"When teachers are abusers"

EDITORIAL Nov 13, 2007 - From USA Today

After Kelsey Peterson, a 25-year-old Nebraska middle school teacher, fled to Mexico recently with a 13-year-old former student, she was publicly fired by her school board.

That seems an easy call, yet hundreds of other teachers who are caught having sexual contact with students end up getting away with it, usually when the case appears difficult to prove, expensive to prosecute or embarrassing to the school district. The offending teachers slip away and teach elsewhere, often protected by confidentiality agreements.

...
Some states are moving to make it harder for school districts to hide such crimes. In Maine, where state officials refused to release teacher disciplinary actions to the AP reporters, the governor has vowed to change confidentiality laws. In Missouri, legislators are considering a bill that would ban confidentiality agreements in sexual abuse cases. And in Florida, legislators are debating a registry of teacher offenders.

The changes are helpful, but only if accompanied by a public awareness campaign. Students need to know that challenging popular teachers who abuse their positions of authority is the right thing to do (but that false accusations will be dealt with harshly). Superintendents need to understand that passing an abuser to another district is just as unacceptable as the Catholic Church shifting pedophile priests from parish to parish.

Nearly all of the USA's 3 million public school teachers are beyond reproach. Identifying and drumming out the relatively few offenders might be cause for embarrassment, but it's vital to the safety of the nation's schoolchildren.

TT - Those confidentiality agreements are the result of education authorities protecting themselves and teachers at the expense of students and their families.