litigation is certainly on the minds of educators

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For some students and their parents, a good lawyer can be as important as good grades. Schools have always been fertile ground for lawsuits over religious observance and free speech. But educators say the volume of suits is on the rise. One-quarter of elementary school principals surveyed by the American Tort Reform Association in 1999 had faced a lawsuit or out-of-court settlement in the previous two years. Not all observers agree that the situation is dire. Lehigh University school-law professor PerryJZirkel says the number of lawsuits isn't necessarily increasing, with the exception of suits involving disabled students.
A number of factors may be linked to the frequency of suits. For one^ aggressive zero-tolerance discipline policies that punish or expel students after only one offense invite lawsuits, say some observers. With the stakes so high, parents are more likely to bring lawyers along to student appeal hearings, says Julie Vogt of the Oklahoma State School Boards Association. Many schools are also drug-testing more students. First limited to student athletes, drug testing in the past five years has expanded to include those participating in any extracurricular activity. That means up to 80 percent of students at affected schools may qualify for — and eventually challenge — the tests.

Privacy is another flash point for conflict. This fall, the United States Supreme Court is likely to hear arguments in the case of the suburban Tulsa, Okla. , high school students who graded classmates assignments. The mother of three students says sharing grades in class violates federal student-privacy laws. Educational records cannot be released without parental consent.

Whatever the volume, litigation is certainly on the minds of educators like Edward Wig-gins, principal of Carver Middle School in Raymond, Miss., who has been sued four times in the past 10 years. In one case, students hurt themselves off campus after cutting class without permission. "We did what we're supposed to do, but we're still held accountable for the child. Those are the kind of cases that make us pull the hair out of our head, " Mr. Wiggins says. Even though none of the cases ever went to court, Wiggins says he spent hours gathering records and meeting with lawyers.

Simply bringing a lawsuit, of course, isn't the same as winning in court. Most students who sue claiming their rights were deprived when they didn't make a sports team, for example, can expect their cases to be thrown out of court. In fact, schools usually wind up winning, particularly those that have written policies, says Charles Russo, a professor at Ohio's University of Dayton School of Education. "To the extent that school districts are doing their homework, those are the schools that tend to prevail, " Professor Russo says. "If you have a policy in place, you're going to win. " Increasingly, he adds, "students are checking their rights at the schoolhouse gate, " noting that courts have seemed more willing in the past two decades to side with schools.

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