Student Teachers, Rights of

Representative Litigation

The following four cases are representative examples of published judicial opinions that resulted when student teachers sued institutions of higher learning or school boards. The issues in these cases include fulfillment of prerequisites for participation in student teaching, faculty evaluations of student teachers' teaching skills, behavior of student teachers at student teaching sites not directly related to the classes they teach, and student teachers' behavior outside the school site or classroom.

In Hunt v. University of Alaska (2002), officials at a public university refused to allow an elementary education major with a 3.58 grade point average, including the prerequisite courses and practicum for student teaching, to participate in student teaching. The facts revealed that the student failed the reading and writing parts of the Praxis examination, which is usually not required until after completion of the degree. The Supreme Court of Alaska affirmed that the faculty could impose this prerequisite to the student's participation, because his application essays caused concern regarding his language skills.

Embrey v. Central State University (1991) involved another education major, at a private college, who received a final grade of “F” for student teaching without receiving any written evaluations during the semester. Although the applicable policy called for periodic meetings between the supervising faculty member and the student teacher, the faculty member had expressed concerns about the student's performance only to the cooperating teacher. Even so, an appellate court in Ohio upheld the student's dismissal from the program, because she did not pass the course.

In Leone v. Whitford (2007), a student teacher in Connecticut ripped down the bulletin board she had been working on after the cooperating teacher suggested changes. A week later, a special university committee conducted a hearing with the student teacher concerning the incident and her previous pattern of confrontational behavior. The resulting decision was to withdraw her from the student teaching placement and the certification program and to offer her the opportunity to work on the department's Web page as an independent study project to fulfill the B.S. degree in art education with no certification. When the student teacher sued the university and officials on a variety of claims, the federal trial court granted their motion for summary judgment on the ground that she failed to establish that she had a fundamental right to earn her degree.

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