Thinking Like a Lawyer: An Educator's Guide to Legal Analysis and Research

Dr. Ellenmorris Tiegerman's insightful comments quoted above and in the preface to this text are seminal. Over at least the past 40 years, education and the law have become increasingly enmeshed. And yet, with the ever expanding emphasis on academic accountability, educators often find little time and inclination to pay sufficient attention to this "nexus, which is both conceptual and pragmatic in nature." It is more obvious to those of us who went to school before the late 60's, especially if we ended up working in the schools, how much case law by itself has changed the way business is done and defined for our schools such standards as "reasonableness," "good faith" and "deliberate indifference." The law has "intruded" so much upon us that we have become preoccupied in a generally uninformed way with it, even to the point of being frightened of it at times. Sarah Redfield is a pioneer in helping to make education law accessible to practitioners both of education and of law. I have long been a student of education law. I have taught it to administrators in training, and I use my understanding of it daily in my career as a public school administrator in a large high school. In my course, this book has become required reading. It fills an important place. As the author contends in her preface,"This book offers a first step." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. once wrote that the law is not "a brooding omnipresence in the sky." Especially if you are an educator seeking to understand what the law truly has to say to our profession, this book is for you. It will not only get you started with a basic understanding; it will give you the means to remain a lifetime learner. You will find it both a readable text and a ready reference.