Education Law Guide 2015 0

EDUCATION LAW

A Career Guide

Written By:

Dan Ahearn, Attorney Advisor

Tori Powers, Summer Fellow 2014

pia@law.harvard.edu

www.law.harvard.edu/current/careers/opia/

Education Law Guide 2015 1

Table of Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 2

Practice Settings ...................................................................................................................... 3

Content Areas ......................................................................................................................... 6

Finding a Job ......................................................................................................................... 10

Professional Narratives ....................................................................................................... 13

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1. AN INTRODUCTION TO EDUCATION LAW

Education provides students with key skills to succeed in society and in life. Without an

appropriate education, individuals may face challenges obtaining employment and other

necessities. The United States has long acknowledged the connection between education

and success, and over the past fifteen years, the education reform movement has gained

momentum and instigated national and statewide educational reform initiatives.

In tandem with the rise of the educational reform movement, the number of law students

profits and advocacy groups may also focus on broader policy issues relating to educational

reform via legislative and advocacy work. Finally, lawyers may work in the educational field

not as lawyers per se but as individuals who seek to change education through the use of

their legal skills in school governance or reform initiatives.

This Guide's purpose is to provide you with a resource that outlines some of the career

options in education law. As such, it provides practical information on practice settings,

content areas, and finding a job. In addition, it contains personal narratives intended to

offer windows into the lives of lawyers in the field. Some lawyers work in traditional legal

environments while others utilize their legal training in non-traditional settings. In this

students. Therefore, we hope that this Guide will provide answers to some of your

questions and serve as an effective roadmap for your career in education law.

Dan Ahearn

Attorney Advisor

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When working in education law, you may practice in a variety of settings. This section

describes and provides general information on three distinct practice settings.

education policy. In a non-profit

organization, attorneys may have any of

the following responsibilities: educating

community groups about their rights,

coordinating grassroots community

organizing, facilitating the passage of

legislation, supervising paralegals in case

preparation, giving technical assistance

to clients via phone conversations, or

representing clients in administrative

legal teams or coalitions is generally a

part of a non-profit attorney's work in

the education field.

These organizations rely on a combination of government funding, foundation support via

grants, or fee for service. There is generally a core team of attorneys who manage the

organization and who may or may not handle caseloads or direct legislative activity. In

addition to the core group, funding allows for specific initiatives via the hiring of attorneys

to initiate or direct new projects relating to education law such as education reform, juvenile

justice and education linkage, or examining the relationship between minority status and

the full benefit of their depth of knowledge. The disadvantages are that you will likely earn a

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The Office of General Counsel provides legal

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Education law offers a variety of opportunities to work with issues that overlap with areas

such as children's law, administrative law, health law, and employment law. This section is

Whether working on behalf of students and parents or representing a school district, an issue

that arises frequently is maintaining safe school environments. In light of deaths, threats and

serious incidents in schools, school authorities are increasingly vigilant about safety.

As a result, attorneys are involved in writing and interpreting provisions relating to discipline

in school handbooks.

Based on handbook language and applicable state law, school personnel may suspend or

expel a student. With zero tolerance statutes in most states, an expulsion can mean lifetime

exclusion from education. Attorneys must, therefore, carefully examine due process

protections to ensure that proper procedures are followed. Attorneys representing students

refinement, expansion, or restriction of disciplinary language in statutes and policies. Finally,

attorneys may be involved in studying and tracking school discipline data to help better

inform any reform efforts relating to discipline. For example, data analysis relating to the

"school to prison pipeline" helps to reveal systemic gaps and drive legislative reform where

school discipline policies, such as zero-tolerance, lead to criminalization, instead of

education, of students.

Civil rights of both students and teachers are a frequent topic for attorneys in education law.

Attorneys must be familiar with, and provide advice about, issues as diverse as free speech in

a school setting, freedom of religion, or testing for substance abuse. Searches of student

backpacks, lockers, vehicles etc. also involve interpretation of constitutional law.

Another civil rights issue that arises in the education law arena is discrimination.

school through graduate school. Discrimination may be based on race, gender, national

origin, disability, age, or sexual orientation. For example, students may require

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coordinate investigations into alleged civil rights violations.

A high profile, and hence high interest issue, for many law students is education reform.

Education reform is a policy driven initiative where attorneys help shape legislation and

policy designed to improve public education in the United States. During the last decade,

education reform has swept across the country to the point where each state now has some

requirements. Finally, private

corporations, non-profits, and

foundations have increased their activity

in the education reform arena.

Often, the forces used to drive school

reform are litigation, legislation and

policy. Attorneys pursue class action

lawsuits in an effort to spur action, and

this litigation often results in reallocation

education may, in turn, interpret legislation to develop policies and implement legislative

reform goals.

