General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Michelle Rhee is smiling. [View all]The Second Stone
(2,900 posts)That they haven't established by evidence (which may be forthcoming in the final decision) that the incompetent 1 to 3 percent of teachers are inflicted on a discriinatorily affected group, such as race, ethnicity, sex, etc. and not the whole of the student body. For strict scrutiny to apply, it must be shown that the impact falls disproportionately upon the protected minority as contrasted to the general population.
The particular expert that the judge relied on has stated that he pulled the 1 to 3 percent number out of the air as a ballpark estimate, and thus lacks any foundation and should not have been admitted, much less relied upon.
And a 1 to 3 percent failure rate of teachers, while not perfect, is not perfect, not a catastrophe of constitutional proportions. Any remedy must be narrowly tailored to fix the ill in a constitutional overturning of a legislative scheme, and removing the tenure protections of 99 to 97 percent that are not failures is hardly narrowly tailored. An example of narrow tailoring would be the suspension of tenure for the 1 to 3 percent of teachers who are utter failures. But the judge shows his true colors by wiping out all tenure. The judge equivalent would be removing a judge from the bench if a certain percentage of his/her decisions are overturned. By this judge's logic, continued employment of a judge who is overturned in a decision is unconstitutional.