clause required the state to offer the same opportunities to women as it did to men. The documentary tells the story of the case and the aftermath.
• Massacre at Virginia Tech by Narrator, Mark Strong. Call Number: Law Koren AV Center / 3 Day: DVD HV6534 .B53 M37 2008 "Documentary looking at the worst school shooting in American history, when a lone gunman killed at least 32 people on the campus of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute at Blacksburg, Va., before taking his own life. Using extensive access to key witnesses, we delve into the mystery of how Cho, a young man with no criminal history, became a mass murderer."-- from BBC website.
• The Road to Brown Call Number: Law Koren AV Center / 3 Day: DVD KF373 .H644 R63 1990 Presents the role of Charles Hamilton Houston in the cases which led to the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown vs. Board of Education. Gives a history of segregation, Jim Crow Laws, the NAACP and biographical information on persons influential in the desegregation movement.
• Next: Primary Sources >>

Education Law

“trying to save the white man’s soul”: perpetually convergent interests and racial subjugation.

The assumption that remedying racial inequality benefits only people of color while being costly to White people underlies many Supreme Court decisions. White people benefit spiritually and democratically from racial equality. Recognizing these benefits warrants a new theory of interest conve…

Who’s Afraid of Carson v. Makin ?

Carson v. Makin  was yet another defeat for progressives in a brutal term. But just how bad was it? This Essay examines how Democratic lawmakers in Maine have already neutralized the ruling, teaching important lessons about how concerned Americans can best resist the Court’s conservative supermajorit…

The Once and Future Promise of Religious Schools for Poor and Minority Students

When  Carson v. Makin  allowed religious schools participation in educational-choice programs, the public-school establishment predicted dire results for marginalized students. This Essay responds to that prediction, exploring religious schools’ historical importance to marginalized students, the publ…

When Religion and the Public-Education Mission Collide

Recently, the Supreme Court has chosen education as the primary stomping ground for rewriting Free Exercise Clause doctrine. It has framed education policies that prevented public funds from promoting religious indoctrination as discrimination. In the process, it has created a new victim—educational…

Racialized Religious School Segregation

Carson v. Makin  has several implications for the future of school-choice programs. This Essay explores one possibility: an increase in sectarian schools participating in state-funded school-choice programs, causing new forms of school segregation based on race  and  religion and impairing the democrac…

Proceduralize Student Speech

This Note proposes a new dimension for student-speech jurisprudence: procedure.  How  schools punish speech drives the lessons students learn, and the lessons students learn should drive judicial determinations of whether the educational value of a restriction is worth the First Amendment infringement…

Schoolhouse Property

Since the Supreme Court ’ s 1975 decision that students enjoy constitutionally protected property interests in education, most states have passed laws and regulations requiring schools to provide meals and health services to students. These services arguably constitute entitlements, requiring sc…

Complicated Process

Introduction I come to this important Title IX Conversation from a unique perspective. This is not because I was a federal judge for seventeen years. Rather it is because before my judgeship, I was a feminist litigator and a criminal defense lawyer. And from this vantage point, my concern…

For the Title IX Civil Rights Movement: Congratulations and Cautions

On September 25, 2015, the Yale Law Journal held a “Conversation on Title IX” that confirmed the existence of a new civil rights movement in our nation and our schools. The movement’s leaders are smart, courageous survivors of gender-based violence—virtually all of whom are current un…

Winn and the Inadvisability of Constitutionalizing Tax Expenditure Analysis

**This Essay is part of a new Yale Law Journal Online series called "Summary Judgment," featuring short commentaries on recent Supreme Court cases.**

In Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn , the U.S. Supreme Court decided, by the thinnest of margins, that Arizona taxpayers cannot m…

A Winn for Educational Pluralism

Over the past decade, scholarship tax credit programs, like the one at issue in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn , have emerged a…

The Common School Before and After Brown: Democracy, Equality, and the Productivity Agenda

120 Yale L.J. 1455 (2011). 

In Brown's Wake: Legacies of America's Educational Landmark

By Martha Minow

New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 320. $24.95.