As mentioned above, one of the common issues in education reform is the emphasis on

national and statewide assessments to measure progress and to determine if children will

earn a high school diploma or if individual public schools are providing an appropriate

quality of education. In this context, attorneys may serve as advocates for children to ensure

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Another issue in education reform is the development of alternatives to traditional public

schools. As such, attorneys may become involved in the formation of charter schools,

magnet schools, or pilot schools. Attorneys may serve in non-traditional legal capacities as

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My route to an education law career was somewhat circuitous. I entered law school in 1984

after three years in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (“JVC”). Through the JVC, I worked for an

agency in Philadelphia that advocated on behalf of residents of boarding homes who had

been abruptly dumped into the community during the hasty and poorly executed

deinstitutionalization of Pennsylvania’s large state hospitals in the 1970s. Our office was

located within a Community Legal Services office. We often worked with legal services

attorneys to push for legislation, licensing and proper oversight of the boarding homes.

From this experience, I came to law school with a well founded interest in poverty law.

At HLS, I happily found a community of like minded classmates and school organizations

Public Schools for their disparate treatment of African-American and Hispanic students in

in 2000. Brian came into our lives with a little something extra: a forty-seventh chromosome

more deeply involved in the disability community, including joining and becoming president

work in litigation, I joined a start-up firm that concentrated in personal injury, civil rights

and product liability work, I took over and ran a civil rights suit against the Worcester

schools and city. The lawsuit arose from three years of abuse by a teacher of several

students with significant special needs. During the district attorney’s investigation and

ultimate prosecution of the teacher, aides disclosed that their reports of the teacher hitting

students had gone unaddressed. I devoted much of my practice to this case which settled in

the middle of the trial in federal court.

I began taking on other civil rights cases involving students with special needs and had a

growing interest in representing families with children with special needs in education

matters. I began exploring starting my own firm with a colleague from LACCM but

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resources and the cost of the advocacy. This variety of clients also provides a depth and

range to our practice.

Unlike virtually all special education attorneys who practice solo, I work with a group of

difference in the lives of others, and are able to make a living doing it.

I arrived at HLS from the Mississippi Delta, where I spent two years as a Teach for America

During law school, I explored a variety of different types of public interest legal work.

Discovering that I really enjoyed having a direct relationship with clients, I applied for a

Skadden Fellowship to work at the Atlanta Legal Aid Society. I learned a lot about myself as

during my two years at Legal Aid. I loved the opportunity to make a positive difference in

people's lives, but I didn’t actually find the law and legal process especially compelling in

their own right. I also recommitted myself to education reform. I kept returning to the idea

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to learn about a new organization called KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program), which was

recruiting people to train to open college preparatory charter middle schools across the

country. KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg captured my imagination with his message of a

fundamentally different kind of public school that would prove that high expectations, hard

first experience managing adults, and leading teachers and building positive relationships

with parents was often much more challenging that managing the children. As a charter

school principal I also had to learn a wide array of business skills – everything from

developing budget and cash flow projections, to assembling a benefits package for my staff,

to overseeing the facilities, food services, and transportation services for my school.

the city, state, and nation.

After five years as principal, I made the difficult decision to leave my school and move to

New York City. This transition created another opportunity for me to take stock of my

career and my role in public education reform. As much as I had loved and believed in my

school in Atlanta, one nagging issue always bothered me. No matter how successful we

were in educating our 300 students, there would always be many hundreds more in the

neighborhood who were stuck going to underperforming public schools. They might never

receive the kinds of educational and life opportunities that they deserved. I came to believe

public education options for children, they themselves will not lead us to the end goal of

ensuring that every child has access to an excellent public school. I therefore joined the

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is a tremendous challenge, as is navigating the politics of a huge bureaucracy. But each

evening, I come home knowing that I’ve spent my day advocating for and helping

implement solutions to the problems I care most deeply about, and I wouldn’t trade that for

the world.

Beth Tossell HLS 2007

I decided to go to law school because I saw the law as a powerful tool for social justice. My

bedrock belief that each human life is equally valuable has led me to work on behalf

I spent the summer after my 1L year in Louisiana at a nonprofit that represented death row

inmates. I assisted with mitigation investigations, which meant extensive research into the

personal histories of the men (and a few women) we represented in an effort to find out

facts that would convince a jury not to impose the death penalty. In our research, we very

often found evidence of unaddressed disabilities. During my 2L summer, I worked at the

Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where I represented teenagers

incarcerated at DC's juvenile prison. I again found that many of the teens had never received

the help they needed to address their disabilities. I vividly remember one 16-year-old who

would ask me to write letters home for him because he could not write complete sentences.

After exploring a number of nonprofits in the DC area, I decided to work with Children's

Law Center as my fellowship sponsor. In partnership with CLC, I developed a project that

focused on special education advocacy for teenagers living in foster care group homes.

