Knowing school law empowers teachers

Wednesday, October 29, 2008 -

Understanding school law empowers teachers, says Julie Mead, professor in UW-Madison’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis.

“Not understanding school law can lead to problems,” Mead says. Unfortunately, teachers don’t always get reliable advice.

“Teachers make assumptions,” she says. “They erroneously believe that they can’t do something when they can.”  Or they might think they can do something that they legally can’t.

Veteran teachers who have taken Mead’s school law course as part of their administrator preparation have told her that they wished they’d learned more about the law as part of their teacher training.

But teacher preparation programs generally have not included courses in law. That is beginning to change, according to Mead, who says that UW-Madison has the capacity to lead in this area.

Working the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, she developed a course for undergraduate teachers in training on legal rights and responsibilities, which was offered this fall for the first time.

“It’s a course I’ve wanted to teach for sometime,” Mead says. “Teachers need this information.”

“Every public school teacher has to have a grasp of the legal framework on which the schools are built,” says Julie Underwood, dean of the School of Education.

As a professor of educational administration at UW-Madison in the 1980s and 90s, Underwood specialized in school law. Prior to returning to Madison in 2005 as dean, she dealt with a range of legal issues as general counsel for the National School Boards Association in Washington, D.C.

“We developed an undergraduate school law for teachers course in the early ‘90s,” says Underwood, who was Mead’s Ph.D. advisor.  “But it is very hard for undergraduate teacher certification students to fit any additional coursework into their schedule.  I hope they find a way now, because the information is valuable.”

The new course will be offered at least through the spring and fall ’09 semesters, to see if sufficient numbers of students enroll.

Calling Mead a “fabulous teacher,” Underwood says, “Julie provides legal information from the perspective of empowering people, so you know parameters and understand why they are set – as opposed to scaring people into submission.”

Mead explains how her perspective on school law differs from what teachers might hear from an attorney:

Lawyers generally address school law through a discussion of cases, which, by definition, means that something went wrong.

In contrast, Mead tries to help teachers understand that law merely bounds their discretion. It can tell them what they “may” or “must” do to be consistent with the law, but it cannot tell them how to exercise that discretion.

“Exercising discretion requires educators to examine what they ‘should’ do – a matter of setting good educational policy,” she says.

“All teaching is an expression of values,” she says.

Understanding the legal boundaries can make teachers more comfortable and guide them in respectfully balancing legitimate competing interests. And having a stronger base of knowledge enables teachers to model democracy as they teach democracy, she says.

Mead often links her graduate school law classes to practice, even having her ELPA students serve as consultation teams for schools seeking guidance on real issues. In all of her law classes, she addresses a range of topics, led by religion, liabilities, boundaries of discipline and special education.

On questions that start “Do I, as a teacher, have a right …?” Mead says the answer often is “no.” She reminds teachers, “This place isn’t about you.” 

In schools, students generally are in the rights-based position and teachers in the responsibilities-based position, with rights on matters of employer-employee relations.

-- by Kerry G. Hill

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