Oversight

Jan 13, 2008 - The Arkansas Board of Education will consider Tuesday whether to revoke the teaching license of Deanna Bobo. Article states that only 8 teachers have had their licenses revoked since 2005.

[TT - The Associated Press in their study, said that from 2001-2005, 26 teachers in Arkansas lost their licenses because of sexual misconduct. We have had 8 Arkansas teachers sentenced for sexual misconduct in the last 14 months alone. Bobo was one, but she has yet to serve a single day.]

From the article: The Arkansas General Assembly passed a law in 2007 to create a professional teacher licensure board, which will operate to similar boards overseeing the ethics of lawyers and physicians. The new teacher board is being organized and a code of ethics is being written, said Julie Johnson Thompson, spokeswoman for the state Education Department. The new board is to operate outside the purview of the Education Department and the state education board and my offer advice or counsel on ethical issues involving teachers.

The article also mentions those confidential agreements that allow a teacher to move on to another district or another state. A New Mexico law that went into effect last summer goes one step further. The measure prohibits administrators from making confidential agreements with teachers who've gotten in trouble.

TT - Hopefully, the new teacher licensure board will have the same autonomy as the Arkansas Appraiser Licensing & Certification Board that publishes disciplinary sanctions in their quarterly newsletter. PDF (see pg 4) Somehow, we greatly doubt it.

Search Google Arkansas Licensing Board to see the number of licensing boards for every conceivable occupation. Like New York which regulates and licenses professions, including doctors, dentists, lawyers, therapists, nurses, and 26 others, teachers in Arkansas are the only exemption to this kind of oversight. In fact, most states do not have independent oversight of educators. And that is a major problem.

It is a blatant conflict of interest for educational bureaucrats to investigate or discipline educators. Bureaucrats are not professionals and have no professional standing on their own. There is no incentive for them to perform their duties, accountability when they do not, nor a vested interest in establishing or maintaining professional standards for others. They are directed overall by a political appointee who may or may not have any qualification for the job. In turn, the politician may have been elected with a generous donation from or campaign workers supplied by teachers unions.

And you wonder why teachers are not considered professionals by anyone other than themselves? The only way to guarantee oversight is transparency so that the public can offer feedback and correction.

LICENSE REVOKED Jan 15 - The Arkansas Board of Education voted unanimously to revoke Bobo's certified teacher's license. State law requires the board to revoke the license of any public school teacher who pleads guilty or no contest or is convicted of sexual assault.