Racial Implicit Bias and School Discipline: Rethinking the Reasonable Person Test of Teacher Misconduct

• In Event: Contemporary Dilemmas of Ethics and Justice in Education

Abstract

Research on school discipline disparities suggests that Black students face significant risks in American schools due to racial implicit bias. The Reasonable Person Test used in teacher misconduct cases asks whether a teacher’s conduct in an individual case meets standards of reasonableness that by design are minimally demanding. As such, the test is unlikely to capture cases where the evidence available underdetermines the teacher’s rightful course of action but where the effects of implicit bias are likely to be most pronounced. Treating teacher reasonableness as a process rather than an event, I argue, could capture the unreasonableness of teachers’ racial implicit bias, but raises further questions about how to establish a racially just standard of care.

Author

• Nicolas Jordan Tanchuk, University of Winnipeg