- Opponents, including U.S. Department of Justice, go after school choice programs in court [Jason Bedrick, more]
- Study finds bullying programs may have opposite from intended effect. Why, next they’ll tell us D.A.R.E. is a flop at curbing drug use. Oh wait [CBS Dallas]
- National Association of the Deaf files lawsuit against Maryland, seeking captioning at sporting events [WaPo]
- “NYC will spend $29 million on salaries, benefits of educators it can’t fire” [NY Daily News] [NY Times]
- Gotta-cover-yourself incident and accident reports clog the classroom day with paper [Ted Frank, Point of Law]
- “IRBs and mission creep” [Dave Hoffman, Prawfs, earlier]
- Boy who drew cartoonish bomb at home suspended, reinstated [Fox Carolina, Free-Range Kids]
Posts Tagged ‘disability & schools’
Disabled rights roundup
- A rein on line-jumping by disabled tour guides? Walt Disney World changes ride admission policy [WKMG Orlando, earlier here and here]
- Every body into the ADA: Michael Stein, Anita Silvers, Brad Areheart, and Leslie Francis in U. Chi. Law Review are latest to propose “universal” right to accommodation [Bagenstos]
- Speaking of which, everyone interested in disability law should be following Prof. Sam Bagenstos’s Disability Law Blog, the ultimate source of many articles linked in this space. I’m honored that Prof. Bagenstos has invited me to speak to his disabilities law class today at the University of Michigan (sorry, it’s not a public event), all the more so since we regularly square off on opposite sides of these issues;
- “First ADA suit since AMA’s obesity policy: Is this the start of something big?” [HR Morning via Eric B. Meyer]
- “Disability Groups Defend California’s LSAT Anti-Flagging Law” [Karen Sloan, NLJ]
- “Student Sues Kaplan For Not Providing Sign Language Interpreter” [Florida Daily Business Review] Another movie theater captioning suit [Connecticut Law Tribune]
- Rep. Tammy Duckworth vs. putative set-aside “disabled vet”: “I’m sorry that twisting your ankle in [prep] school has now come back to hurt you in such a painful way” [Daily Caller]
- From the rumor mill: Senate Foreign Relations Committee may hold hearings next month on ratification of Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, much criticized in this space; here’s a pro-ratification Facebook group and a John Kerry op-ed to the same effect.
- From historic Julian, Calif. to Philadelphia, we all pay price of ADA’s coercive utopianism [Mario Loyola and Richard Epstein, The American Interest]
Time to rethink special education
One school attorney’s plea:
Teachers may tell you (privately) that inclusion [of special education kids in regular classroom, as mandated by federal law] often leads them to slow down and simplify classroom teaching. Yet the system is entrenched and politically correct. Many parents remain silent. Some quietly remove their kids from public schools.
Can this be anything but very bad for America?
Sports roundup
- Florida attorney John Morgan, suing NASCAR over crowd injuries, says waiver on back of ticket isn’t valid [Mike Bianchi, Orlando Sentinel, scroll to “Open Mike”; John Culhane, Slate] Idaho court denies assumption-of-risk “Baseball Rule” in foul-ball case [CBS]
- “Pennsylvania vs. NCAA: case dismissed” [antitrust; Rob Green, Abnormal Use]
- 1911 article: aviation “as safe as football”: 47 aviation vs. 60 football fatalities in 1909. [Kyle Graham, @tedfrank] “Do no harm: Who should bear the costs of retired NFL players’ medical bills?” [WaPo] “Retired Jocks Dig for Gold in the California Hills” [Jon Coppelman on state’s generous worker’s comp arrangements, earlier]
- “The Derrick Rose lawsuit and emotional distress claims in South Carolina” [Frances Zacher, Abnormal Use]
- “Parents of autistic New Jersey teen sue so he can play on” [Brick, N.J. football team; WPVI]
- NY Yankees successfully challenge company’s effort to trademark “Baseball’s Evil Empire” [Ilya Somin, Michael Schearer]
- “Memo to Roger Goodell: I’ll take my NFL football without Obamacare propaganda, please” [Bainbridge]
ADA vs. school choice programs, cont’d
Patrick Wolf at Education Next and my Cato colleague Jason Bedrick have more on the Department of Justice’s aggressive interpretation of federal disabled-rights law to go after the successful Milwaukee school-choice program (earlier). Private schools that accept vouchers, Bedrick writes, do not become government contractors “any more than grocery stores become ‘government contractors’ when citizens use their EBT cards to purchase food there.”