The Impact of Teacher Collective Bargaining Laws on Student Achievement: Evidence from a New Mexico Natural Experiment

120 Yale L.J. 1130 (2011). 

This Note uses the 1999 sunset and 2003 reauthorization of New Mexico’s public employee collective bargaining law to estimate the causal effect of teacher collective bargaining on student achievement. This Note finds that mandatory teacher bargaining laws increase the pe…

Confronting the Seduction of Choice: Law, Education, and American Pluralism

120 Yale L.J. 814 (2011). 

School choice policies, which allow parents to select among a range of options to satisfy compulsory schooling for their children, have arisen from five periods of political and legal struggle. This Feature considers the shape of school choice that emerged in the 1920s ed…

Tinker ’s Tenure in the School Setting: The Case for Applying O’Brien to Content-Neutral Regulations

Popular constitutionalism, civic education, and the stories we tell our children.

118 Yale L.J. 948 (2009).

This Note analyzes a set of constitutional stories that has not been the subject of focused study—the constitutional stories we tell our schoolchildren in our most widely used high school textbooks. These stories help reinforce a constitutional culture that is largely d…

Is There a Place for Religious Charter Schools?

118 Yale L.J. 554 (2008).

Recently, religious groups have sought to become charter school providers. Scholarship and popular commentary dispute the desirability of this prospect. Religious charter schools can address unmet needs of religious groups and keep them invested in the public school sys…

When Parents Aren't Enough: External Advocacy in Special Education

117 Yale L.J. 1802 (2008).

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has been widely celebrated for providing millions of disabled children with broader educational and life opportunities. This Note seeks to improve the implementation of the IDEA by questioning one of its key assumptio…

"Home Schooling" in California

The "Bong" Show: Viewing Frederick's Publicity Stunt Through Kuhlmeier's Lens

Next week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument in Morse v. Frederick. At issue is whether a public high school principal violated a student’s First Amendment rights by suspending him for displaying a banner reading “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS” at an outdoor school rally for the 2002 Winter Olympi…

National Citizenship and Equality of Educational Opportunity

Equal Educational Opportunity and the Federal Government: A Response to Goodwin Liu

Goodwin Liu’s inspiring article mines a rich vein of the history of American education. He revives and re-interprets congressional attempts to create a national system of public schools in the years following the Civil War. Professor Liu’s work is a signal contribution to the national movement f…

A Response to Goodwin Liu

Professor Liu’s article convincingly shows that the Fourteenth Amendment can be read, and has been read in the past, to confer a positive right on all citizens to a high-quality public education and to place a correlative duty on the legislative branches of both state and federal government to pro…

Federal Nagging: How Congress Should Promote Equity and Common High Standards in Public Schools

In two articles—one recently published in this Journal and another forthcoming in the NYU Law Review—Professor Goodwin Liu argues that the federal government should play a greater role in financing public education, should distribute more fairly among states its funds targeted to the neediest sc…

Education, Equality, and National Citizenship

116 Yale L.J. 330 (2006) For disadvantaged children in substandard schools, the recent success of educational adequacy lawsuits in state courts is a welcome development. But the potential of this legal strategy to advance a national goal of equal educational opportunity is limited by a sobering and l…

For-Profit and Nonprofit Charter Schools: An Agency Costs Approach

115 Yale L.J. 1782 (2006) This Note applies agency costs theory to explain charter schools' use of for-profit and nonprofit forms, and to suggest ways to make charter school regulation more sensitive to the differences between these forms. Borrowing from Henry Hansmann's "contract failure" theory of …

Civil Rights, Antitrust, and Early Decision Programs

115 Yale L.J. 880 (2006) Early decision admission programs--which allow a student to receive early notification of admission in return for a commitment to attend a particular institution--enjoyed explosive popularity at America's institutions of higher education in the 1990s. Schools use the programs…

