r its own negligence, or it can be held vicariously (strictly) liable for the negligence (or intentional torts) of its employees. Teachers were regarded to be in loco parentis, in the place of a student's parents. Teachers were liable only for their failure to exercise due care, which was proven to be the proximate and reasonably foreseeable cause of injury. In most cases which imposed liability under state law, very serious failures of supervision were present, such as in the landmark case of Daily v. Los Angeles School District. In that case, a gym instructor allowed "slap boxing" to go on in his class, which resulted in the death by skull fracture of one of his students (Tanner, 1972, p. 526).
Plaintiffs have rarely succeeded in prevailing in actions aimed at holding schools or teachers liable for sports injuries or in cases involving injuries inflicted on students by teachers and vice versa. In one 1987 New York case, the court said that, "the school board did not assume an affirmative duty to protect teachers from students" and, in another the same year, that "a board of education is not an insurer of its students' safety" ("Recent Developments," 1988, p. 329). Attempts by students disappointed with the results of their education to sue schools and teachers for educational malpractice have generally failed (Newman, 1990, p. 110). The reluctance of many state courts to intervene in school disciplinary matters was summarized by an Alabama appellate court in a 1984 case as follows: "It is not the court's function to review school board actions unless there exists a clearly unconstitutional disparity between the offense [of a student) and the penalty" (Scoggins v. Board of Educ., 1984, p. 99).
Effects of Federal Intervention in the Public Schools
In 1954, the Supreme Court decided in Brown v. Board of Education that de facto racial segregation in the public schools violated the Equal Protection clause of the F...