Ugly

Ugly. I have two daughters and if they had a teacher that had made suggestive comments towards them – and he didn’t get fired and didn’t lose his license I would be outraged.

That is what happened in Houston and a reporter there called to ask me what I thought.

I think it is outrageous that we have a system that would allow this teacher to slink away to possibly teach again. I strongly believe that because of the teacher shortage, and groups that fight against new methods of recruiting and certifying teachers, the problem will only get worse.

We don’t usually have HR professionals in districts and schools that are trained to deal with this. We have former teachers in these jobs doing the best that they can. We don’t have a way for states, districts and schools to share issues with teachers. We don’t have a standardized method for performing background checks on teachers and there are too many vendors providing this service. (Hint to principals: in addition to doing a background check - google the name of the teacher BEFORE hiring as the cheapest way to see if they have made the news lately). And we don’t have enough teachers fighting for jobs in the schools.

Until principals have enough teacher candidates to select the right one for their schools and until we get a standardized background check process and until we have districts that take and stand and revoke licenses of teachers making sexual advances towards students – we will have this problem.

And it is outrageous.