Forbidden Conversations: On Race, Privacy, and Community (A Continuing Conversation with John Ely on Racism and Democracy)

114 Yale L.J. 1353 (2005) More than ever, urban school systems are segregated by race and class. While a chief cause of this segregation is the flight of white and upper-middle-class black families from predominantly black public schools, there is little discussion of white flight in contemporary edu…

Race as Mission Critical: The Occupational Need Rationale in Military Affirmative Action and Beyond

113 Yale L.J. 1093 (2004) In Grutter v. Bollinger, the much-anticipated case challenging affirmative action practices at the University of Michigan Law School, the Supreme Court held for the first time that "obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body" represents a compel…

Private Voucher Schools and the First Amendment Right To Discriminate

113 Yale L.J. 743 (2003) At the end of its 2001 Term, the Supreme Court settled one of the most contentious educational debates in recent history, ruling in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that the inclusion of religious schools in a state school voucher program did not violate the Establishment Clause of t…

Renting Space on the Shoulders of Giants: Madey and the Future of the Experimental Use Doctrine

113 Yale L.J. 261 (2003) The experimental use doctrine in patent law protects alleged infringers who use patented inventions solely for experimental purposes, such as testing whether a device functions as claimed or re-creating a process to observe its effects from a scientific perspective. The judi…

The Political Economy of School Choice

111 Yale L.J. 2043 (2002) This Article examines the political economy of school choice and focuses on the role of suburbanites. This group has re- ceived little attention in the commentary but is probably the most important and powerful stakeholder in choice debates. Suburbanites generally do not sup…

Announcing the YLJ Academic Summer Grants Program

Announcing the editors of volume 134, announcing the first-year editors of volume 133, featured content, lock them™ up: holding transnational corporate human-rights abusers accountable, administrative law at a turning point, law and movements: clinical perspectives.

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Current Issue

• Monetary Liability of Public School Employees under the IDEA and Section 504/ADA (Perry A. Zirkel)
• The Federal Role in Universal Pre-K (Brian McWalters)
• Armed and Dangerous – Teachers? A Policy Response to Security in our Public Schools (Todd A. DeMitchell, Christine C. Rath)

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• Separating the Wheat from the Tares: the Supreme Court’s Premature Strict Scrutiny of Race-based Remedial Measures in Public Education (Hayden Smith)

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Home > USC Columbia > Law School > Law Reviews and Journals > J.L. & Ed.

The Journal of Law and Education is a student-run journal at the University of South Carolina School of Law. Published online bi-annually, the journal prides itself on providing relevant academic articles on all aspects of constitutional and civil law related to American education.

Current Issue: Volume 1, Issue 4 (1972)

Table of Contents

The Constitutional Implications of Federal Aid to Higher Education William D. Ford

Institutional Aid Laura Christian Ford

Present Direction of Court Decisions Regarding Metropolitan Area Desegregation Thomas A. Shannon

Persistent Problems of Church, State and Education Donald E. Boles

Teacher Liability during Field Trips Charles R. DuVall and Wayne J. Krepel

School Bells and Wedding Bells Ray Corns

The Texas School Finance Case: A Wrong in Search of a Remedy Joel S. Berke, Anthony P. Carnevale, Daniel C. Morgan, and Ron D. White

NOTES ON RECENT CASES

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Home > Journals > BYU Education & Law Journal

BYU Education & Law Journal

Faculty and graduate students at the McKay School of Education and students at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University support a national peer-review Board of Authors to publish the BYU Education and Law Journal . The mission of the BYU Education and Law Journal is to contribute to equity, fairness, justice, and the improvement of education everywhere by facilitating legal and policy research, discussion, and understanding.

To view past issues of the journal, please visit https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/elj/ .

