Opinion ID: 1758520
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Educational Malpractice Defined

Text: Peter W v. San Francisco Unified School Dist., 60 Cal.App.3d 814, 131 Cal.Rptr. 854 (1976), is considered to be the seminal case in the area of so-called educational malpractice. There, the eighteen-year-old plaintiff sued his school district for, among other things, negligently failing to teach him basic academic skills such as reading and writing. Id. at 818, 131 Cal.Rptr. 854. Refusing to recognize a cause of action for what it characterized as educational malfeasance, the California court reasoned: On occasions when the Supreme Court has opened or sanctioned new areas of tort liability, it has noted that the wrongs and injuries involved were both comprehensible and assessable within the existing judicial framework.... This is simply not true of wrongful conduct and injuries allegedly involved in educational malfeasance. Unlike the activity of the highway or the marketplace, classroom methodology affords no readily acceptable standards of care, or cause, or injury. The science of pedagogy itself is fraught with different and conflicting theories of how or what a child should be taught, and any layman mightand commonly doeshave his own emphatic views on the subject. The injury claimed here is plaintiff's inability to read and write. Substantial professional authority attests that the achievement of literacy in the schools, or its failure, are influenced by a host of factors which affect the pupil subjectively, from outside the formal teaching process, and beyond the control of its ministers. They may be physical, neurological, emotional, cultural, environmental; they may be present but not perceived, recognized but not identified. We find in this situation no conceivable workability of a rule of care against which defendants' alleged conduct may be measured ..., no reasonable degree of certainty that ... plaintiff suffered injury within the meaning of the law of negligence ..., and no such perceptible connection between the defendant's conduct and the injury suffered, as alleged, which would establish a causal link between them within the same meaning. [ Id. at 824-825, 131 Cal.Rptr. 854 (citations omitted).] Peter W represents the classic case of educational malpractice in which a public school is alleged to have failed to adequately instruct a student in basic academic skills. Such claims, including those directed at institutions of higher learning, are uniformly disfavored. [6] Courts have also considered and rejected educational malpractice claims arising out of an alleged misdiagnosis of learning disabilities. [7] Various public policy grounds have been advanced by those courts that have refused to recognize claims of educational malpractice, including: (1) the lack of a satisfactory standard of care by which to evaluate an educator; (2) the inherent uncertainties about causation and the nature of damages in light of such intervening factors as a student's attitude, motivation, temperament, past experience, and home environment; (3) the potential for a flood of litigation against schools; and (4) the possibility that such claims will embroil the courts into overseeing the day-to-day operations of schools. [ Alsides v. Brown Institute, Ltd., 592 N.W.2d 468, 472 (Minn.App., 1999) (citation omitted).] These and other related public policy grounds have also been cited by various courts that have declined to impose liability on proprietary and trade schools for educational malpractice. In Cavaliere v. Duff's Business Inst., 413 Pa.Super. 357, 605 A.2d 397 (1992), the Pennsylvania court upheld the dismissal of the plaintiffs' claim for educational malpractice brought against a court reporting school. The court explained: The concerns that are clearly appropriate in the case of an academic institution are equally raised by an attempt to inquire into the sufficiency of teaching methods at a trade or business school like the Institute. This court would be hard pressed to determine which of several alternative methods of teaching court reporting, or auto repair, or any other specialized business or trade skill was the appropriate one. Nor would it be an easy task to determine why a particular student failed to acquire certain skills after pursuing a course of instruction aimed at teaching those skills. [ Id. at 369, 605 A.2d 397.] Similarly, in Tolman v. CenCor Career Colleges, Inc., 851 P.2d 203 (Colo.App., 1992), aff'd. 868 P.2d 396 (Colo., 1994), the Colorado court upheld the dismissal of educational malpractice claims brought by nineteen former students of a vocational school for medical and dental assistants. The court relied on the following public policy rationale: Since education is a collaborative and subjective process whose success is largely reliant on the student, and since the existence of such outside factors as a student's attitude and abilities render it impossible to establish any quality or curriculum deficiencies as a proximate cause to any injuries, we rule that there is no workable standard of care here and defendant would face an undue burden if forced to litigate its selection of curriculum and teaching methods. [ Id. at 205.]