| Public schools have transformed significantly over the past several decades in response to broad concerns about rising school violence. Today's public schools are high security environments employing tactics commonly found in jails and prisons such as police officers, security cameras, identification systems, and secure building strategies. Schools then supplement these security strategies with strict discipline policies and punishments to keep order and further maintain safe campuses. The debate about the proper boundaries of students' rights in school is not new, yet these changes in public schools have implications for students' rights in new ways. Via ethnographic methodology, including direct observations and in-depth interviews of two Mid-Atlantic public high schools, this dissertation examines how public schools negotiate students' rights issues on a regular basis. Included in this examination is the treatment of students' Fourth Amendment rights, Fifth Amendment rights, Fourteenth Amendment due process and equal protection rights, and students' privacy rights under FERPA. The results of this study suggest that contemporary school policies and practices can jeopardize students' rights. School discipline policies and practices that deny students due process in punishment and the manner in which school administrators partner with School Resource Officers are found to be particularly problematic for students' rights. |