Current Issue: Volume 2024, Issue 1 (2024)

ELJ 2024 Front Matter

A Review of Existing Literature Surrounding Female Educator Sexual Misconduct in Anglo-American Classrooms Avery Barnes and Isaac Calvert

Let's Get Critical: The Rights and Obligations of School District Stakeholders under State Laws Limiting or Banning Discussion of Critical Race Theory in K-12 Classrooms John E. Rumel

A Practitioner's Approach to Examining Title IX Jordan Tegtmeyer and Ashley Nicoletti

Welcome to the Circus: An Analysis of Kennedy v. Bremerton Ryan Spencer

Student Athlete or Student Employee? Considering the Future Implications of Recent College-Athletics Decisions Regarding Employee Classification Nathan Schmutz and Joseph Hanks

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Bill Koski ( [email protected] ) is the Eric & Nancy Wright Professor of Clinical Education and Professor of Law at the Stanford Law School where he directs the Youth and Education Law Clinic, an in-house legal clinic devoted to ensuring that disadvantaged children and communities receive excellent and equal educational opportunities. Koski is a 1993 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and received a Ph.D. in Educational Policy Analysis at the Stanford School of Education in 2003. After a stint in private practice with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and starting a boutique litigation firm with three other lawyers, Koski joined the East Palo Alto Community Law Project in 1997 and has represented hundreds youth and families in race discrimination, student discipline, and disability rights matters. He has served as co-counsel in three recent complex class action matters, including Emma C. v. Eastin, a pathbreaking class-action lawsuit that seeks to systemically reform the special education delivery service in a Bay Area school district. As an educational researcher, Koski has published articles on educational equity and adequacy, the politics of judicial decision-making, and postsecondary remedial education, and has provided expert witness testimony in the Williams v. California school reform litigation.

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Explaining a Major Education Settlement in California

The state has agreed to use at least $2 billion meant for pandemic recovery to help students hurt most by remote learning.

By Sarah Mervosh

The State of California settled a lawsuit last week that had been going on for more than three years, since the height of the debate around pandemic school closures. The case was notable nationally; there have been few others like it. And the settlement included an eye-popping number: $2 billion.

Several families in Oakland and Los Angeles had sued the state, accusing it of failing in its constitutional obligation to provide an equal education to all children in the state, because lower-income, Black and Hispanic students tended to have less access to remote learning in the spring and fall of 2020 than other students did.

It’s important to note that the state — meaning taxpayers — will not pay out any new money under the settlement. Instead, it will take money that was already set aside for pandemic recovery — no less than $2 billion of it — and will direct schools to use it to help students who need it most to catch up. There will be requirements to spend the money on interventions that have a proven track record. You can read more about the settlement here .

Why does this matter?

Because new national data released last week, in a study led by researchers at Stanford and Harvard, made it clear that students across the country are nowhere close to catching up on learning lost during the pandemic .

That is true for students of all backgrounds, but especially for poor students. Schools in poor communities tended to stay closed longer than those in more affluent areas, and when they did, students lost more ground. Once schools reopened, students from richer families have tended to catch up more quickly than students from poorer families in the same districts, according to the new data.

Yet there have been some surprising variations.

In California, Compton Unified , near Los Angeles, and Delano Unified , north of Bakersfield, are examples of lower-income school districts that have recovered remarkably well, at least judging by standardized-test scores. You can read more about bright-spot districts, including Delano Unified, in an article I wrote with my colleagues Claire Cain Miller and Francesca Paris.

Some more affluent districts have had lackluster recoveries in reading, math or both, including Santa Monica-Malibu Unified , Menlo Park City in the Bay Area, and Arcadia Unified in the San Gabriel Valley, northeast of Los Angeles.

Look up your school district and see how it compares with nearby areas and the rest of the state. (Note: This data includes scores for students in third through eighth grades for most public school districts; some small ones are not included. The graphics show only math scores.)

