Guaranteed Dividends: Why Finance And Other Education Law Scholars Should Invest In Legal Literacy Research

No matter whether you are an education finance scholar or study the myriad of other education law topics, every education law researcher should recognize that legal literacy matters. But are we, as a collective discipline, doing enough to invest in legal literacy research? This article provides persuasive support that we should be doing more to expand current research and offers concrete suggestions to encourage all of us to identify how we could advance legal literacy research. Of course there are personal benefits, but the dividends that enhance our field of education law—as well as society at large—are guaranteed.As education law researchers, we recognize that when university and PK-12 school employees fail to understand how the law impacts their daily lives, it can result in dire situations where students are subjected to discrimination,1 assault,2 abuse,3 or even death.4 When educators are uninformed about the law, it can also result in legal violations affecting students5 and employees.6 Once these errors are made, no matter how skilled and experienced an attorney is, they usually cannot prevent the emotionally draining, expensive, and time-consuming litigation or the many other negative consequences that may result. But when employees are legally literate, they become empowered to influence policies and practices both internal and external to their workplace.7 Legal literacy allows university and school employees to advocate for the changes that they want to see and prepares them to make better decisions which ultimately, improves the overall education system.The purpose of this article is to encourage all education law researchers to reflect on the importance of legal literacy and analyze if collectively, we are prioritizing it enough in our individual research agendas. I conclude that we are not, and propose that if education law researchers will prioritize this topic, our findings can validate the value and impact of our field. Therefore, I argue that we should do more to increase the depth and number of studies focused on legal literacy. Education law is a niche specialization with a relatively small number of scholars. To advance our unique discipline of education law, and also to situate our research in a way where we can have a greater impact on the larger PK-20 educational system, as well as society in general, we must increase our understanding of legal literacy. To put it in finance terms, if we compare education law researchers to shareholders of stocks, then, we as a collective discipline are guaranteed future dividends—or predictable benefits—by investing in legal literacy research now. Education researchers should prioritize this topic because legal literacy research can validate and advance our field in ways that other education law research cannot.To support this proposition, this article begins by providing additional details about what legal literacy is and why it matters. Then, I summarize the relatively few studies that exist about legal literacy. I conclude by offering ideas about how education law researchers should take advantage of opportunities to advance the study of legal literacy. However, my hope is that this article merely initiates a conversation among education law researchers so that we begin to do more to build upon the existing research and as a result, we have an even greater impact on the larger PK-20 educational system.To be legally literate, PK-20 education employees need more than mere knowledge, they must be “able to spot legal issues, identify applicable laws or legal standards, and apply the relevant legal rules to solve legal dilemmas.”8 Therefore, knowing how to define legal terms, identify constitutional amendments, or recite legal standards from court cases is insufficient. Mere knowledge of the law is not enough. To be literate, employees must know how to apply the law. When university and school employees are legally literate, they “have the requisite attitudes to ensure that they will take appropriate action when faced with unfairness, injustice, and inequities.”9 Essentially, education employees do not merely need to know what to do, they need to be prepared to handle the many legal dilemmas that they face.University and PK-12 school employees may not fully recognize how often the law impacts their daily practice, but nearly every aspect of education is governed by the law. Of course, school and university attorneys may be available for consultation, but it is the employees who have direct student contact. They are the ones who are on the front lines and must make split-second decisions about legal dilemmas every day. Many times, these employees are not provided with access to legal advice from an attorney and must respond to situations immediately. For example, a classroom teacher who suspects that a student is vaping must know when it is legally permissible to search the student's backpack. In a college setting, a resident assistant must know the proper procedures to respond to allegations of sexual harassment.When PK-20 employees are legally literate, they are more confident, make better decisions, prevent lawsuits/legal violations, and feel more empowered to influence policy reform at the local, state, and federal levels.10 Without an understanding of the legal system and education law, employees often feel intimidated to advocate for policy changes. However, school leaders, educators, and employees are in the ideal positions to identify problems and offer realistic solutions. Once employees are educated about how the law is enacted, interpreted, and enforced, as well as the interplay between the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government, they can make more informed decisions.When employees in universities and schools are legally literate, they are also less anxious because this increased knowledge makes them feel better. No one wants to feel unsure and insecure about something as important as the law. Call and O'Brien found that 64% of teachers were concerned about the risk of lawsuits or legal challenges.11 Educators often fear the law, which can “[paralyze] educators such that they fail to act when they should and overreact when they should not.”12 But once employees better understand the legal “complexities, contradictions, and areas of uncertainty,”13 they can recognize how to act in within the gray areas and nuances of the law. Additionally, increasing the legal literacy of employees allows them to better understand how complicated it is to craft policies and attempt to balance diverse