This volume combines both the broader and narrower aspects of school-related law to provide increased understanding of the legal realities and responsibilities of American teachers and administrators. The book depicts the flow of authority in American polity, from the national level in the Constitution's grant of power in the Tenth Amendment to the local level in the development of policy by local school boards. Selected statutes and cases provide a framework of national rulings on educational matters, but the emphasis is on the role of the state as the critical force in decision making...

School teachers and administrators may be the largest single group of rule enforcers in American society. Operating under legislative statutes, court cases, board policies, program regulations, and so on, there appears to be no end to that part of their professional tasks that calls for them to be on-the-spot enforcers in an adult to child relationship. Using constitutionality of operations within a school as its central focal point, the book takes both the broader and the narrower aspects of the law and combines them to provide an extended understanding of the realities in which...