Athens, Ga. – A new journal published by a University of Georgia professor is helping to establish UGA as a leader in the field of educational law and public policy.
Education Law & Policy Review, which recently published its second issue, not only takes a scholarly approach to educational policy but also suggests ways to solve the issues tackled by its contributors. And these aren’t topics to be taken lightly: The first issue addressed workplace bullying in higher education, while the second volume tackled issues surrounding freedom of speech in schools.
John Dayton, professor in the College of Education’s department of lifelong education, administration and policy, said the idea for the journal came after he realized there was a lack of resources focusing on broader policy. Dayton has spent the past couple of years assembling a national panel of reviewers and an editorial board, as well as a partnership with the Educational Law Association, the national scholarly and professional organization and co-publisher of the journal.
And one more key distinction sets the Education Law & Policy Review apart from the handful of other journals that touch on the topics of policy and law: It’s available to download for free.
“We are really trying to do good deeds, provide useful information to everyone and establish UGA as a national leader in this area of scholarship,” said Dayton.
The most recent issue includes a foreword written by Mary Beth Tinker, whose involvement in the landmark 1969 Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines led to the ruling that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
“When youth exercise their rights of free speech, there is hope that our professed democratic ideals of justice and equality might one day be realized,” writes Tinker, who, at age 13, fought her school district for the right to wear a black armband in protest of the Vietnam War. “And, there is no greater protection against totalitarianism than educated, empowered youth with a passion for justice.”
Education Law & Policy Review is available for download. A hard copy for can be purchased for $10 through Amazon.com or other bookstores (ISBN 0692486224). Dayton said the next two issues will focus on the 50th anniversary of the Elementary and Second Education Act and will be edited by UGA education policy professor Elizabeth DeBray and College of Education alumna Annie Blankenship, now a professor in Mississippi. The fifth issue will focus on church-state law, edited by Dayton and professor Hillel Levin of the UGA School of Law.
