Abstract
Rational basis review is broken. Consider a vignette: Imagine a student, Lisa, who is about to graduate high school. Lisa has already completed all of the graduation course requirements early and is spending her time during her senior year taking interesting electives and dual-enrollment college courses. The state has a statute that requires school districts to deny a diploma to any student “who, during the final year of school attendance, fails to achieve a passing score on the state-approved, end-of-course exams in the courses of Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies in which that student is then-currently enrolled.”
As part of the graduation requirements, schools must administer these “end-of-course” exams in the twelfth grade to every student enrolled in one of the aforementioned courses. It forbids early administration of the tests under any circumstances, due to concerns over cheating and test security. However, because Lisa took online courses in the summers, and completed her last graduation-required course in the eleventh grade, she took no end-of-course test then, and she will take no such test this year, as she is not enrolled in any graduation-required course. Thus, by operation of the mandate, Lisa will “fail to achieve a passing score” in all of the required subjects and will accordingly fail to graduate.
When Lisa and her parents notice this anomaly and inform the school district, the response is to quote the policy to them, and to express regret that Lisa will apparently not graduate.
Obviously unsatisfied, Lisa’s parents take Lisa’s issue up the chain of command, all the way to the Superintendent’s Office. The Superintendent, recognizing the absurdity of the situation, offers a solution. A random student from Lisa’s graduating class will be selected, and Lisa’s graduation requirement will be held satisfied if, and only if, that student passes all of the end-of-course exams.
Would that seem absurd or arbitrary? How about irrational?
Thankfully, no school district has such an arbitrary requirement, but what if one did? Would that pass muster in a challenge under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause? Under current approaches, the answer would likely be yes. Focusing on a teacher evaluation plan in Florida, this contribution to the Symposium considers why this is, critiques that state of affairs, and offers the beginnings of a way forward, which, as it turns out, is somewhat a call for a way backward in Constitutional Law.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2019
12-19-2022
Repository Citation
Bauries, Scott R., "Perversity as Rationality in Teacher Evaluation" (2019). Law Faculty Scholarly Articles. 726.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/law_facpub/726
