CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM STATED The public secondary education program is a complex business enterprise as well as a welfare activity of vital importance. It seems evident that a successful continuance of the development of this program can be based only upon familiarity with and use of sound business principles, and a knowledge and use of the laws governing the educational problems involved. The purpose of this study is to find and synthesize constitutional and statutory provisions relating to public secondary education, and the decisions of the courts interpreting the same. DELIMITATION OF THE PROBLEM The study includes the forty-eight states of the United States. It is limited to public schools. It is further limited to those public schools which are of secondary grade, seventh to fourteenth grades inclusive. This classification includes: (1) junior high schools, (2) high schools and senior high schools, (3) continuation schools (part-time day and evening), and (4) junior colleges. The thirteenth and fourteenth grades are included only when existing as junior colleges. The study is in two major parts. The first part is an attempt to discover what curricula and extra-curricular services are authorized or prescribed by law in the various states, and upon what rules of law they are based. The second part is a study of the legal provisions for controlling the expenditure of public funds for the support of this educational program, and of the rules of law involved. DATA The principal sources of data are: (1) Federal constitution, (2) state constitutions, (3) state statutes as given in state school laws, state codes, and state session laws, (4) reports of state supreme courts, appellate courts, and lower courts of record. Other references are: (1) legal periodicals, (2) United States Bureau of Education bulletins and reports, (3) American City Bureau bulletins, (4) curricula of public secondary schools, and (5) in the introduction a few facts quoted from standard writers in the secondary education field. For a complete list of references see Part V, Bibliography. The validity of the data used in this study seems well established. Probably no records are more accurately made than those of our Federal and State constitutions, statutes, and court reports. In this study every court case used has been traced by means of Shephard's Citators and the present status of the case determined before being included. The latest published "School Laws" of the various states have been supplemented by examining the subsequent state session laws. Constitutional provisions not published in "School Laws," and amendments and laws enacted since the most recently published "School Laws" have thus been secured. as Since every state in the United States has been included in the study, it seems certain that the statements of law involved are based upon valid data. The reliability of the data used seems almost evident. Since the sources are permanent, objective records, the same data should result from a similar study covering the same period, if conducted by different individuals. Since this study is not one purporting to measure the relative merits of the educational programs of the several states, but is rather to endeavor to discover what legal provisions affect the public secondary education program, it is believed that the validity of the data composed of evidence from all the states and ruling court cases is of a high order. Careful re-checks upon the data used were made with the aim of securing the highest degree of validity and reliability possible. METHOD The procedures followed may be summarized into major steps or divisions. The legal provisions of the forty-eight states relative to the public secondary schools were segregated after reading all of the school laws in the United States. These provisions were then classified. They were then analyzed, compared, and summarized. These operations were for the purpose of securing a knowledge of the legal provisions of the various states relative to the public secondary education program. Simultaneously with the above procedures a study was conducted for the purpose of discovering the attitudes of the courts of the various states and of the United States toward these provisions. Since we can never be sure of the constitutionality or meaning of statutes until interpreted by our courts, the ascertaining of court opinions relative to the statutory provisions relative to the secondary school program seems to be of vital importance. The first step was to consult the "Corpus-JurisCyc" system, the American Digests, and the legal periodical index. Every reference that gave promise of a possibility of applying to the study was investigated. Approximately 1,000 court cases were examined. Of these 424 were found to refer to some phase of this study. These were read carefully; the essential facts of the case were recorded, and the opinions of the courts were analyzed for the rules of law upon which the decisions were based. The final step of procedure was to make an analytical study of the classified legal provisions and the interpretations by the courts of these provisions for the purpose of recording the controlling laws relative to the public secondary education program. |