Because of the structure of the federal special education law, these teenagers had no ability

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the work rewarding in large part because I was able to have a great deal of contact with the

students and their parents. In a typical week, I would meet with clients at their homes, speak

to their therapists and doctors, observe them in the classroom, and advocate for

improvements to their special education programs in meetings with their schools. I was

part of the work is developing creative systemic reform proposals. Since our work is so

closely tied to our clients' experiences, we are presented constantly with new problems that

require innovative solutions.

The most gratifying part of my policy work so far actually occurred this year, when I had the

opportunity to develop an extensive package of special education reform legislation at the

adults.

My favorite part of working in education law is that there is so much hope. The children I

represent have immense potential. There are certainly times when it is hard to maintain hope

in the face of my clients’ difficult circumstances, but over the last seven years I have had the

incredible privilege of seeing many children make remarkable progress. That’s what keeps

me in this field, and it’s hard for me to imagine anything more inspiring.

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Education Law Center of Pennsylvania, Staff Attorney

Fifty five years after Brown, equal opportunity is still a distant dream for many children. At

families. Each year, we help thousands of children to gain access to the best possible public

education. Some are students with disabilities, children in foster care, or children facing

unfair discipline. I have the job I went to law school to get!

I had focused on urban education policy in college and knew I wanted to practice education

law—even if I was not 100% sure what that meant. My college summers were spent

working at the Children’s Defense Fund and the Education Trust (two other great

organizations you should check out)! After college, I sought classroom experience, to have a

better sense of the classroom challenges from a teacher’s perspective. Teaching kindergarten

and first grade was definitely harder than being a 1L. But I learned a lot about education in a

education case. These experiences greatly enriched my law school experience and I highly

Department of Justice’s Educational Opportunities Section in the Civil Rights Division

following summer I split my time, working at a large New York law firm for part of the

fabulous way to gain exposure to organizations doing innovative work while applying what

what I wanted (and did not want) to do after law school.

After clerking for a federal judge, I wanted to take my 20+ years of education and finally

make my education path available and accessible to all children. With the patient help of

Alexa Shabecoff, Judy Murciano, and Harvard’s Skirnick and Kaufman Scholarships, I found

my dream job at the Education Law Center of Pennsylvania. Four years later, I am now a

staff attorney, having been hired at ELC when my fellowship there ended.

At the Education Law Center, I focus on school discipline law and the education of children

emerging from the juvenile justice system, though as an office, our scope is much larger.

Our goal is to improve the school experience for all children. Specifically, we focus on many

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• Joseph was accused of taking part in a fight at school. A judge heard the evidence and

the decision and assigned Joseph to an alternative school for disruptive youth. ELC

intervened and Joseph was able to return to his own school.

• Domestic violence forced Sarah and her mother to leave their home. Sarah wanted to

that right. School is now an important source of stability in Sarah’s otherwise uncertain

young life.

• Georgia was born with cerebral palsy. When she celebrated her third birthday, the “early

intervention” agency proposed to cut her services. With ELC’s help, Georgia’s family

persuaded the federal court that the agency’s actions violated special education law.

Georgia’s case has made it easier for other young children to receive the services to

than regular schools, provide fewer classes and generally offer no sports or extra-curricular

activities. Many kids drop out or fail out, and we see that these programs often serve as one

stop on the school-to-prison pipeline. Children are sent to these schools for all sorts of

reasons—many under Pennsylvania’s zero tolerance prohibition of weapons, which is often

misapplied.

For example, a child who picked up a smashed pencil sharpener on the playground because

it was interfering with his kickball game and gave it to his teacher was recommended to be

sent to an alternative school for possession of a weapon! Cases like this one are not an

anomaly and while we were sometimes able to help a child on an individual level (I was able

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in our state receives a quality education.

As a civil rights attorney at ELC, I am working to move children one step closer to Justice

Warren’s notion of an equal opportunity. As you get ready to launch your career as an

spent one summer with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights; and

fortune of assisting Professor Martha Minow, now Dean of HLS, with her education law

especially with Dean Martha Minow and Gary Orfield, proved critically important

CRP was conceived by Professors Gary Orfield and Christopher Edley Jr., as a research

think tank that could document the benefits of diversity in education as a way to bolster

affirmative action policies against legal attacks. From this initial work, the core mission of

CRP evolved into becoming a source of intellectual capital for the civil rights movement. In

my work there, I am engaged in bringing together scholars and leaders from all parts of the

country to address issues related to equal educational opportunity. While my work goals are

consistent in their focus, their substance is remarkably diverse.

