Assignment:
I know that a lot of people talk about the No Child Left Behind law that affects schools across the US but what about all the other laws?
Today's schools function in a complex legal environment. A wide range of legal issues influence the lives of teachers, students, parents, and administrators (Fischer, Schimmel, & Kelly, 1995). Some legal decisions, such as how local education will be financed or where the next new school building will be located, relate to general control of the school curriculum. Other decisions deal with issues of classroom teachers' authority as they perform duties required by their job assignments (Nolte, 1983).
Recent court proceedings reflect an increase in settlements related to educational matters (Hartmeister, 1995). The National Education Association (NEA) reports approximately 14,500 teacher employment disputes in 1992-1993, resulting in expenditures of $24,650,000 by the organization's legal fund (Patterson & Rossow, 1996). NEA figures do not include tort claims. Applying a finding by Underwood and Noffke (cited in Pell, 1994) that 42.5% of all education cases involve employee issues to the information supplied by the NEA, we extrapolate that in 1992-1993, teachers and their districts were involved in at least 27,500 legal disputes in such matters as employee...
The No Child Left behind has left less time for education and more time on how to pass a test. I would like to look at the reverse effects that this theory places on classrooms and teachers...