Lakisha Young, the founder of Oakland REACH, a parent organization that worked closely with some families involved in the lawsuit, told me that the plaintiffs would not receive any personal compensation from the settlement.

She said she hoped that the settlement will mean that more students across the state will get the help they need.

“We have a lot of families who are not opening up The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times — they will never know that this lawsuit happened,” she said. But if those parents see their children advancing in reading and math, she said, “then they have won.”

Sarah Mervosh is an education reporter for The Times, focusing on K-12 schools.

The rest of the news

A ferocious atmospheric-river storm that has battered California for days has started to taper off, though forecasters warned that there was a continuing danger of mudslides .

Climate change is leading to dangerous bouts of severe weather happening more and more often .

Judson Jones, a meteorologist and New York Times reporter, explains the intricacies in tracking the record-breaking storm that hit California on Sunday.

Southern California

An accountant for the San Diego City Treasurer’s Office has agreed to accept a settlement of $250,000 after reporting that she was fired after refusing to sign off on findings her bosses had changed , The San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

The ninth-oldest person in the world, Pearl Berg, died in Los Angeles yesterday at 114 , The Los Angeles Times reports.

Central California

Several Fresno gun dealers have noted a jump in their ammunition sales after a federal court ruled that California’s law requiring background checks for ammunition purchases was unconstitutional, The Fresno Bee reports.

Northern California

Mayor London Breed of San Francisco is promoting a pair of public safety proposals, including one that would require that single adults on welfare be screened and treated for addiction to illegal drugs , that are on the March 5 ballot, The Associated Press reports.

A ban on street vending on Mission Street in San Francisco, originally set to last 90 days, has been extended for an additional six months in light of a decrease in reports of assaults and robberies in the area, The San Francisco Examiner reports.

The new Sixth Street Bridge in L.A. The Sundial Bridge in Redding. The exceptionally long San Mateo-Hayward Bridge.

Which California bridge is your favorite, and why?

Tell us at [email protected] . Please include your name and the city in which you live.

And before you go, some good news

A recent study in the scientific journal Nature showed that sea otters had helped slow erosion in marshland near Monterey, The Associated Press reports .

The study measured the impact that sea otters had on erosion in a tidal estuary called Elkhorn Slough, where the once-dwindling otter population has started to recover in recent decades thanks to habitat restoration efforts.

The study compared rates of erosion in the estuary before the otters’ return with more recent data and found that the animals had helped stem erosion significantly by eating crabs that burrow deep in the marshland and make its banks less resistant to storms and rough water.

In addition to slowing erosion, sea otters have also been shown to help restore kelp forests by eating sea urchins whose seaweed diets similarly compromise the forest habitat.

Thanks for reading. We’ll be back tomorrow.

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword .

Soumya Karlamangla, Maia Coleman and Briana Scalia contributed to California Today. You can reach the team at [email protected] .

Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox .

Sarah Mervosh covers education for The Times, focusing on K-12 schools. More about Sarah Mervosh

Santa Clara Law Review

Home > Journals > Law Review

The Santa Clara Law Review is a legal periodical edited by the law students of Santa Clara University and is the only legal periodical officially sponsored by the Santa Clara University Law School Administration.

Current Issue: Volume 63 (2023-2024) , Number 3 (2024)

TECHNOLOGY, TINKER, AND THE DIGITAL SCHOOLHOUSE Simoneau, Blakely Evanthia

REACHING PAST RUCHO: A CONSTITUTIONAL TORT FOR MONEY DAMAGES AGAINST INDIVIDUALS WHO DRAW GERRYMANDERED DISTRICTS Turner, Sam

RESTORING BALANCE TO QUALIFIED IMMUNITY: MODIFIED MANDATORY SEQUENCING Cain, Patrick

UNRAVELING THE DISGORGEMENT REGIME Piras, Alessandro

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• Shake-up in US News' 2024 law school rankings

By Julianne Hill

April 9, 2024, 12:30 pm CDT

Updated: The 2024 U.S. News & World Report Best Law Schools rankings is riddled with ties, including three ties in the top tier, and a few unusual jumps.