needs. This enhanced understanding of the law can “counteract the belief that the scales of justice are tilted against them.”14 Therefore, because legal literacy allows employees to make better decisions, and to understand the legal reasoning behind their decisions, increasing their legal literacy ultimately benefits the overall educational system.On the other hand, when employees are uninformed about the law, they may unintentionally violate the rights of students and coworkers.15 They may fear the law or feel paralyzed to react to legal dilemmas which can exacerbate the problem.16 Once these errors are made, lawyers may be able to help defend universities and school districts, but they cannot erase the facts that have already occurred. Additionally, when employees do not know the law, they cannot use that unfamiliarity with the law as a defense.Further, if a lawsuit is filed, the employees must endure expensive, emotionally draining, and time-consuming litigation—and oftentimes, the distraction of these disputes means the employee may face burnout and find it difficult to balance their other work responsibilities.17 For example, when parents of students with disabilities file lawsuits against school districts, long-term battles over the student's education, accommodations, and placement may result. Specifically, the adults involved become so filled with distrust and resentment that their relationships are irreparably damaged, and they find it impossible to communicate or compromise effectively. Because of all the drama surrounding the lawsuit and allegations of wrongdoing, both school employees and parents may not be focused on the child who ironically, was sole reason for the dispute in the first place! And, like custody battles in divorce cases, these adversarial special education disputes can endure for many years during the precious time when prioritizing the child's needs should be the overarching priority. Therefore, preventing litigation is not only about conserving resources. Avoiding lawsuits is imperative to preserve relationships. No matter who prevails in a lawsuit, “parties on both sides leave feeling disheartened, angry, exhausted, and oftentimes, not fully satisfied with the result.”18 Clearly, when employees are distracted by volatile disputes, toxic environments, or damaged relationships, they are unable to focus on the roles and responsibilities of their jobs.This is why legal literacy matters and education law researchers should care about it. Increasing employees’ understanding of the law will not prevent all legal violations and lawsuits, but it will help to decrease the likelihood of them. Unfortunately, however, we know that a lack of legal awareness often leads to negative consequences and nonetheless, we have not made huge strides in ensuring that employees are adequately educated about the law. On the contrary, the limited existing research has uncovered that most PK-20 employees lack legal training and as a result, are unprepared to accurately respond to legal dilemmas.For 60 years, researchers have repeatedly recommended that more legal training is needed.19 Schimmel and Militello explained that “failure to provide all teachers with [even] a basic understanding of school law, in view of today's demonstrated need, can be considered a form of educational malpractice.”20 But it is extremely rare that future PK-12 teachers or university instructors are required to learn about the law. Additionally, administrators in higher education and schools may be required to only complete one education law course,21 or sometimes, they can complete their degrees without completing any legal training. This section briefly summarizes the relatively few studies about legal literacy by first, discussing PK-12 research and then, higher education research.Despite repeated complaints to prioritize legal training for PK-12 school employees, education law scholars have only produced two large-scale empirical studies to measure legal knowledge of educators.22 Both studies concluded that most teachers and administrators are uninformed or misinformed about the legal rights of students and teachers. In the first study from 2007—which, problematically, is almost 20 years old—Schimmel and Militello surveyed 1,317 elementary and secondary teachers in 17 states.23 They provided a series of true/false statements and found that the over half of teachers provided incorrect responses about students’ and teachers’ legal rights. For example, only 17% accurately answered a question about whether a suspended student has a legal right to be represented by an attorney at a hearing. Only 3% responded correctly to a question about a teacher's liability for student injuries. It makes sense that the teachers were unable to answer the questions correctly, considering that over 75% of the respondents had never completed a school law course and they were getting their legal information from other—presumably uninformed—teachers. But it appears that educators want to know more about the law and explained that they would change their practices if they had more legal training.In the second study from 2009, Militello, Schimmel, and Eberwein similarly found that school leaders lacked legal knowledge.24 They surveyed 493 secondary school principals and found that only 54% of principals correctly answered questions about students’ rights, and only 65% were accurate on questions about teachers’ rights. Many more principals than teachers had completed a school law course—in fact, 87% had received formal school law training. Considering that the great majority had received legal training but appeared uninformed about student and employee legal rights, then, one could question whether their school law training was effective. Additionally, some principals commented that it would be prudent if school leaders were provided with legal updates because the law is constantly evolving and what they learn in a school law course quickly becomes outdated. Similar to the teachers in the previous study, 85% of the school leaders thought that if they were taught more about school law, then they would change their behaviors.In addition to providing a valuable measure of educator legal literacy, the questions used in these two seminal studies about legal literacy were incorporated into a 2023 study by Thomas, McElhattan, and Carlo. These researchers explored how school employees could leverage emerging technology to improve legal literacy. The researchers used the questions from the prior 2007 and 2009 legal literacy studies to prompt ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) tools and to assess the performance of the