For example, over the course of the last 10 years I have advised civil rights organizations on

impact litigation strategies to end the school to prison pipeline; coauthored and edited a

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academic component, I have served as a lecturer on law and clinical supervisor to both law

and graduate school interns who signed up to work with CRP. CRP’s advocacy mission also

puts me in position to do a fair amount of public speaking beyond academia, including

testimony before Congress, speeches to leading civil rights organizations, as well as to federal

PTA on state laws regarding family engagement. Most recently, I joined an administrator

from the U.S. Department of Education and a colleague at the Charles Hamilton Houston

Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School to discuss possible changes to the federal

collection of data on school discipline and school arrest data for students with and without

disabilities disaggregated by race and gender. If approved, the changes could substantially

improve the knowledge base about incarcerated youth.

passionate scholars, policymakers and advocates. Increasingly, I collaborate with former

students I have supervised, who now hold leadership positions in the field, which is really

wonderful!

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Rhoda Schneider

Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, General

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Roxbury with applying to college and formulating plans for after high school. Harvard

students work as "coaches," helping the high schoolers with applications, essays, financial aid

forms and all other aspects of the college selection process. Students spend 3-4 hours per

week volunteering, and the program lasts from early October through early May. Coaches

Education Success explores the notion of success in K-12 education. In their discussions,

members analyze a variety of educational settings, including public, private, and charter

schools. In addition to exploring domestic educational issues, members also discuss and

work to address problems affecting international school systems.

The Educational Surrogate Parent Program provides legal representation for children with

special needs. Volunteers involved with the program work to defend the educational rights

of children in state custody. Without parents or guardians to act on their behalf, these

children lack the representation they need to receive appropriate education services. By

advocating on behalf of these children, volunteers work to improve education outcomes for

children in Massachusetts.

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PROGRAM ON NEGOTIATION (HLS)

The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School is an applied research center

committed to improving the theory and practice of negotiation and dispute resolution. The

Program works to change the way people, organizations, and nations resolve their disputes.

teenagers by addressing barriers to educational attainment they may encounter.

GSE:

CAP Volunteer Opportunities:

http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/about/cap/volunteer/index.html

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8. FELLOWSHIPS IN EDUCATION

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seeks to foster connections between different entrepreneurs and partnerships with private

organizations in order to meet its goal of large scale societal change.

Broad Residency in Urban Education

The Broad Residency selects individuals to step into managerial positions in urban school

districts, charter management organizations, and federal/state departments of education.

The two-year program enables fellow to develop their professional capacity by proving them

with direct, full-time experience in urban communities. Additionally, the fellowship seeks to

cultivate educational leadership by providing residents with professional development.

http://www.tntpteachingfellows.org/dc

The New Teacher Project helps cultivate educational leadership in cities across the nation

through its Teaching Fellowship. The program prepares recent graduates to work in the

Educators Entrepreneur Fellowship

http://www.themindtrust.org/education-entrepreneur-fellowship

The Educators Entrepreneur Fellowship works to improve access to high quality education

by enabling entrepreneurs to pursue public education projects in Indianapolis. During the

fellowship, participants will receive $20,000 startup stipend in addition to an annual salary

and health benefits. The fellowship seeks to improve education outcomes by expanding the

opportunities available to low-income and foster children. The Mind Trust will provide

fellows with professional and monetary support as fellows work to launch their individual

projects.

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MALDEF Fried Frank Fellowship

http://www.friedfrank.com/index.cfm?pageID=49

Recipients of the MALDEF Fried Frank Fellowship serve two years as litigators at Fried

Gautreaux Fellowship. BPI seeks to address issues related to social justice and access to

opportunity in Chicago. The fellowship spans one year, with the opportunity to renew the

fellowship for a second year. Fellows will assist the organization with legal matters related to

segregation, school reform, and government accountability.

Ruth Chance Fellowship

http://www.equalrights.org/2013-2014-ruth-chance-law-fellow/

The Ruth Chance Fellowship provides recipients with the opportunity to work on issues

related to women’s rights at Equal Rights Advocates. The fellowship lasts for one year, with

prevent gender discrimination in schools and ensure equal opportunities for young women

in the classroom. The fellow will serve as a staff attorney at the organization, providing

assistance on matters related to litigation and community education.

http://www.jlc.org/about-us/who-we-are/working-at-jlc/zubrow-fellowship-childrens-law

The Zubrow Fellowship, offered through the Juvenile Law Center, provides recent graduates

with an opportunity to effect change in the Philadelphia juvenile justice system. The Juvenile

Law Center works to ensure that children receive equitable treatment in the juvenile justice

national organizations to shape policy related to juvenile justice.

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The list below contains individuals from all law schools who completed education law

fellowships sponsored by the Skadden Foundation between 2008 and 2014. All information

Foundation’s website. For your convenience, the following participating organizations

color in the Baltimore City and Miami public school systems.

to reform discipline policies and practices in charter and traditional public

schools in Washington, D.C. to help eliminate the push out of students of color.

• Advocates for Children of New York, New York, NY