In the last several years a high number of school litigations have been lost by school administrators. Especially those cases related to the "Due Process of Law" which has to be followed by school administrators when they pursue the dismissal of a teacher or the suspension of a student. The litigations have had a negative impact on school budgets and on the school work environment as well. Thus, this paper discusses why school administrators lose on due process related legal cases in courts and recommends remedies. A survey research method among local school district administrators is used, as a sample to measure school administrator's familiarity with due process, and the impact of that knowledge on the outcome of discipline cases. The survey questionnaire has two parts. The first part presents several due process attitudinal multiple choice questions. These questions are related to U.S. courts due process statements; statements with which some school administrators agree and others disagree. The second part has several due process questions. The questions regard due process accepted standards that courts and legal authorities point to as common denominators in due process procedures. A third part has two questions related to when principals last took a legal educational course or refresher workshop, and if they would consider a "due process" handbook helpful to them. Each item, part, sub-parts totals of correct responses were computed and compared using percents, the mean and standard deviation. The findings show a considerable absence of knowledge and a poor attitude toward due process of law; the attitude of the respondents toward due process for students was the most negative. In addition, it was found that the better the due process knowledge, the better the attitude toward due process; also, the more recently a principal has taken a legal course, the higher their correct responses.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-7751 |
| Date | 01 January 1990 |
| Creators | Velazquez, Francie |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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