American society is groaning under a tide of litigiousness, and education is one of the fields most profoundly affected by it. "Legal fear" - the paralysis caused by frivolous lawsuits - has deprived "teachers and principals of the freedom to use their own common sense and best judgment. Thanks to judicial rulings and laws over the past four decades, parents can sue if their kids are suspended for even a single day - for any reason - without adequate 'due process.'" It has also tied the hands of administrators seeking to do what's best for the greatest number of students, as in the case of the serial vandalizer who was expelled from a public school after a $40,000 graffiti spree. The lad's mother hired psychologists who diagnosed attention deficit disorder - and the courts ordered him returned to school on grounds that the system had failed to prove that his previously undiagnosed malady hadn't been a factor in his behavior. Besides the financial costs - New York City alone spends $550 million a year on legal settlements - this regimen rends the fabric of trust necessary to keep civil society strong. The authors of this long article (in three parts; only one deals with education) advocate tort reform, a greater reliance on arbitration, and also removing disputes about student discipline from the courts completely, relying instead on parent-teacher committees to provide oversight of administrators who would otherwise be free to use their common sense to protect the rights of other children in the classroom. There's also a fine profile of Philip Howard and his group, Common Good, which last month kicked off a new initiative in legal reform for America's schools with a Brookings Institution conference (See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=122#1533). Howard is fighting the good fight on tort and legal reform.
"Civil wars," by Stuart Taylor, Jr. and Evan Thomas, Newsweek, December 15, 2003