Source: https://www.educationnext.org/author/jdunn/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 10:31:51+00:00

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Joshua Dunn is professor of political science at the University of Colorado–Colorado Springs. His research focuses on judicial policymaking and in particular the influence of the courts on education. He is the author of Complex Justice: The Case of Missouri v. Jenkins (University of North Carolina Press 2008) and the co-editor, with Martin West, of From Schoolhouse to Courthouse: The Judiciary’s Role in American Education (Brookings 2009). He also authors a quarterly article on law and education for Education Next.
A compelling play on the wrong stage?
Conservatives didn’t weaponize the First Amendment; the authors of the Bill of Rights did.
If the four Supreme Court justices who sided with Friedrichs vote to hear Mark Janus’s case, and if Neil Gorsuch votes according to expectations, agency fees could be dead by the end of the court’s next term.
With Justice Antonin Scalia’s unexpected passing, we can’t help but ask what will happen with Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which appeared headed to a 5-4 split.
In the real world, limited resources force state legislatures to make tough choices about allocating tax dollars to roads, police, prisons, parks, and K-12 education.
The education community should be watching to see how the Supreme Court rules on a housing case from Dallas which considers whether plaintiffs can bring “disparate impact” claims under the Fair Housing Act (FHA).
Who Needs the Law When You Have OCR?
The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights lacks any reasonable legal foundation for its adventures in educational management.
Schools, we are constantly told, are supposed to educate students for citizenship. Part of being an American citizen is learning to tolerate speech that you don’t like.
Today’s guidelines announced in Baltimore by the Justice and Education Departments brings the tortured logic of disparate impact to school discipline.
Voters think Colorado already has good schools and were not in the mood to approve the largest tax hike in state history.
The court’s decisive ruling upholding the constitutionality of the current system will make it much more difficult to convince Colorado voters to open their wallets.
Courts are undoubtedly going to be called upon to draw lines which will inevitably have some appearance of arbitrariness.
The AEA and other Alabama choice opponents had better pray for a miracle, or prepare for the country’s newest tax credit program to become law.
Few good things came out of Hurricane Katrina but one has been the transformation of the New Orleans’ school system.
Last Thursday, Washington’s Supreme Court ruled that the state legislature needs to spend more on education. At first glance, the ruling looks like significant victory for the plaintiffs, but a close reading of the ruling shows that looks can be deceiving.
In our latest Legal Beat column, Martha Derthick and I discuss a case, Renee v. Duncan, where the 9th Circuit held that teachers seeking alternative certification could not count as highly qualified under No Child Left Behind.
South Carolina is on the cusp of leapfrogging most of the competition by passing one of the most ambitious pieces of school choice legislation in the country.
Last week the media reported the apparently shocking news that the Kansas City, Missouri School District school board voted 5-4 to close nearly half of its schools, 26 of 61 schools in the district. But those familiar with the district were not surprised. The real question is not why the school board has decided to close so many schools but why it took them so long.
On Monday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that his department will expand its efforts in civil rights enforcement. Like everything this sounds fantastic in the abstract. Who after all publicly declares that they oppose protecting civil rights? The details, though, paint a more troublesome picture.
In “Strange Bedfellows,” Martha Derthick and I wrote on a case out of Texas, Palmer v. Waxahachie Independent School District, that brought two unusual groups together on the same side: supporters of John Edwards and Christian conservatives.
The new issue of Education Next includes a “legal beat” column by Martha Derthick and myself that discusses three important rulings from the Supreme Court’s last term. “Receiving almost no attention but potentially of utmost significance,” we wrote, “was Horne v. Flores, a case about English-language learning in which the court divided narrowly along ideological lines, with Kennedy joining the five-member majority.” Anyone doubting the potential significance of the Supreme Court’s decision in Horne v. Flores should consider two recent developments in Florida and Colorado.
Colorado’s state Supreme Court defied national trends on Monday, handing down a decision in Lobato v. State that thrusts the judiciary into the middle of the state’s educational finance disputes.

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