National Education Ass'n v. South Carolina
Headline: Court affirms South Carolina’s use of a teacher licensing test despite evidence it disproportionately disqualifies Black applicants, allowing the State to continue using the test for hiring and pay.
Holding: The Court affirmed the lower court’s judgment allowing South Carolina to use the National Teachers’ Examination for certification and pay, leaving the State’s test-based hiring and pay rules in place.
- Allows South Carolina to keep using the NTE for teacher hiring and pay.
- Leaves in place rules that disqualify far higher share of Black applicants.
- Keeps South Carolina uniquely tying test results to teacher pay.
Summary
Background
South Carolina has long used the National Teachers’ Examinations (NTE) to hire and classify teachers and to determine pay, even though the test’s authors advised against those uses. The United States sued under the Constitution and Title VII, arguing the test disqualified a much larger share of Black applicants and placed more Black teachers in lower-paying classifications. The District Court upheld the State’s practices and found that plaintiffs had not proved a discriminatory purpose, and that the State had justified the test with a validation study prepared for the State.
Reasoning
The central question was whether the State could rely on the validation study and use the NTE for certification and pay despite its unequal racial effects. The District Court accepted a study showing that the test measured familiarity with teacher training course content, rather than tying the test directly to job performance. The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling on appeal, letting the lower court’s judgment stand and permitting South Carolina to continue its NTE-based rules.
Real world impact
The result leaves in place a system that the dissent says will disqualify far larger percentages of Black applicants (for example, the 1976 revision is described as disqualifying 83% of Black applicants versus 17.5% of white applicants) and that will keep most newly certified teachers white. Only two other States use the NTE for initial certification, and South Carolina is described as the only State using it to set pay. The ruling is an affirmation of the lower-court outcome rather than a full, argued decision, so the dispute could be revisited in further proceedings.
Dissents or concurrances
Justice White, joined by Justice Brennan, dissented from the summary affirmance, arguing the test was not properly validated against job performance and that the study and authors’ warnings did not justify the test’s use for pay and certification. They would have set the case for oral argument.
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