2024 Reparations Priority Bill Package: New California Laws Taking Effect

"Now in its fully-updated third edition, California School Law is the only comprehensive resource that examines how federal and state law affects the day-to-day operation of the state's traditional public, charter, and private schools. Accessible and broadly appealing, this indispensible desktop reference is vital reading for administrators, school attorneys, union leaders, and policymakers. Fully updated to reflect recent developments in educational jurisprudence, the newest edition of California School Law explains the legal framework within which California schooling operates. The book examines student attendance and truancy, curriculum law, teacher and student rights of expression--including the use of electronic communication devices and social media, religion, students with disabilities, discipline, privacy and search and seizure, race and gender discrimination, and issues of legal liability. The book's companion website provides new information as it becomes available, and ensures all coverage is up-to-date. "-- Provided by publisher

Over the past decade, No Child Left Behind, Common Core, Race to the Top, data mining initiatives, Title Ix gender equity, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, and executive actions on immigration illustrate key federal initiatives that have redefined standards, priorities, and practices within educational institutions. Similarly, state policies in terms of school funding, school choice, teacher qualifications, student bullying, and other measures have added another layer of complexity to the education law and policy dialogue particularly when addressing matters of education inequality. These emergent policies beget the question: how have these policies contributed to easing the effects of educational inequality? The purpose of this book is to examine the role of law as potentially countering or impeding desirable education reforms, and it calls on readers to consider how policymakers, lawyers, social scientists, and educators might best alter the course in an effort to advance a more just and less unequal educational system

Answers the calls of grassroots communities pressing for integration and increased education funding with a complete rethinking of school discipline In the era of zero tolerance, we are flooded with stories about schools issuing draconian punishments for relatively innocent behavior. One student was suspended for chewing a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun. Another was expelled for cursing on social media from home. Suspension and expulsion rates have doubled over the past three decades as zero tolerance policies have become the normal response to a host of minor infractions that extend well beyond just drugs and weapons. Students from all demographic groups have suffered, but minority and special needs students have suffered the most. On average, middle and high schools suspend one out of four African American students at least once a year. The effects of these policies are devastating. Just one suspension in the ninth grade doubles the likelihood that a student will drop out. Fifty percent of students who drop out are subsequently unemployed. Eighty percent of prisoners are high school drop outs. The risks associated with suspension and expulsion are so high that, as a practical matter, they amount to educational death penalties, not behavioral correction tools. Most important, punitive discipline policies undermine the quality of education that innocent bystanders receive as well--the exact opposite of what schools intend. Derek Black, a former attorney with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, weaves stories about individual students, lessons from social science, and the outcomes of courts cases to unearth a shockingly irrational system of punishment. While schools and legislatures have proven unable and unwilling to amend their failing policies, Ending Zero Tolerance argues for constitutional protections to check abuses in school discipline and lays out theories by which courts should re-engage to enforce students' rights and support broader reforms.