Best Interests of the Student: Applying Ethical Constructs to Legal Cases in Education

Citation

Brooks, J.S. (2010), "Best Interests of the Student: Applying Ethical Constructs to Legal Cases in Education", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 48 No. 1, pp. 126-128. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578231011015485

Jacqueline A. Stefkovich's Best Interests of the Student: Applying Ethical Constructs to Legal Cases in Education fills an important gap in the literature that rests in the hazy space between law and ethics. The book seeks to investigate those (p. xi) “times that there have been actions on the part of school personnel that courts have ruled as legal, which other educators have criticized as bad law or bad practice”. Stefkovich notes that her interest in this topic grew out of her work with Joan Shapiro (Shapiro and Stefkovich, 2005), where they described various ethical paradigms and placed the best interests of the student at the heart of their model. Yet, when questioned by ethics scholar Dr Paul Begley at a conference about what the phrase “best interests of the student” actually means, she realized all she had were vague assumptions rather than a solid definition. This book is the result of Stefkovich's research, wherein she seeks not only to define the elusive concept but provide a useful heuristic educators can use to help guide their decisions when faced with ethical and legal quandaries. Best Interests of the Student: Applying Ethical Constructs to Legal Cases in Education consists of 15 chapters organized into four parts.

Part I includes five chapters and is entitled “A conceptual framework.” In the “Introduction,” Stefkovich provides a brief overview of basic concepts such as law, ethics, morals and values. She then explains how ethics and law in particular lie at the heart of the preparation and practice of educational administration and discusses five important themes of special relevance to educational administrators confronted with such dilemmas: access to education; equity; values inculcation; cultural differences, and; parents' rights. In chapter 2, “Conceptualizing an ethical framework for educational leaders,” Stefkovich explains the ethic of justice, ethic of care, ethic of critique, and ethic of the profession and underscores the importance of considering each in relation to the community context in which one works. Chapter 3 is entitled “A model for promoting the student's best interests,” advances a (p. 26) “best interests model” that shows rights, responsibility, and respect orbiting the best interests of the student. The chapter further identifies sub‐constructs of each of these conceptual organizers and explores the relationships between them. Importantly, Stefkovich's model takes into account student voice and assumes that administrators will be involves in an inquiry and discovery process rather than jumping to conclusions about what is legal and just.

In chapter 4 we are introduced to some shortcomings of law, and in particular a lack of clarity in certain aspects of the US legal system. There is also an interesting discussion of something often overlooked in legal texts – the possibility that the law is wrong. Chapter 5, “Applying ethical constructs to legal cases,” is the last in Part I. In this chapter Stefkovich uses a case, Cornfield by Lewis v. Consolidated School District 991 F.2d 1316 (7th Cir. 1993) as a means of illustrating the way the best interests model can guide analysis. She compares the court's decision with an alternative analysis that calls into question whether the application of law was ethical. Her example shows how the application of the model can provide fresh insight into situations if law and ethics are considered in balance and with the student's rights, responsibilities and the amount of respect they are afforded.

Part II of the book focuses on ethical issues related to legal and ethical applications of the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution. Each chapter in this section presents a number of basic concepts related to particular concepts embodied in the Bill of Rights and then several court cases that show the complexity of ethical and legal interpretation. Cases are followed by questions that prompt readers to analyze the situations through the Best Interests Model, and to consider how they might have acted differently or similarly based on this perspective. The chapters in this section focus on: Chapter 6, “Freedom of speech”; Chapter 7, “Religious expression”; Chapter 8, “Censorship and discrimination”; Chapter 9, “The right to privacy”, and; Chapter 10, “School safety and zero tolerance”.

Part II is entitled “School Governance, The Curriculum, and the Student” and it focuses on how ethical and legal aspects of administrators' curriculum decisions influence students. The part follows the same general approach as part two in that Stefkovich introduces certain basic concepts in each chapter and presents court cases chosen to highlight ethical and legal dilemmas as to relate to students. Chapters include: Chapter 11, “Academic standards, assessment, and the right to education”; Chapter 12, “Teaching, learning, and the curriculum”; Chapter 13, “Governmental immunity”, and; Chapter 14, “Equity, equality, and equal protection”.

The book ends with Part IV, “Conclusions.” In this final chapter Stefkovich revisits the purpose of the book and considers how her research and the Best Interests of the Student model might help school administrators make the difficult ethical and legal decisions that confront them on a daily basis. She points out that this framework calls into question the way many longstanding decisions are made in education and even uses the monumental Brown v. Board of Education decision to point out the fact that before 1954 separate but equal was accepted as legal, though it was hardly ethical. Stefkovich further notes that laws intended to keep schools safe can go to far and actually infringe on the rights, responsibilities, and respect of students, and violate their basic human dignity in circumstances where they should be protected, nurtured and educated. She further explains that while laws may be fine in principle, they may be too ambiguous or they may even be flawed in a manner that demands administrators to advocate for their students, either by crafting enlightened school policy, or even by advocating for a change through the courts.

Stefkovich's parting advice is important for administrators to consider, that administrators must engage in inquiry and self‐reflection on ethical and legal dilemmas in a proactive and ongoing manner. They must be critical of the law and understand the ways that critique can be guided by the best interests of the student model, which advocates for keeping the student rather than the regulation at the center of educational practice. Stefkovich argues that while there may be no certain definition of what best interests of the students means, due primarily to the fact that it is a contextual construct, educational administrators must develop and hone a critical perspective on student rights, responsibility, and respect. Her parting words offer inspiration to those seeking to put students at the center of educational administration practice (p. 159):

… it is my hope that those reading this book may learn from any wisdom it has to offer, will be encouraged to reflect on their own ethical concepts of good and bad, right and wrong, and will feel empowered with the understanding that courts allow considerable discretion to educators as they pursue what is truly in the best interests of the student.