Social Work in Education

Though unheralded, social workers serve an indispensable function in American schools. The rise of social work in education matched the expansion of public education, an expansion that began at the turn of the 20th century. Today, social workers have become crucial to the American educational system, even as their mission has become increasingly complicated by regulation and seemingly intractable problems such as drugs, violence, and broken homes. This paper will briefly examine the history of social work, then discuss some of the legal issues that social workers face everyday in America's schools.

School social work began in 1906, as private agencies sprouted up to help underprivileged youth in three eastern cities (Hartford, Boston, and New York). In 1913, the school board in Rochester, New York initiated the first public social work program. The school board created the program because factors "outside of school are to be found which will often thwart the school in its endeavors." The school board recognized that social workers (which they called "visiting teachers) were needed as "an attempt on the part of the school to meet its responsibility for the whole welfare of the child" (Allen-Meares, 1996, p. 24).

Scholars have cited three influences to explain the emergence of school social work. First, America's public schools experienced a huge influx of students at the beginning of the 20th century. Education had not been a priority in the agrarian America of the 1

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ter in life are not dogged by a thick file detailing their past misdeeds and possibly coloring the views of educators new to the situation. Today, after 25 years, social workers have adjusted to FERPA and learned to live with its many requirements (Allen-Meares, 1996, p. 112). The most important part of FERPA (and its amendments) is the restriction on the release of information. The information in a student's file can only be shared with other school officials who have a "legitimate educational interest" (violating this law could bring severe penalties). If a student's records are subpoen'd, the school must first try to contact the student's parents before releasing the records. Schools are permitted to share certain directory information with other governmental agencies. Such information includes a student's height, weight, date of birth, and address (Allen-Meares, 1996, p. 115). Educators also are permitted to share their firsthand observations of a student (basically to permit letters of recommendation for college-bound students and for educators to discuss a student informally). Law enforcement agencies fall outside FERPA's restrictions, so any law enforcement records (including those from the school police) can be sha

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