What Is Your Rights Quotient?

I. Teachers’ Rights and Responsibilities

1			Issue Applying for a position Situation 1 You did it! You finished student teaching (you were great!) position and the school district you most want to teach in has called you for an interview. Mr. Thomas, from the personnel office, seems impressed with your credentials and the interview is going well. He explains that the school district is very committed to its teachers and invests a great deal of resources in training. He wants to make certain that this investment makes sense, so he asks you for your long-range plans with such questions as: “Do you see yourself teaching in this system for a long time?” and “Are you planning to get married or have children in the near future?”
			A)	You answer the questions realizing that the district is entitled to know about your long-range plans.
			B)	You avoid answering the questions. You think it’s none of his business, but you are worried that you won’t get the position.
2			Issue Sexual harassment Situation 2 After surviving the gender discriminatory interview, you are offered a teaching position and decide to take it. After all, you like the community and the children, and with any luck you will never run into Mr. Thomas (the interviewer) again. You are very excited as you prepare for your first day. You are up an hour early, rehearsing your opening remarks. You enter the school, feeling hopeful and optimistic. Then it’s your worst nightmare. You meet the new principal, Mr. Thomas, recently transferred from the personnel office. You spend the next year dodging his lewd comments, his unwanted touches, and his incessant propositions. At the end of the year, you find yourself in counseling and worried about your job. You decide that
			A)	Your initial instincts were right. You should never have taken this job. Quit before things get worse.
			B)	Enough is enough. You sue the district for damages.
3			Issue Personal lifestyle Situation 3 After your first few months, your reputation is established: You are known as a creative and effective teacher and are well liked by students and colleagues (isn’t that wonderful!). But your life outside the classroom is not appreciated by school officials. You are single and living with your “significant other.” Several school officials have strong feelings about this and believe that you are a poor role model for the students. The school system publicly announces that your cohabitation is having a negative influence on your elementary-age students and suspends you.
			A)	You are the victim of an illegal action and should sue to be reinstated.
			B)	The school board is within its rights in dismissing you and removing a bad role model from the classroom.
4			Issue Teachers’ academic freedom Situation 4 As a social studies teacher, you are concerned about your students’ apparent insensitivity to racism in the United States. You have found a very effective simulation game that evokes strong student feelings on racial issues, but the school board is concerned by this activity and has asked you to stop using the game. The board expressed its concern over your discussion of controversial issues. Committed to your beliefs, you persist; at the end of the year, you find that your teaching contract is not renewed.
			A)	Since you think your academic freedom has been violated, you decide to sue to get your job back.
			B)	You realize that the school board is well within its rights to determine curriculum, that you were warned, and that now you must pay the price for your indiscretion.
5			Issue Legal liability Situation 5 You are assigned to cafeteria duty. Things are pretty quiet, and you take the opportunity to call a guest speaker and confirm a visit to your class. While you are gone from the cafeteria, a student slips on some spilled milk and breaks his arm. His parents hold you liable for their son’s injury and sue you for damages.
			A)	You will probably win, since you did not cause the fall and were on educational business when the accident occurred.
			B)	The student’s parents will win, since you left your assigned post.
			C)	The student who spilled the milk is solely responsible for the accident.
			D)	No one will win, because the courts long ago ruled that there is no use crying over spilled milk. (You knew that was coming, right?)
6			Issue Teachers’ freedom of speech Situation 6 As a teacher in a small school district, you are quite upset with the way the school board and the superintendent are spending school funds. You are particularly troubled with all the money being spent on high school athletics, since these expenditures have cut into your proposed salary raise. To protest the expenditures, you write a lengthy letter to the local newspaper, criticizing the superintendent and the school board. After the letter is published, you find that the figures you cited in the letter were inaccurate. The following week, you are called into the superintendent’s office and fired for breaking several school rules. You have failed to communicate your complaints to your superiors and you have caused harm to the school system by spreading false and malicious statements. In addition, the superintendent points out that your acceptance of a teaching position obligated you to refrain from publicizing critical statements about the school. The superintendent says although no one can stop you from making public statements, the school system certainly does not “have to pay you for the privilege.” You decide to
			A)	Go to court to win back your position.
			B)	Chalk it up to experience, look for a new position, and make certain that you do not publish false statements and break school rules in the future.
7			Issue Copying published material Situation 7 You read a fascinating two-page article in a national magazine, and, since the article concerns an issue your class is discussing, you duplicate the article and distribute it to your students. This is the only article you have distributed in class, and you do not bother to ask either the author or the magazine for permission to reprint it. You have
			A)	Violated the copyright law, and you are liable to legal action.
			B)	Not violated any copyright law.
8			Issue Labor rights Situation 8 Salary negotiations have been going badly in your school district, and at a mass meeting teachers finally vote to strike. You honor the strike and stay home, refusing to teach until an adequate salary increase is provided. During the first week of the strike, you receive a letter from the school board, stating that you will be suspended for fifteen days without pay at the end of the school year, owing to your participation in the strike. You decide
			A)	To fight this illegal, unjust, and costly suspension.
			B)	To accept the suspension as a legal action of the school board.
9			Issue Internet censorship Situation 9 You have found a terrific website, one that really communicates recent changes and unique insights about the economics topic your class is studying. You give out the website address, and some students log on in class, while several others tell you that they will follow up at home. The next day, the principal calls you into her office to tell you that she has gotten several parent complaints about the website. It seems that a number of the items on the site are controversial, and some of the topics discussed have upset them. You thank her, go back to your classroom, and recheck the site. Now you see the problem. There is slick advertising, directing site visitors to free games and prizes. There are links to information forms with personal questions about beliefs and finances. And, you find a story about money management and family decision-making ideas that probably conflicts with the more traditional views of your students’ parents. While none of the sites are pornographic, vulgar, or age-inappropriate, some of the positions taken are well out of the mainstream.
			A)	You decide that the principal is right and that students should not have unfettered access to the Internet. You take responsibility for inappropriately directing your students to this controversial site, offer an apology, and eliminate it from the curriculum.
			B)	You decide to resist, believing that the website has good information and that your students should have access.

