"The Important Consideration, After All, Is Disability": Los Angeles Physical Standards for Teachers, 1940–1980

• In Event: 64.039 - Federal Policies and Educational Borders: Teachers, Standards, and Nations at Risk

Abstract

This paper is an examination of how the Los Angeles Board of Education defined and enforced physical standards of normalcy and health through the medical examinations of teaching applicants. Between 1940 and 1980, the Board adapted these standards in relation to national trends or laws—such as World War II, the Disability Rights Movement, and the Rehabilitation Act. Despite changes in the language the Board used to detail the high physical standards required in a teacher or in the certain “defects” the Board deemed permissible over time, the basis for these standards—that a disabled teacher was a hazard to the safety and to the proper development of her students and a burden on the Board’s budget—never wavered.

Author

• Kristen Chmielewski, The University of Iowa