Feb 18, 2008 - Oregonian series continues with "Schools cut secret deals with abusive teachers"
FINDING: During the past five years, nearly half of Oregon teachers disciplined for sexual misconduct with a child left their school districts with confidential agreements. The confidential agreements promised to keep alleged abuse quiet. Officials promised to keep alleged abuse quiet. Some promised cash settlements, health insurance and letters of recommendation as incentives for a resignation. Some promised cash settlements, health insurance and letters of recommendation as incentives for a resignation.
One teacher who left with such an agreement in 2005 began teaching in Arizona in 2006-2007 school year before leaving for "personal reasons." He's now teaching in New Hampshire.
Oregon public school officials say an educator suspected of sexual misconduct gives them few options. If they fire the educator, they may face a costly legal battle with teachers union lawyers. Putting an employee on paid leave is also expensive because the commission takes, on average, nearly 16 months to complete investigations.Other states do not approve secret agreements. Montana is one. Similar problems with secret deals in California led the state Supreme Court to rule that districts can be sued for such pacts. The decision largely put an end to resignation deals, said Mary Armstrong, a lawyer for the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
The Oregonian found that in 2006-07, 28 Oregon educators missed 993 workdays while on paid leave during investigations of misconduct, at a cost of about $350,000 in salaries and hiring substitutes.
Cutting a resignation agreement offers the fastest, cheapest way for a district to push a problem teacher out of the classroom, school officials say.
SELF-POLICING DOESN'T WORK The problem in Oregon is that teachers unions helped create the Teacher Standards and Practices commission in 1965, and nearly all 17 commissioners are teachers or former teachers. The commission dismisses about half of the 200 complaints it receives each year.
KEEPING BAD TEACHERS The commission usually gives teachers who touch students or watch pornography on school computers a public reprimand or probation and permits them to keep teaching if they get counseling and pass a psychological evaluation.
Even educators who admit to sexual misconduct with a student sometimes get a second chance. The commission, a professional organization supported by license fees, tries to serve educators and their interests. Though commissioners say they give student safety high priority, their mission also includes “always save a good educator,” said Vickie Chamberlain, the agency’s executive director.
Pt I of their series Link
-----------------------------------------------
TT - THE BOTTOM LINE is that your children are dead last in their consideration. Secret agreements let teachers move to other districts in other states and commit the same offenses. Your school officials aren't warned about the menace. Education bureaucrats make deals that protect, defend and tolerate teachers knowing that they do so at the expense of children. They even screw over other bureaucrats in other states. But the ones they hurt the most are students, their parents, and the quality of education for those teachers who feel as strongly about the issue as parents do.
Such deals demoralize teachers, serve as bad examples and guarantee a continuation of the problem. And in some states, the information is so secret that a direct order by the states' attorney general isn't sufficient to obtain the records.
And this is the same finding in investigations by the Columbus Dispatch (OH), the Sarasota Herald-Tribune (FL), the Small Newspaper Group in Illinois), the Detroit News, and in Arkansas, and in virtually every state where licensing has been examined.
Whether you call it a Broken Trust or the ABCs of Betrayal, the Code of Silence, The Hidden Costs of Tenure, Dirty Secrets: Why sexually abusive teachers arent stopped, Betray of Trust or Out of Bounds every single investigation came to the same conclusion about licensing and standards bureaucracies.