Schools roundup
- More commentators weigh in on the truly horrible new federal campus speech and discipline code [Harvey Silverglate /Juliana DeVries, Minding the Campus; Wendy Kaminer, The Atlantic; Will Creeley, HuffPo; Scott Greenfield; Reason TV; my two cents] More: Greg Lukianoff, WSJ.
- Feds: states must impose extensive disability-rights regime — including obligations to accept students with difficult accommodation needs — on private/religious schools participating in voucher programs [Bagenstos, Disability Law; Ramesh Ponnuru (noting that loading new regulatory burdens onto private and religious schools may not be displeasing to school choice opponents in the administration)] NYC’s famous selective/performance schools obliged to take special ed kids who can’t meet standard entrance or audition requirements [Inside Schools]
- Volunteer-led school band survives shutdown attempt by Oregon teachers’ union [Katherine Mangu-Ward]
- AFT: donate to groups that oppose our aims, and we’ll see that you pay [Jason Bedrick, Cato]
- Chicago: “Teachers union plans to file civil rights suits to stop school closings” [Chicago Tribune]
- Newly passed Minnesota “anti-bullying” law will expand state control over local schools [Pioneer Press] Court proceedings over alleged taunting and insults proliferate under New Jersey’s law [Star-Ledger via Reason]
- “Graduates, your ambition is the problem” [Roger Pilon on the president’s Ohio State commencement address]
“Student Who Sued GVSU Over Campus Pet Rule Honored”
First the complaint, then the money, now the public accolade: as we noted last month, student Kendra Velzen filed a complaint — and got a $40,000 settlement — after administrators at Grand Valley State University in Michigan declined to allow her emotional-support guinea pig to live with her in the dorm, even though she had a doctor’s note for it. Now the “Fair Housing Center of West Michigan has given … Velzen its annual Outstanding Effort by an Individual award. The group says Velzen was honored for promoting ‘equal housing opportunity for university students throughout the country.'” The center has a previous connection with the case, having assisted Velzen in her complaint. [AP/WILX]
Schools roundup
- Appalling: pursuing the logic of equality arguments, prominent constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinsky has proposed abolishing private/religious/home K-12 schooling [Eugene Volokh, Rick Garnett, Marc DeGirolami]
- How wrong is the NRA on school security? So wrong that even Marian Wright Edelman makes more sense [Gene Healy]
- Schools, marriage, and self-replicating elites: Ross Douthat tells some secrets of the NYT-reading class [NYT]
- Critics flay Connecticut bill to require school mental health checkups of children [Raising Hale]
- “How the Anti-Bully Movement is Hurting Kids: An Interview with Bully Nation’s Susan Porter” [Tracy Oppenheimer, Reason]
- Montgomery County, Maryland pols concerned some public schools might become unfairly good [DC Examiner] Also in Maryland, there’s a push to emulate a truly bad New Jersey idea by shifting the burden of proof onto schools in special education disputes [WaPo]
- Telephone frustration in New Haven: “How public schools drive us away…” [Mark Oppenheimer]
Massive new mandate for schools to provide disabled sports
Don’t you wish we’d heard more about this before the election, and not just afterward?
Breaking new ground, the U.S. Education Department is telling schools they must include students with disabilities in sports programs or provide equal alternative options. The directive, reminiscent of the Title IX expansion of athletic opportunities for women, could bring sweeping changes to school budgets and locker rooms for years to come.
Schools would be required to make “reasonable modifications” for students with disabilities or create parallel athletic programs that have comparable standing as mainstream programs.
[AP/Yahoo, New York Times, Michael Petrilli/NR (“The Obama Administration Invents a Right to Wheelchair Basketball”)]
“Teacher claims discrimination over her fear of kids”
“A longtime French and Spanish high school teacher is suing the Mariemont school district, alleging it discriminated against her because she has a disability – she has a phobia of young children.” [Cincinnati Enquirer] More: Eric Owens, Daily Caller.