II. Students’ Rights and Responsibilities

10			Issue Student records Situation 10 You are a high school teacher who has decided to stay after school and review your students’ records. You believe that learning more about your students will make you a more effective teacher. As you finish reviewing some of the folders, Brenda, a 16-year-old student of yours, walks in and asks to see her folder. Since you have several sensitive comments recorded in the folder, you refuse. Within the hour, the student’s parents call and ask if they can see the folder. At this point, you
			A)	Explain that the information is confidential and sensitive and cannot be shared with nonprofessional personnel.
			B)	Explain that the parents can see the folder and describe the procedure for doing so.
11			Issue Distribution of scholarships Situation 11 As a secondary teacher, you are concerned with the manner in which scholarships and other financial awards (donated by the local booster club and neighborhood businesses) are distributed at graduation. You notice that nearly all the awards are going to boys. You mention this to the principal, who explains that this has been the case for as long as anyone can remember. The groups donating the scholarship funds use such categories as leadership skills and sports abilities in choosing the recipients. The principal says that, although this is not exactly equitable, it is realistic, because future financial burdens hit males more than females. You decide that
			A)	It is an unfortunate but realistic policy.
			B)	It is unfair, unreasonable, and unrealistic. You file a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights.
12			Issue Suspension and discipline Situation 12 You are teaching a difficult class, and one student is the primary source of trouble. After a string of disorderly episodes on this student’s part, the floppy disks for the entire class mysteriously disappear. You have put up with more than enough, and you send the student to the principal’s office to be suspended. The principal backs you up, and the student is told not to return to school for a week. This action is
			A)	Legal and appropriate (and probably long overdue!).
			B)	Illegal.
13			Issue Freedom of speech Situation 13 During your homeroom period, you notice that several of your more politically active students are wearing t-shirts with a red line drawn through “www.” You call them to your desk and ask them about it. They explain that they are protesting censorship, the new school board policy that limits student access on the Internet. You tell them that you share their concern but that wearing the t-shirts is specifically forbidden by school rules. You explain that you will let it go this time, since they are not disturbing the class routine, but that if they wear them again, they will be suspended. Sure enough, the next day the same students arrive at school still wearing the t-shirts, and you send them to the principal’s office. The students tell the principal that, although they understand the rule, they refuse to obey it. The principal, explaining that school rules are made to be followed, suspends them. The principal’s action is
			A)	Legally justified, since the students were given every opportunity to understand and obey the school rule.
			B)	Illegal, since the students have the right to wear t-shirts if they so desire.
14			Issue School prayer Situation 14 A student on your team objects to the daily prayer recitation. You are sensitive to the student’s feelings, and you make certain that the prayer is nondenominational. Moreover, you tell the student that he may stand or sit silently without reciting the prayer. If the student likes, he may even leave the gym while the prayer is being recited. As a teacher, you have
			A)	Broken the law.
			B)	Demonstrated sensitivity to individual needs and not violated the law.
15			Issue Search and seizure Situation 15 The drug problem in your school is spreading, and it is clear that strong action is needed. School authorities order a search of all student lockers, which lasts for several hours. Trained police dogs are brought in, and each classroom is searched for drugs. The dogs sniff suspiciously at several students, who are taken to the locker rooms and strip-searched.
			A)	School authorities are well within their rights to conduct these searches.
			B)	Searching the lockers is legal, but strip-searching is inappropriate and illegal.
			C)	No searches are called for, and all of these activities present illegal and unconstitutional violation of student rights.
16			Issue Freedom of the press Situation 16 The Argus is the official student newspaper, written by students as part of a journalism course, but it has run afoul of school administrators. First the student newspaper ran a story critical of the school administration. In the next edition, the paper included a supplement on contraception and abortion. With their patience worn thin, school administrators closed the publication for the remainder of the school year.
			A)	Closing the student newspaper is a legal action.
			B)	Closing the student newspaper is an illegal action.
17			Issue HIV-infected students Situation 17 As you enter school one morning, you are met by a group of angry parents. They have found out that Randy, one of your students, is HIV positive, and hence can transmit the AIDS-related virus to others. There is no cure for AIDS, and there is no compromise in the voices of the parents confronting you. Either Randy goes, or they will keep their children at home. You listen sympathetically, but find your mind wandering to your own contact with Randy. You worry that you, too, may be at risk. In this case, you decide
			A)	It’s better to be safe than sorry, so you ask Randy to return home while you arrange a meeting with the principal to discuss Randy’s case. There is no cure for AIDS and no reason to put every child’s life in jeopardy.
			B)	It’s probably okay for Randy to attend school, so you check with your principal and try to calm the parents down.
18			Issue Sexual harassment Situation 18 One of your favorite students appears particularly upset. You are concerned, so you go over to Pat and put your arm around him. Pat stiffens his shoulder and pushes you away. He is obviously distressed about something. The next day, you offer to take Pat to a local fast-food restaurant after school, to cheer him up with a hot fudge sundae. He refuses to go but thanks you for the gesture. A few weeks later, the principal calls you into her office to explain that you have been charged with sexual harassment.
			A)	You decide not to respond to the principal until you seek legal advice.
			B)	You decide to apologize, realizing that you have overstepped the boundaries of propriety.