Current Issues in Education Policy and the Law

Book excerpt: Educational policy controversies in the United States invariably implicate legal issues. Policy debates about testing and school choice, for example, cannot be disentangled from legal rights and mandates. The same is true for issues such as funding, campus safety, speech and religion rights, as well as the teaching of immigrant students. Written for a general audience, this new twelve-chapter book explores these compelling educational policy issues through that legal lens, building an understanding of both law and policy. The book's editors are Kevin Welner, associate professor of educational policy at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Wendy Chi, a doctoral candidate at Boulder. Both Welner and Chi are lawyers as well as educational scholars.