eSchool News » Policy

Court: Schools can publish small excerpts of texts online for students

staff and wire services reports — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:43:44 +0000

The court decision means students will have access to at least some free book excerpts online.

A federal judge in Atlanta has ruled mostly in favor of Georgia State University in a copyright case that would allow professors to continue posting excerpts of published works online for their students.

In a case closely watched by academia and publishers, Senior U.S. District Judge Orinda Evans rejected 69 copyright claims filed by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Sage Publications. She found that Georgia State had violated copyright infringement law by using five longer excerpts from four books.

The suit was the first of its kind in the country and examined a key way college professors teach and students learn in the digital age.

In the lawsuit, publishers accused Georgia State of “massive” copyright violations for allowing professors to download and reproduce excerpts from published works for course materials without getting publishers’ permission or paying licensing fees.

The decision, if upheld on appeal, means students will continue to have easy access to excerpted academic and scholarly material posted in online reading rooms managed by colleges.

The publishers’ highly publicized lawsuit, filed in 2008, was heavily watched by research librarians across the country, and several blogged about the verdict, which was issued May 11, over the weekend.

“The judge’s ruling is significant not only for Georgia State University, but for all educational fair use in general,” Georgia State University President Mark P. Becker said. “While the broader implications of this case will be analyzed for weeks and months to come, Georgia State is very pleased to have been a trailblazer in this increasingly complex digital copyright environment.”

The case tested the application of the “fair use doctrine,” which allows someone to use published material without the consent of the copyright owner. It also limits the amount of material that can be used and serves to ensure that the use of copyright material does not diminish the market for it.

The decision highlights the importance of providing academic faculty a cost-effective, legal way to spread important knowledge to students, said Kerry Heyward, a Georgia State attorney.

Student with autism denied graduation by state law

staff and wire services reports — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:15:45 +0000

Sinclaire Coffer, a 17-year-old high school student with autism, is fighting to be allowed to graduate from North Springs Charter High School in Sandy Springs, Ga., after the state Board of Education ruled against it, WSB-TV reports. While Coffer has passed every other portion of the state’s graduation exam, he has failed the math portion five times.

“We’ve gotten a private tutor,” his mother Linda Coffer told WSB-TV. “He’s taken classes that are offered by the school in summer and throughout the school year.”
According to Fox 5 Atlanta, Coffer applied for a waiver which would have allowed him to graduate despite failing the exam. The state Board of Education, however, voted to deny his request…

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New Jersey town bans texting while walking

staff and wire services reports — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:10:13 +0000

As a slew of U.S. states have passed laws to ban texting while driving, one New Jersey town upped the ante with its texting-while-walking ban. Pedestrians in Fort Lee, New Jersey will have to stop to text, following the passage of a new law that imposes $85 fines on walkers caught texting. Fort Lee Police Chief Thomas Ripoli cited numbers of pedestrian crashes to support the ban: Last year there were 74 crashes involving pedestrians; three pedestrians were killed this year, according to the Record’s NorthJersey.com.

“It’s a big distraction. Pedestrians aren’t watching where they are going and they are not aware,” Ripoli said during an announcement of the ban.

Following a brief warning period, New Jersey police began issuing fines to distracted walkers near the end of March, with more than 117 violations recorded to date…

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Court dismisses two counts, upholds others, in professor’s child-porn viewing case

staff and wire services reports — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:53:08 +0000

Viewing child pornography online isn’t a crime, the New York Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday in the case of a college professor whose work computer was found to have stored more than a hundred illegal images in its web cache, U.S. News reports. The court dismissed one of the two counts of promoting a sexual performance of a child and one of the dozens of counts of possession of child pornography on which James D. Kent was convicted. The court upheld the other counts against Kent, an assistant professor of public administration at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Kent—who said at his sentencing that he “abhorred” child pornography and argued that someone else at Marist must have placed the images on his computer—was sentenced to one to three years in state prison in August 2009. The decision rests on whether accessing and viewing something on the Internet is the same as possessing it, and whether possessing it means you had to procure it. In essence, the court said no to the first question and yes to the second…

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Senate bill on the use of restraint would tie school leaders’ hands

Dan Domenech — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:56:50 +0000

The U.S. Senate is considering a bill that would prohibit the use of seclusion and restraint, the very practice that has enabled many students with serious emotional or behavioral conditions to be educated in the least restrictive and safest environment possible.

