1

Richard

Steggerda

Final

Project EDLP

380-B

The

University

of Vermont

Quantitative

Research 12.6.06

The Problem: Schools don't do enough to teach the First

Amendment. Surveys conducted in recent years by research

groups like The JohnS. and James L. Knight Foundation show

that the First Amendment receives attention and support

during a national crisis such as 9/11, but then deteriorates

in the following years so that in 2004, American's support

for the First Amendment returned to a pre 9/11 status.

According to the JohnS. and James L. Knight Foundations High

School Initiative's "Future of the First Amendment research

project "public support for the First Amendment is neither

universal or stable" (p.1). Each generation passes along its

1understanding of "freedom" to the next generation and how

that generation interprets what "freedom" means in our

democratic society found in the words of the First Amendment

is what's at stake.

Research Question:

What statistical relationships exist, focusing on First

Amendment- knowledge and attitudes of high school students,

teachers and administrators, between what teachers and

administrators know and think about the First Amendment, and

what students do in their classrooms and with news media,

and what they know and think about the First Amendment?

2

Null Hypothesis: There is no statistically significant

difference found between groups of students and teachers and

administrators with regard to a series of questions

conveying beliefs and knowledge of the First Amendment and

news media.

Methodology:

A chi square significance test (Pearson's) will be used. The

relationship between the data is strong, the sample size is

large, the number of values of the variable is large, all

requisites for the use of this kind of test. A chi square

probability of less than .05 will be expected as a

justification for a rejection ofthe null hypothesis. Looking

at the Knight survey, "assumptions" necessary for the

Pearson's chi square test are in place: random population

data, the sample is large, the observations are independent

(the same observation can only appear in one cell), which

means that chi square cannot be used to test correlated data

(example, before-after, matched pairs, panel data), a similar

distribution exists, and the data used is nominal and ordinal

2and not continuous. Student, teacher, principal responding in

a predictable way were found (see "key findings" and analysis

of "Descriptive statistics").

Lit Review:

Each generation of Americans perpetuates democracy and

freedom for the next generation. What this dissertation

intends to do is take a close look at the state of The First

Amendment, particularly in our public schools, measure its

degree of importance by students, teachers, principals and

to measure its relationship with democracy. How

3

students, teachers and principals interpret these words

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of

religion, or prohibiting thefree exercise thereof; or

abridging thefreedom speech, or of the press; or the right

of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the

Government of grievances will inform us of the stability of

the First Amendment which is the foundation of our democracy

and seems to be on shaky ground.

Students, today, are taking the First Amendment for

granted, are not knowledgeable about it and have trouble

articulating just how they feel about it. Students are

developing the view that they are not allowed to express

unpopular views through speech or through the press. Theirs

is a view of a government that can freely restrict public

protests such as flag burning and restrict Internet material

that is indecent is part of the problem. If this generation

loses its understanding of our rights protected by the First

Amendment, what will the next generation believe about their

rights guaranteed by this amendment? The American public

school is where these students should be learning about the

First Amendment. Schools should involve all students in

media classes and media-related activities. The Research

3(which will be substantiated later in the dissertation)

points out that students who do participate in journalism

classes and/or media-related activities are more likely to

believe that people should be allowed to burn the American

flag and to articulate unpopular opinions. Student

involvement in the media and American democracy depends on

the priorities oftheir school curriculum directors.

Administrators seem to agree that learning about journalism

is a priority, but not a high priority. Funding is often

mentioned as a restrictive force for invigorating high

school curricula with journalism classes and media-

activities. Twenty-one per cent of schools do not offer

4

students the opportunity to run a school newspaper which

is where students who write articles for their school

newspaper report they have the right to express, in print,

controversial points of views and issues. In the past five

years 40 per cent of American public schools that have had

school newspapers have eliminated them. Most students who

do write for a school-sponsored newspaper attend suburban

schools. Suburban schools are the wealthiest and the urban

and rural schools, the poorest, and are lagging behind when

it comes to teaching the First Amendment in their classes.

Even more shocking is that nearly 75 percent of high

school students polled by such organizations as the Knight

Foundation say they don't have how they feel about the First

Amendment or that they take it for granted. Schools need to

start teaching the First Amendment to a greater degree than

they are currently doing to re-ignite an understanding of

what our rights are. Becoming passionate about the First

Amendment is a goal all schools should have for their

students. What (the First Amendment) is believed

by many to be the cornerstone of our democracy is in

jeopardy of being taken for granted, which is the first step

in losing something valuable.

4Public school teachers should be held accountable for

instilling the passion necessary for their students to

accelerate their interest and understanding of the First

Amendment. Research, however, does not portray that this is

the case. Most teachers report back that having all students

learn some journalism skills is "somewhat important." These

same faculty members believe that it is important to be

involved in an extracurricular activity or club (nearly

75%), but are only 35% as enthusiastic about students

learning journalism skills. These same people believe that

the school's administration feels the same that they do

about these issues. These same polled teachers believe that

journalists tell the

5

truth only 79 % of the time. Less than half of these teachers

polled believe that schools do a "good" job of teaching

students about the First Amendment. Fifty-nine per cent

believe that Americans should not have the right to burn the

flag as a political statement. Other rights that teachers

feel should be denied are the right of a musician to sing

songs whose lyrics might be offensive, high school students

being allowed to freely report

controversial issues in their student newspapers without the

permission of the school, and are split 50-50 on the issue of

the government's right to restrict indecent material on the

Internet.

