Legal Status of Teachers

Abstract

IT APPEARED APPARENT from a review of the literature concerning the legal status of the public school teacher that there is a growing recognition of the importance of the law in determining and promoting the professional position and welfare of the personnel of the American school system. Although no extensive general treatise on the law pertaining to the public school teacher has appeared during the last three years many aspects of the problem have been studied. Chambers and others (596) brought together a list of the problems in educational law, a number of which pertain to the status of teachers. The Research Division of the National Education Association made an interesting study comparing the statutory status of six other professions with teaching (651), surveying provisions for admission, provisions for expulsion and revocation of licenses, and studying a number of cases of removal. Legislative provisions for teacher welfare were brought together in a helpful way in the form of a chart (663). General resumes of legislation are referred to in the following section. Similar general studies of court decisions have appeared during the period (597, 612) and more specific reviews of this kind are referred to in subsequent sections. A portion of a doctoral dissertation by Campbell (589) considered the influence of court decisions in Kentucky on the legal status of teachers in that state. Nation's Schools, Clearing House, Educational Law and Administration, and the American School Board Journal conduct regular school law sections which frequently contain material on the legal status of teachers. Former issues of this publication include reviews by Anderson (578), Edwards (609), and Chambers (593). The most important sources of data on the teachers' legal position are the appropriate chapters in the Yearbooks of School Law (600).