As predicted by rankings watchers, Stanford Law School and Yale Law School came out on top—but in a tie for first that those experts didn’t expect.

While the University of Chicago Law School remains in third place, much of the top 14 (or the T14, as it is called) shifted. There’s a four-way tie for fourth place—with the University of Virginia School of Law jumping up four places to join the Duke University School of Law and Harvard Law School, which each moved up one slot to meet the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. Columbia Law School held firm at eighth place.

Meanwhile, the New York University School of Law slid down four places to ninth place, tied with the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and the University of Michigan Law School at Ann Arbor, which each moved up one spot. A spokesman for the NYU School of Law said the school had no comment on the rankings change.

The much-watched list’s methodology has shifted in recent years after many law schools started taking a pass at participating in U.S. News & World Report’s survey.

Of the current ABA-accredited law schools, 144 responded to this year’s survey, according to U.S. News & World Report, with 60% of the formula gleaned from the schools’ successful placement of graduates. The rest of the score included academic metrics about faculty resources; achievements of entering students; and opinions by other law schools, lawyers and judges on overall program quality, according to U.S. News & World Report.

Those changes have made predicting the much-touted rankings nearly a sport, with predictions starting weeks ahead. Last week, law school consultant Mike Spivey released an embargoed list of the 2024-2025 top 25 schools on his blog.

“Just last year, U.S. News published their top 14 in advance of the full rankings release, and those top 14 turned out to include errors,” he wrote in his April 3 blog post. “This year, over 50 law schools opted not to participate in U.S. News’ survey, and given that fact plus the immense scrutiny on the rankings and their trustworthiness, we think it’s worthwhile for everyone to be aware of this initially released top 25.”

This 2024-2025 embargoed rankings first were delayed a day, until April 3, and then updated the next day impacting 80 rankings, according to the TaxProf Blog written by Paul Caron, dean at the Pepperdine University Rick J. Caruso School of Law.

Also on the T14, two University of California entrants moved, with the University of California at Berkeley School of Law moved down two spots to 12th place, and the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law moved up one spot to 13th place. The top tier is rounded out another tie—with Cornell Law School down one place and the Georgetown University Law Center up one.

Notre Dame Law School jumped up seven spots to land at 20th place, and it is now tied with the University of Southern California Gould School of Law—which was down four places—along with the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill—which was up two spots—and the University of Georgia School of Law, which held firm.

Wake Forest Law School ranks 25, down three spots from last year’s ranking.

Yale Law and Stanford Law, with acceptance rates of about 6% and about 7%, respectively, are ranked the hardest law schools to get into , followed by Harvard Law, the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and the Duke University School of Law, each with about 10% acceptance rates. The numbers are based on students who started in fall 2023.

Meanwhile, the top three part-time law schools —those with at least 20 part-time students enrolled in fall 2022 and fall 2023—stayed the same. The Georgetown University Law Center comes in first place. However, the George Washington University Law School, now at No. 3, flipped places with the Fordham University School of Law, which is now in second place.

The rankings were once seen as the Bible to help aspiring lawyers determine where to apply. In a survey of law school admissions officers from 86 accredited law schools by test prep company Kaplan, it shows that 51% of law schools think that U.S. News & World Report’s rankings “have lost some of their prestige over the last couple of years;” 18% disagree, and the remaining 31% don’t take a position, according to an April 9 press release.

A separate Kaplan survey of nearly 400 prelaw students, who often base their application decision on the rankings, found that 37% said it would be a “positive development for both law schools and applicants to no longer have rankings at all;” 53% disagreed, and 10% were unsure, according to the press release.

Updated April 11 at 9:54 a.m. to correct the rankings of Cornell Law School and the Georgetown University Law Center.

