EDUCATIONAL MALPRACTICE: THE LEGAL ACCOUNTABILITY OF EDUCATORS (TORT LAW, STANDARDS, INSTRUCTIONAL NEGLIGENCE)

Instructional failures and the quality of education are problems of local, state and national concern. Corrective action is being sought through legislative, judicial and administrative channels.;A model for court intervention into professional standards already exists. In medicine and law, professionals are held accountable for their medical and legal failures and their quality of services. A comparison of medical and legal malpractice to educational malpractice was performed using standard legal and educational research.;The trends in law were studied by examining the problem from both the plaintiffs' and defendants' viewpoint. The plaintiffs presented their cause of action based on the legal theory of negligence. The defendants focused on public policy and immunity considerations.;The court decided that educational malpractice should not be imposed as a liability on school districts because (1) recognition of educational malpractice would open a door to a flood of countless, and often frivolous student claims, and would overburden the courts and the already beleagered school system; (2) litigation of such claims would inevitably lead to inappropriate judicial interference in educational policy making and in the allocation of scarce resources; (3) there are already available administrative procedures for the satisfaction of complaints of incomplete instruction; and (4) proof and damages would be too difficult to actually assess.;This dissertation examined the role the judicial system has played in the search for a standard for competent instruction in schools. The specific questions under examination were: What are the trends in law that would allow a court to rule in favor of a plaintiff for money damages in compensation for a student's failure to achieve a skill level and/or for specific programs/services? What is the state of the law? What are the public policy and educational ramifications of the adoption of various legal positions?;Current state constitutional, statutory and regulatory provisions related to educational malpractice were catalogued and are included in the appendix. All court cases raising the claim of educational malpractice between 1976 and 1984 were analyzed in light of legal and educational factors.