AI tools against teacher and administrator performance reported in the 2007 and 2009 studies.25 In comparing the AI responses to educator responses, the researchers found that AI tools outperformed the average educator's performance in every subcategory of issues including school authority, religion, free speech, and disability.26 The researchers stressed the preliminary nature of the research, highlighting that while AI tools may be a useful supplement to educators’ legal literacy, more research needs to be done to ensure the reliability of these tools and the extent to which they can be used to help educators in their daily practice.27More recent scholarship also highlights issues of legal literacy pertaining to specific areas of education law. In 2020, Summers, Kiracofe, and James published the results from their state-level study of 300 teachers where they also concluded that educators lacked important legal knowledge.28 In 2021, Everson measured teachers’ legal literacy pertaining to English Learners. Despite 78% of the teachers had completed a master's degree, they nonetheless scored low on questions measuring legal literacy.29Researchers have also begun to measure legal training and whether it improves educators’ legal literacy. In a 2017 study, Decker, Ober, and Schimmel asked whether educators’ actions and attitudes were impacted in the years after they had completed one graduate-level school law course.30 They found that that legal training did improve educators’ behaviors and attitudes. The large majority of the 123 respondents (88%) stated that their school law course increased their confidence making them less fearful and anxious. Additionally, 85% of respondents reported that the class had changed their behaviors.31 Every single respondent concluded that it was important for future teachers to learn about school law.In addition to research on the value of legal literacy, researchers have also explored the specific legal literacy needs of educators and school leaders. In a survey of Arizona school administrators, Hughes examined their preferred instructional purpose, focus, and delivery of legal literacy trainings.32 Results of the survey demonstrated that administrators overwhelmingly wanted legal literacy trainings that focused on issues “tied to likely administrator challenges” and emphasized how to translate legal requirements to day-to-day situations.33 Based on these results, Hughes recommended that legal literacy trainings be provided in a problem-based approach that emphasizes how to respond to common situations administrators face, not just discussion of the law itself.34Other PK-12 research has discussed school law courses in general,35 the value of teaching educators about the law,36 reasons teacher do not law and teaching for increasing legal have published by legal literacy researchers to provide school leaders with and they need to school law into their The Avoiding can be in provides legal on how to apply the law to some of the most important legal issues in schools student of and and second to Education Legal allows special education and without prior legal knowledge to school employees about the legal rights of students with It legal about that are often at in lawsuits student Both are without legal so that school leaders, university can the to The a including and discussion is to ensure are and of that they are the law to common The conclude with so that that can measure whether the have increased their legal a time of increasing and focused on PK-12 schools and teaching the legal literacy can provide teachers and administrators with increased and and that increasing teachers’ knowledge about the law provides teachers with ways to act within the of at school and teacher understanding the gray areas of laws and how the law from the to teachers and school leaders learn that they “have to both and the education law has in in the 60 years, and universities from to administrators and employees are faced with litigation to student and rights, many other most and universities at one if not increasing legal literacy university employees can decrease legal However, this topic has not survey of that 78% of respondents their legal and training was less than when they their as Schimmel and a between the issues administrators an administrator and the issues they the respondents legal issues but legal problems in these in knowledge and Schimmel and recommended law to disputes and increase administrator the university law to provide training to administrators, providing for administrators and employees to when faced with a legal and providing direct access from employees to legal scholars have also emphasized the importance of law within universities to disputes and survey of almost 300 higher education attorneys the that college and university had the most with issues to and federal law issues, and sexual by university also that university need training to sexual and These studies that the benefits of law can be increasing training and support for university law will have on the university legal and risk by way of issues that are most for this existing research, scholars have that university and school are But these studies only a small of The existing research in both PK-12 and higher education is limited and which that more must be all education law research improve legal literacy by and providing to a of legal For example, education law scholars advance our field by a myriad of such as finance free law on college and Many education law researchers are already to to advance legal literacy by that impact schools and the in our field are often for other scholars and not with the with of increasing the legal knowledge so that they are better able to apply the law to the of their daily most of our are They are published by that are not Therefore, even if our research is useful to advance PK-20 employees’ legal literacy, it is often behind a and by the who may most from some of our It is also that and secondary of law like court cases, and law are also For example, there is not access to like and some free exist such as search and these are only if educators know they exist and understand how to legal research. it is that many employees have the time or means to education law in to for or to education law of these that prevent PK-20 employees from from education law research, I propose that we should be more and prioritize legal literacy research. few areas for us to expand our of legal of legal of specific of legal we have only just begun to measure legal literacy. research has measured legal knowledge of literacy. 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