High school principals/administrators are also

exacerbating the problem: over 50 % do not see the students

learning about journalism and the media is a high priority.

Nearly a third of those polled think it is not a priority.

Financial restraints are cited by some principals as a

deterrent to the implementation of a stronger journalism and

media curriculum. Along with the problem of budget comes

their notion that students are just not interested in

learning about the First Amendment more than they are

currently, that teachers lack the knowledge to teach about

5the First Amendment through journalism and the media, that

school officials (school board members, superintendents et

al.) would not support such an effort.

A truly democratic society such as ours depends on people

understanding the First Amendment. A push for more education

about the First Amendment and the freedoms it guarantees

would strengthen our students' right to speak, write,

worship freely, assemble and petition the government. A gap

has formed and widened in our schools' teaching of the First

Amendment. Inorder to have a democracy in action we need to

build, nurture and ensure that public school students know,

understand and exercise their First

6

Amendment freedoms. Creating and perpetuating healthy

scholastic journalism is part of the solution. Teaching all

high school students about the First Amendment, and opening

doors to opportunities for them to speak and write freely is

the only way they'll become First Amendment players when

they reach the age of legality and become eligible to vote.

What relationships exist (focusing on First Amendment-

knowledge and attitudes of high school students, teachers

and administrators) between what teachers and administrators

know and think about the First Amendment and what students

do in their classrooms and with news media, and what they

know and think about the First Amendment?

To answer this question, quantitative and qualitative

research will focus on student, faculty, and administrative

views on First Amendment issues that were surfaced by the

Knight Foundation School Initiative Research project. The

focus of my dissertation and this project is the First

Amendment and in particular Freedom of Speech and Freedom of

the Press and why it's in jeopardy in American high schools.

Are our students losing their First Amendment rights? The

dissertation focus springs from my own experiences with the

censorship of two student written and edited literary

6journals, under my auspices as

its faculty advisor at Mount Abraham Union High School (

imprimatur) in Bristol, Vermont and how this experience

brought me to the understanding that the perpetuation of our

democracy depends on whether or not our students K-12 become

better First Amendment players. I will look at my and my

students' baptism by fire (censorship) in relationship to

four Supreme Court Cases that have established the legal

precedent set by the outcome of each by which all First

Amendment cases involving high school students are measured.

The cases are, in chronological order: 1. Tinker v. Des

Moines Independent

7

Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), 2. Board of

Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v.

Pico, 475 U.S. 853 (1982), 3.Bethal School District No. 430

v. Fraser, 478 U .S. 260 (1986), and 4. Hazelwood School

District v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S.260 (1988). I will also look

at an appeal to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in

Manhattan, Guiles v. Marineau.

In the aftermath ofhaving my students' work in the

school's literary journal censored by the school's principal

I became intensely interested in how this could happen and if

I as an educational leader could teach my editors something

about an amendment that very much effected me and them and

those student editors that would follow. I have been an

advocate for students my entire career, but this incident has

defined who I am. I have come to a point in my life, because

of what happened to the 2003 Resurgam and another act of

censorship by the same administrator over the same issue in

2005 Resurgam, that is slowly and carefully defining me in

terms described by Clarence Darrow's words used by

Morris Dees with Steve Fiffer in their book A Lawyer's

Journey, The Morris Dees Story, 2001: "I have lived my life

and I have fought my battles, not against the weak and poor

7but against power, injustice, against oppression" (preface).

Isn't this what the First Amendment to the Constitution allows

us Americans to do?

Inorder to better understand how leadership, in this case my

own, has developed in the area of the First Amendment and

student rights, I will combine the two camps of research-

qualitative and quantitative to support my argument. My

qualitative research centers on interviews and a follow-up

analysis of them and my quantitative research is a replication

of a study already done that defines the need for First

Amendment Schools throughout the U.S. My ultimate goal, in

this dissertation, is to formulate a strong case

8

for establishing Vermont's first- ever First Amendment

School at Mount Abraham Union High School. Along with the

inclusion of three interviews with past Resurgam editors I

will incorporate several narratives as part of my

qualitative work: "When one thinks of the leader as a

storyteller, whose stories must wrestle with those that are

already

operative in the minds of an audience, one obtains a

powerful way of conceptualizing the work ofleading"

(Gardner, 1995, xi).

The Tinker Standard also referred to as one of the Supreme Court's "three tests'' for

determining "free expression rights" for students in a public school was decided in 1969:

When 15-year-old John Tinker, his sister Mary Beth, 13,

and Christopher Eckhardt, 16, wore black armbands to their

Iowa public schools in December 1965 to protest the Vietnam

conflict, they never imagined that their actions would lead

to a landmark First Amendment decision. Nonetheless, their

protests eventually culminated in the leading First

Amendment free speech case for public school students.

