Educational Malpractice

In the US, educational malpractice is not an unheard term. Students and parents have dragged educational institutions in courts on account of neglectful teaching, carelessness and inability to make the candidates competent enough to get employment. In most of the educational malpractice cases, plaintiffs have claimed that the educational institutions and its teachers or staff were unable to fulfill their duties of educating them properly, as promised at the time of admission.

Failed Educational Malpractice Lawsuits: Prominent Causes

Educational malpractice cases have always attracted debates from scholars and judicial stalwarts. It is a fact that in many cases, colleges and universities always had a stronghold in the cases due to reasons that are not very difficult to understand. There are plenty of reasons why the judiciary has discarded plaintiffs arguments in a majority of cases against educational institutions. The biggest limitation in announcing a punishment against educational institutions in malpractice cases is that courts don't have an exact definition of what all constitutes the duties to educate a child. It is yet to decide, when should a child be deemed educated? Just because the child is unable to read or write with the expected level of proficiency at the end of educational year, makes the school or college responsible for it? Similarly, the reasons behind failure of a student to come up to an expected mark, after learning was imparted to him or her can't be exactly stated. A child spends significant number of hours at home besides the school. What if the child didn't diligently pursue his or her studies at home? Or what if the parents were careless in looking after the child and helping him at his work. It is a fact that good learning atmosphere is not only important at school but also at home. Moreover, every child is capable in his or her own unique ways. Not everyone has same aptitude, emotional, social, cultural and environmental upbringing. This effects performance in the academic career. Considering public schools, colleges or universities responsible for the poor performance of a student certainly raises several questions.

Educational Malpractice Suits

A large number of legal lawsuits have been filed against institutions on several charges. While not pointing out to exact cases and their complete details, here are some common reasons as to why parents, students and colleges or universities have been in the courtrooms.

    * A school sued parents for not paying the tuition fees and in return the parents sued the school on charges of racism, poor education practices and absenteeism of the school staff.
    * A group of students battled in court against their college administration for being unable to stop cheating and using unfair means by several students in the college exams.
    * Some cases have also been filed by students who passed high school but complained of having reading and writing skills at par with seventh grade students.
    * A child is misdiagnosed with a learning disability, is sent to a normal school and is unable to learn anything for many years. Parents sue the doctor and the school, both.
    * A student joined a college after winning athletic scholarships however, after completing four years of education, he feels incompetent in the employment world. Sues the college eventually.
    * Several cases also include stances where vocational training institutions have been sued because even after the complete training, students ended up with no employment.

The above examples of educational malpractice lawsuits, though don't directly depict the exact cases, are just some incidents, where lawsuits have been filed against private and public educational institutions. It is a fact that many cases in educational malpractices have been rejected by courts due to the inability of the plaintiffs to prove in the court that the defendant was responsible for the loss occurred to plaintiffs. Nevertheless, in some cases, lawsuits have been won by plaintiffs and that has triggered hopes for many others who have been in the legal battle against institutions.