A wave of student walkouts has washed over the country in the last month, with secondary school students leaving campus to protest ICE activity in Oklahoma, Illinois, Virginia, Texas, Washington state, Ohio, Florida, and more. In Texas, the state is
The author manages to spend paragraph after paragraph describing the legal implications of this and that issue in public schools, but never pulls back the curtain to make clear that these problems are all the result of having government-run schools in the first place. Everything that anyone deplores about government schools would be solved by closing them. The marketplace is adept in finding ways to please new customers and would flourish, and all the legal agonies the author deplores would vanish (each school would set its own rules about student protests), once the cold, dead bureaucracies of so-called "public" schools have been dissolved once and for all.
Free to organize a protest, waive signs, yell and stomp your feet on your own time. With social media it’s easy to set up. But the purpose here is to leverage the publicly funded school to broadcast their political message.
Schools have a right to force them to stay in the classes so that funding will not be diminished, but the schools have no obligation to educate them even to the minimal level of proficiency.
1. I hadn't realized that parents signing out a kid creates a level of protection. And I used to run a high school!
2. For purposes of counting "days absent," schools often distinguish b/w excused with parent note (dentist) and unexcused with parent note (family vacation). Presumably walkout with parent note = absent, like family vacation.
Not sure if you're aware of the extent to which "chronic absenteeism" has made schools focus more on "days out."
I.e., 400 kids walk out at a high school, if you mark them as "absent," then state gives school 1/180 (1 day out of 180 per yera) times 400 kids times annual appropriation per kid (let's say $10,000 per year in Massachusetts).
So the walkout might cost $22,000 in actual cash cut if school accounts for it properly. Would that change any of the legal calculation?
Schools present students the opportunity to learn. They cannot force students to learn. Continue to give homework, accept and grade homework, and give exams. Students can protest on their own time. If students want to protest during school time they need to make arrangements with the teachers to do and turn in their coursework and take their exams. If they want to do that without the advantage of in-class teaching and review, so be it.
The author manages to spend paragraph after paragraph describing the legal implications of this and that issue in public schools, but never pulls back the curtain to make clear that these problems are all the result of having government-run schools in the first place. Everything that anyone deplores about government schools would be solved by closing them. The marketplace is adept in finding ways to please new customers and would flourish, and all the legal agonies the author deplores would vanish (each school would set its own rules about student protests), once the cold, dead bureaucracies of so-called "public" schools have been dissolved once and for all.
I agree with you, but FIRE is concerned only with the legality of free expression. It's not a libertarian organization.
Free to organize a protest, waive signs, yell and stomp your feet on your own time. With social media it’s easy to set up. But the purpose here is to leverage the publicly funded school to broadcast their political message.
Schools have a right to force them to stay in the classes so that funding will not be diminished, but the schools have no obligation to educate them even to the minimal level of proficiency.
Fascinating. Great blog.
1. I hadn't realized that parents signing out a kid creates a level of protection. And I used to run a high school!
2. For purposes of counting "days absent," schools often distinguish b/w excused with parent note (dentist) and unexcused with parent note (family vacation). Presumably walkout with parent note = absent, like family vacation.
Not sure if you're aware of the extent to which "chronic absenteeism" has made schools focus more on "days out."
I.e., 400 kids walk out at a high school, if you mark them as "absent," then state gives school 1/180 (1 day out of 180 per yera) times 400 kids times annual appropriation per kid (let's say $10,000 per year in Massachusetts).
So the walkout might cost $22,000 in actual cash cut if school accounts for it properly. Would that change any of the legal calculation?
Yes, but they should be punished for skipping class.
It’s truancy.
Some adults could use that refresher on how civil disobedience works.
Schools present students the opportunity to learn. They cannot force students to learn. Continue to give homework, accept and grade homework, and give exams. Students can protest on their own time. If students want to protest during school time they need to make arrangements with the teachers to do and turn in their coursework and take their exams. If they want to do that without the advantage of in-class teaching and review, so be it.
Yes they do IF AND ONLY IF THEY UNDERSTAND WHY THEY ARE