A state appeals court in Massachusetts has upheld the reinstatement with full back pay of three teachers who were fired by the Lowell school district for “failure to demonstrate fluency in English.”
A three-judge panel of the Massachusetts Court of Appeals on Sept. 25 unanimously upheld decisions by an arbitrator and a state trial court that the district had violated the teachers’ procedural rights because the teachers could not cross-examine the graders of a standardized oral-proficiency test they had failed.
Also, the district failed to follow state guidelines by not relying first on classroom observation to determine whether the teachers were fluent in English, the appellate court said in School Committee of Lowell v. Oung.