(Haynes, Chaltain, Ferguson, Hudson, Thomas, 2003, pp. 59-

860)

The Fraser Standard high court decision differed from the

Tinker case in its interpretation of "free speech." In the

Fraser case a high school senior named Matthew Fraser

claimed his right to deliver a lewd speech in nominating a

friend for school office citing the Tinker case as the

basis for his entitlement. Inthis case the high court

established a "balancing test":

9

In its opinion, the court majority stated that 'the

constitutional rights of students in public schools are not

automatically coexistent with the rights of adults in other

settings.' Instead the high court set up a balancing test:

'the freedom to advocate unpopular and controversial views in

schools and classrooms must be balanced against society's

countervailing interest in teaching students the boundaries

of socially appropriate behavior.' (Haynes, et al., 2003, p.

63)

The Hazelwood Standard is the third test in the high

court's triangulation of foundational cases from which a

precedent has been established in judging high school

students' "free speech" claims. Public high school students,

in this case, claimed a right to print, in their school

newspaper, articles about pregnancy and divorce, censored by

a school principal because in his view the subject matter,

teen pregnancy and birth control, were inappropriate topics

for the younger students at the school and the divorce

article did not allow a certain parent mentioned to respond

to comments about the parent. The Hazelwood ruling by the

High Court states that "educators do not offend the First

9Amendment by exercising editorial control over the style and

content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive

activities so long as their actions are reasonably related to

legitimate pedagogical concerns" (Haynes, et al., 2003, pp.

62-63).

Groups to Compare: Students, teachers, principals.

Source of Statistical Information Used to Compare

The Three Groups Was Extracted From The Knight

Foundation 2004 Study.

Sample: The JohnS. and James L. Knight Foundation High SchoolInitiative's "Future

of the First Amendment Project" surveyed (2004) more than 100,000 students, nearly

10

8 000 teachers and more than 500 administrators and

principals at 544 high schools across the United States.

(NOTE: This is where I decided to trim the paper to comply

with the 10 page limit. I did, however, include the

“References” page. I wrote this using the APA style format)

References:

Balkin, Jack M. (2004). "Digital Speech And Democratic Culture: A Theory Of Freedom Of Expression For The Information Society." N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1.

Chaltain, Sam (2005). "Dose the First Amendment Have a Future?" Social Education 69 (4), pp. 126-130. National Council for the Social Studies.

Garvey, John H. (1996). What Are Freedoms For? Cambridge, MA, London, England: Harvard University Press.

22

Haynes, Charles C. Chatlain, Sam, Ferguson, John E. JR. Hudson, David L. Thomas, Oliver (2003). The First Amendment in Schools. ASCD (Association for Supervision and CurriculumDevelopment.

hltp :l / wv. '' . knightli.ln . o r !.! l knighll'd .:asc . /2 0 0 5/ 2 0 0 5 / 9 /2 0 1 0 5 /s un c · finds first amendment is being left behind in us. High schools.html

http://www.poynter.org/content/content/9/20/05 high school editor heads off campus for first amendment rights. html

Hudson, David L. (2005). "Student Expression in the Age of Columbine." Securing Safety and Protecting First Amendment Rights. First Amendment Center Publications.

First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

First Amendment Center (2006). First Amendment Schools Vision Statement. ASCD: Publication No. 01-flO, Alexandria, Virginia.

Guiles v. Marineau, Morris-Kortz, Shoik, Graham, Docket Nos. 05-0327-cv (L), 05- 0517-cv (XAP) (VT. 2005), U.S. Court of Appeals For the Second Circuit (2006).

Johnson, Anna. (AP) (2006, March). The freedom to worship ... 'Simpsons'? The Burlington Free Press (VT), March, 2006.

Leslie, David W. and Novak, Richard J. (January and March2003 98-120). "Substance Versus Politics: Through the DarkMirror of Governance Reform." Educational Policy, Vol. 7,No. 1.

McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum (March 1, 2006). "Americans' Awareness ofFirst Amendment Freedoms" survey. Chicago.

Milton, John, Lockwood, Lauara E. (1911) Selected Essays Of Education, Areopagitica, The Commonwealth. Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, The Riverside Press Cambridge.

Newsweek Education Program (2002), Living Up to the FirstAmendment. Newsweek, Inc.

22Stone, Deborah (2002). Policy Paradoxes The Art of Political Decision Making, Revised Edition. New York, London, W.W. Norton & Company.

Rothstein I. Russell (1996) "First Amendment Rights and the Internet in K-12 Schools: Legal Precedent from Print Media " International Jl. Of Educational Telecommunications.

23

Tyack, Davis and Tobin, William(? 453-479). "The 'Grammar' of Schooling: Why Has it Been so Hard to Change?" American Educational Research Journal, Fall, Vol. 31, No. 3.

T-shirt ban decision appealed. (2005, October 28). The Burlington Free Press (VT).

U.S. Constitution.

Warnke, Andrea, editor (Septembet, 2006). "Student Speech Rights Upheld." The Defender, ACLU ofVT.