Hot For Teacher No More

Original Posting here.

An AP report Friday showed that ten states have taken action in the past few months to crack down on sexually abusive teachers in our nation's schools. This comes on the heels of a previous AP study that found 2570 educators had lost their teaching credentials or otherwise been sanctioned from 2001-05 because of sexual allegations involving students. The report goes on to state:

While the vast majority of America's roughly 3 million public school teachers are committed professionals, a disturbing number have engaged in sexual misconduct. When faced with evidence of abuse, administrators sometimes fail to let others know about it, and legal loopholes let some offenders stay in the classroom. Experts who track sexual abuse say the problem is even bigger than those numbers suggest. Underreporting is common, they say, because victims often are ostracized and accusations are difficult to prove. Governors, state education officials and lawmakers have led the push for new measures, which include tougher penalties for teachers who abuse students, punishment for administrators who fail to properly oversee their faculty, and an effort to train an entire state's corps of teachers to recognize potential abusers in their midst.

These measures include Maine legislation that will require school districts to share information on a teacher disciplined for any reason, including sexual abuse, as well as a Utah law that will permanently revoke the license from any educator guilty of sexual abuse. Several other loopholes have also been closed off or severely curtailed in various states:

• Backroom deals. Florida's new ethics law for teachers bars school districts from entering into confidential agreements with teachers who get in trouble. Such deals crop up around the country, allowing schools to remove a problem teacher but letting that educator quietly move on to another district or state.

• Failing to report. Kentucky's law raised the stakes for officials who fail to report allegations of abuse, bringing 90 days in jail for a first offense and up to five years in prison for repeat violations.

• Problem teachers returning to the classroom. Colorado would require any teacher who lost a license for sexual misconduct to promise never to teach again. The measure awaits Gov. Bill Ritter's signature. Virginia closed a gap that made it possible for teachers who abuse students to be hired by another school district in the time between when they are fired and when the state Education Department is notified.

• South Carolina looked beyond punishment, instead creating a statewide training program that aims to instruct 10,000 teachers, administrators, guidance counselors, coaches and school nurses on how to prevent, identify and report cases of abuse.

Now, don't get us wrong, we are 100% behind the notion that sexually abusive educators have absolutely no business working in our childrens' schools. If a teacher thinks that he/she should be dating (or worse) someone in their teens (or worse), then he/she should face the appropriate consequences, including job-related sanctions as well as possible criminal charges. These people do not belong in the educational system, no matter how well they can explain Chaucer or teach derivatives. But what bothers us is the last paragraph of the report:

The training will focus not only on stopping sexual predators but on preventing simply inappropriate relationships, said schools Superintendent Jim Rex. Sometimes young, naive teachers do improper things, with no ill will toward the student, and get into trouble, such as texting students' cell phones or giving them a ride home. "So much of what schools do is based on trust. Not only must kids trust their teachers, but parents have to trust those teachers too," Rex said. "And schools have to earn that trust each and every day."

We've all heard of doctors practicing defensive medicine - ordering up myriad tests to cover every base in an effort to avoid liability - but we're afraid that the educational climate is getting to a tipping point where teachers are practicing defensive mentoring. As we think back to our nascent years, we recall that our very best teachers were those who were indeed willing to cross an invisible barrier and give us that extra attention we sought or needed, the pat on the back when things weren't going well, or the ride home when our parents got stuck at work.

Granted, in our case the pat on the back never turned into a hand on the ass, but it is a shame that we're losing this teacher-student relationship that goes beyond the in-class pedagogy in the name of fighting sexual abuse. Clearly, the one-tenth of one percent of bad apple teachers are resulting in a significantly devalued education for the rest of our children.