School administrators make certain decisions everyday and many of them have remarkable legal significance. Because of these decisions, school leaders have the responsibility of knowing and understanding state, federal, and case law that governs general education, special education, and community education. It is imperative that school leaders have appropriate legal knowledge base that includes past court rulings as well as present rulings; and must be able to develop, adjust, and implement policy to meet local, state, and federal requirements and constitutional provisions, standards, and regulatory applications that impact schools.
4. Which …show more content…
Grutter, a white woman, who had a 3.81 undergraduate grade point average, and 161 score on the LSAT, sued the university over the school’s affirmative action policy, which considered race as a factor in admissions. Michigan, and many other universities in the country use affirmative action (or positive discrimination) to increase the number of minority students admitted in the university. Grutter claimed that University of Michigan’s affirmative action policy, which admitted less-qualified minority applicants, is in violation of federal civil rights laws and the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees citizens “equal protection” under the law. In Grutter v Bollinger (2003), the Supreme Court upheld the use of affirmative action in higher education. The Court affirmed that diversity could be a legally legitimate rationale for affirmative action, and emphasized that University of Michigan’s policy was acceptable because the school conducted a thorough review of each applicant’s qualifications and did not use a racial quota system (Parker, …show more content…
Bollinger has the greatest impact on my role as a professional educator. Affirmative action, which has its origins in a 1961 executive order issued by then president John F. Kennedy, continues to be a contentious issue. Since 1996, several states, including California, Washington, and Michigan has prohibited affirmative action in public education, in state government hiring, and the awarding of state contracts while the face of America has been changing. Traditionally excluded racial and ethnic minorities make up a large portion of the present and next generation. Without a variety of affirmative action programs that identify and nurture talent among groups, our nation will fail to effectively compete in the global market and maintain the world’s strong research capability (Garces, 2012). Despite the Supreme Court’s upholding the constitutionality of affirmative action practices in Grutter v. Bollinger, the use of the state ballot to enact policies that ban the practice is a growing phenomena affecting higher education policy. While the process is considered to be an exercise of democracy, it undermined the efforts of institutions of higher education to further the educational and democratic goals in our society, which in the words of the U.S. Supreme Court involves “cultivating a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry” (Garces, 2012, p.