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Senate Education Committee is warning universities to comply with anti-DEI law. Here's why

The Texas Legislature last year banned Diversity, Equity and Inclusion offices and initiatives at public universities and colleges; now the Senate Committee on Education is calling to the carpet the administrators of the institutions of higher education to prove how the schools are complying with Senate Bill 17 .

Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, who wrote the anti-DEI law, warned university system chancellors and regents in a March 26 letter that lawmakers can take legal action and even freeze state funding if they do not comply with the law.

“While I am encouraged with the progress I have seen from many institutions of higher education in implementing SB 17, I am deeply concerned with the possibility that many institutions may choose to merely rename their offices or employee titles,” he wrote. “This letter should serve as notice that this practice is unacceptable.”

More: Higher education in Texas: What lawmakers hope to tackle in the 89th legislative session

The Senate Education Committee is holding a hearing in May for university system chancellors and general counsels to lay out how their institutions are ensuring that there are no DEI offices or training, no diversity statements in hiring and only merit-based employment offers with no considerations for race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin.

Creighton's letter was sent to the University of North Texas System, Texas Woman’s University System, Texas A&M University System, University of Texas System, University of Houston System, Texas Tech University System and Texas State University System.

Creighton told the American-Statesman that he sent the letter to give university administrators advance notice of the hearing, and he said that what the committee learns from the discussions will help guide any actions.

"These institutions have had sufficient time to implement this new law, and I expect that the committee will hear from university leadership on their successes and any obstacles they've encountered," he said in a written answer to the Statesman. "By providing them clear directives, the committee can work efficiently to determine whether more needs to be done next session."

SB 17, which went into effect Jan. 1, resulted in the quiet and hurried closing of DEI programs at all Texas public colleges and universities. The office and program shutterings at UT in Austin included the Multicultural Engagement Center and Monarch, a program to help undocumented students. UT-sponsored student multicultural organizations lost school funding. The Gender and Sexuality Center was replaced with the Women's Community Center, and the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement was replaced with the Division of Campus and Community Engagement.

More: What UT lost with SB 17: American-Statesman's guide to changes due to Texas' anti-DEI law

SB 17 does not apply to academic course instruction, research, registered student groups, guest speakers, data collection, recruitment, guest speakers or policies implemented to support students without regard to race, sex, color or ethnicity.

'Everything’s on the table'

Some students, professors and lawyers have complained that the universities are overcomplying with SB 17 and creating a chilling effect on campuses by removing protections against the historical exclusion of students of color and those who are LGBTQ+.

“DEI offices are not and have never been an instrument to promote one race or gender or sexual orientation above another,” Courtney Avant, legislative counsel for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ rights nonprofit, told the Statesman in January. "They have been a critical tool to address inequality and discrimination."

Those against DEI policies, however, say the law doesn't go far enough.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, held its annual policy summit in Austin the week before Creighton sent his letter to university system administrators. The summit had multiple panels about higher education, including one in which Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said that "everything's on the table" next legislative session to keep Texas a leader in the fight against "woke" ideologies — or identity politics — on college campuses. He said the Legislature is not satisfied with SB 17 alone, and that more needs to be done.

"We're going to ask some very tough questions to make sure that it's actually being enacted in the way that the bill intended," Bettencourt, who serves on the Senate Education Committee, said at the panel about SB 17.

More: 'Exhausted', 'confused,' 'unprecedented': Texas professors, students reflect on DEI ban

The Chronicle of Higher Education is tracking 82 bills targeting DEI across 28 states since 2023. So far, 12 have become law. Creighton said SB 17 is the strongest yet.

"Recognized as the most robust DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) prohibition in the nation, this bill mandates a fundamental shift in the operation of our higher education institutions," Creighton said in his March 26 letter. "The Texas State Legislature, along with the people of Texas, anticipate that each institution will undertake sincere efforts to align with the bill's provisions, ensuring a merit-based environment where every student, faculty, and staff member can strive for and achieve personal excellence."