Teachers suing NYC over school closings

staff and wire services reports — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:47:07 +0000

Unions representing teachers and principals are suing the New York City to stop the official closing of 24 schools, arguing education officials are pretending to shutter the schools without actually changing anything significant in a bid to illegally get rid of staff, the Associated Press reports. The United Federation of Teachers and the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators filed court papers Monday seeking to force the city into arbitration on the issue. For the teachers union, it is the third lawsuit in as many years on school closures, all brought over different issues. The UFT won the first case, while the second is still pending. Both the mayor and the education chancellor denounced the lawsuit…

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Watch: Education Secretary Arne Duncan: Gay marriage should be legal

staff and wire services reports — Tue, 08 May 2012 13:32:47 +0000

A day after Vice President Joe Biden said he was “absolutely comfortable” with gay marriage, signaling the Obama administration’s evolving views on same-sex marriage, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said on “Morning Joe” that he believes it should be legal, The Ticket reports.

“Yes, I do,” Duncan said when asked by Time political analyst and MSNBC contributor Mark Halperin if same-sex marriage should be legal in the United States. Duncan said he’s never mentioned that publicly because, “I don’t know if I’ve ever been asked.”

“It only took minutes for the White House to try to fix Joe Biden’s comments,” joked fellow “Morning Joe” panelist Andrea Mitchell. “Let’s see how long this takes.”

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Will new federal rules kill off a beloved school tradition?

staff and wire services reports — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:49:56 +0000

Is the tradition of school bake sales nearing an end? At a time when school communities are forced to increase fundraising efforts amid tighter budgets, one hugely popular method of raising money for the basketball team or math club is at a crossroads — with the national fight against childhood obesity, the Huffington Post reports. In Maryland’s Montgomery County, bake sales are not permitted during the day and school officials keep an ear to the ground to make sure that there’s no underground sales of sweets, Bloomberg Businessweek reports.

“If a bake sale is going on, it’s reported to administration and it’s taken care of,” Marla Caplon of the county’s food and nutrition services told Businessweek. “You can’t sell Girl Scout cookies, candy, cakes, any of that stuff.”

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Don’t believe the outrage: First grader rightfully suspended

staff and wire services reports — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:45:15 +0000

According to ABC News, a first grader in Aurora, Colo., was suspended for singing “I’m sexy and I know it” during school. , quoting a lyric from a popular LMFAO song. Though many are outraged D’Avonte Meadows was banned for three days from Sable Elementary, the move is justified and Meadows was a repeat offender, says Calvin Wolf for Yahoo! News. Meadows was not just singing the song. He had been antagonizing a girl with the song and apparently had done so multiple times. The incident that landed him the suspension involved “shaking his booty” near the girl’s face. A three-day suspension was necessary to convey the seriousness of harassment, especially since previous disciplinary actions apparently didn’t take. While D’Avonte’s mother thinks the school went too far, many schools do not go far enough. As a high school teacher, I deal with several students who behave in ways that will earn them pink slips as adults. They think their lewd comments, innuendos and hands-on behaviors are in fun but fail to recognize they are unacceptable on the job…

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Parents of boy forcibly tattooed sue school district

staff and wire services reports — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:20:11 +0000

The parents of a New Hampshire teenager who was assaulted and forcibly tattooed on the buttocks by four older students during school hours have filed suit against the school district, Reuters reports. Michael and Tammy Austin are seeking unspecified damages from the district in Concord, New Hampshire, which they say failed to provide a safe environment for their son and to protect him from bullying in the May 2010 incident. A group of older students lured the boy, who was 14 at the time, to a house near Concord High School, where they tattooed a picture of a penis and the words ‘Poop Dick’ on his buttocks, according to the lawsuit filed in Merrimack County Superior Court.

“We believe they had a duty to protect, and they failed in that task,” Stephen Duggan, an attorney for the parents, said in an interview this week…

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