Education Administration
Evolving judicial interpretation of employees' rights to due process have established for contemporary courts and state legislatures that termination of an educator is a property interest under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The 14th constitutional amendment states, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" ("U.S. Constitution," 2012). Salaries and wages are considered property, which means that termination of a contractual position for reasons related to performance must be subject to due process.
Due process entails the collection of documentation and statements that may provide information and data to support decision-making. Accordingly, statements would be taken in formal fact-finding sessions with the teacher, with the student's parents, and with staff members who may have been witness to behavior or actions that would substantiate or negate the charges being brought by the parents. This documentation would be subjected to triangulation in order to seek corroborating evidence in either a positive or negative direction. Moreover, the collection of information regarding the situation must be as complete as possible,...
The information collection process is iterative, and therefore, may require more than one round of gathering testimony and the like.
Implementation of Due Process
According to due process laws in most states, communication between administrators and teachers must take place on at least an annual basis. In the contracts negotiated between bargaining units and educators in most states and school districts, the stages and steps for conducting performance evaluations are specific and mandated. A component of the official performance evaluation is the identification of a set of standards to which the performance of educators is compared -- some districts refer to this as the Instructional Framework. Educators who do not meet these standards must have received notice that they have been found deficient in one or more areas, been provided with guidance as to how to improve, and given the time to improve before the next scheduled performance evaluation. School boards and bargaining units must be prepared to provide notice of their rationales and their intended actions; likewise, employees facing termination must also be given opportunity to defend their side of the issues. Due process in most states includes a predetermination hearing and while the school boards due have what is referred to as sole discretion over the actual decision to…
