State Lacks Way To Track Abusive Teachers
By Christy Watson, Staff Writer
Originally published by The Daily Oklahoman, January 14, 2001
Abusive and incompetent teachers are allowed to switch school districts and leave their troubled pasts behind because Oklahoma has no system to track teachers who have been fired or pressured to resign, an investigation by The Oklahoman found.
In one case, a district court judge found a teacher had committed child abuse. The teacher had already been fired from his job, but no criminal charges were filed. He continued teaching for more than four years in two different school districts.
This isn't the only case, Oklahoma administrators say. It probably isn't even the most serious example.
Administrators sometimes ask teachers to resign rather than go through the expensive termination process. Teachers also can choose to resign before they're fired. School officials have no way to stop them.
"Our Number 1 priority is children," said Mary Howell, executive personnel director for Tulsa Public Schools.
"With the shortage that we're seeing with teachers in some areas, it would be nice to have a central clearinghouse to check on teacher certification or to see if the teacher has had problems with other school districts. We want to put the best possible teachers in the classroom."
But districts find that difficult.
Even state schools Superintendent Sandy Garrett admits Oklahoma has some of the weakest reporting requirements in the country when it comes to reporting teacher firings and teacher misconduct.
Background checks not foolproof
Most schools conduct criminal background checks on prospective teachers, and Garrett wants an even greater crackdown on criminals in Oklahoma's classrooms. A majority of teacher certificates revoked in the last 15 years involved sexual misconduct felonies.
Teachers were accused of having sex with students or molesting their charges, and one teacher was sentenced to 670 years in prison.
The state Board of Education revoked nine certificates last year, prompting Garrett to ask legislators to change state law and require both state and national background checks on anyone wanting to become a teacher. The checks also would be required for teachers renewing their certificates.
The state rarely revokes certificates unless teachers are convicted of felonies.
But background checks don't catch everything or everyone.
Consider Washington Jones.
Tulsa school officials fired the middle school special education teacher in 1996 for willful neglect of duty and negligence.
Administrators claimed repeated physical altercations with students constituted child abuse and illustrated his incompetence.
Jones was warned as early as 1990 to "refrain from hitting students" and using profanity. In following years, the teacher grabbed one girl by the neck. She required medical treatment and wore a neck brace for a week, court documents said.
Less than four months later, Jones was involved in a shoving match with a seventh-grade student and a faculty member reported Jones baited the student, saying, "bring it on." Jones said he was breaking up a fight between two students.
It took one more incident eight months later before Jones was suspended with pay and subsequently fired.
Jones sued in Tulsa County District Court. Judge Deborah Shallcross found that Jones' conduct "constitutes mental and physical abuse to a child."
He kept teaching, first in Muskogee and then Oklahoma City.
He never was charged with a crime in Tulsa, so criminal background checks uncovered no problems.
Jones wrote on his Oklahoma City application that he left Tulsa so he could try a new district. Oklahoma City school officials acknowledge they probably never contacted Tulsa about his employment history and why he left.
"Obviously, we put a lot into and put a lot of value on OSBI (background) checks," said Guy Sconzo, Oklahoma City's interim superintendent. "But it doesn't appear we checked beyond his immediate past employer, which was Muskogee."
No law required Tulsa schools to notify the state Education Department of the alleged abuse, said Tulsa and state education officials.
Jones was arrested last month in Oklahoma City, accused of molesting a student. Police are investigating, and the district has begun termination proceedings against Jones. They also won't be required to notify state officials if school board members agree to fire him.
Garrett said Oklahoma's first priority is to keep criminals out of Oklahoma's classrooms. But the Jones case bothers her.
Any teacher aware of child abuse must report the allegations to the Department of Human Services. Even though the district court judge concluded Jones abused a child, a Tulsa police spokesman said no one filed a police report against Jones.
Problems reported online
Now, Garrett wants to do more than just check for criminal histories. She told The Oklahoman on Friday that she will propose a new Internet-based system requiring superintendents to report all dismissals "for cause." Teachers whose contracts are not renewed for cause also would be reported, she said.
She hasn't completed her proposal, but wants superintendents to report the information online. Although superintendents would be given passwords to ensure security, the information would be accessible by the public.
"We'd have to be sure it wouldn't be tampered with, but we certainly think this would help school districts," Garrett said.
"We are now a very mobile society, and teachers, just like everyone else, move around a lot."
Garrett stressed this would be "another point of information" for school districts. It shouldn't replace criminal background checks, interviews with former employers and other standard hiring practices.
The Oklahoman found several states where all firings must be reported to the state agency in charge of teacher licensing. Some states make it a crime for school administrators not to report teachers fired or punished for suspected abuse.
Last year, an Arizona elementary school principal was prosecuted for not telling authorities two children had accused a school counselor of sexual abuse. The principal received probation and community service.
Arizona also requires districts to report any instances of unprofessional or immoral acts by a teacher. The reports are made on a secured employment Web site. Administrators who don't report the acts can have their licenses revoked, said Craig Emanuel, chief investigator for the Arizona Board of Education.
New Mexico education officials want lawmakers to make school districts report teacher firings, regardless of confidentiality agreements, officials said.
Beginning this month, Pennsylvania strengthened its reporting system. It now requires principals and other school leaders to tell the state Department of Education if they suspect a teacher is sexually abusing students. Previously, only teachers' arrests or dismissal "for cause" had to be reported.
The new law came after a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette series found that the number of U.S. teachers losing their licenses for sex-related offenses had increased 78 percent in five years. The series also described a frightening number of teachers who, after being accused of molesting students and often striking resignation agreements that kept their abuse secret, moved to other states and began teaching again.
In Colorado, a teacher's license can be revoked for engaging in "immoral conduct which affects the health, safety, or welfare of children or conduct which offends the morals of the community or sets an inappropriate example for children," according to state law. Districts must notify state officials when resignations or firings result for some criminal convictions.
A new educator accountability law in Delaware requires a teacher to share his three most recent evaluations with an employing school district when that teacher moves from one district to another.
Garrett said she doesn't want to encroach on local boards of education, which are in charge of all hiring and firing.
One state has avoided that. Local boards of education in Virginia can recommend to the state schools superintendent whether a license should be suspended or revoked. The state then investigates and the Virginia Board of Education makes a final decision.
Garrett called the Virginia model a "good middle ground" worth investigating.
A balancing act
A reporting system won't close all the gaps, educators warn.
State education officials must first learn of criminal felonies before they can revoke a certificate. Even with an improved background-check system, teachers could be in classrooms for three or four years before anyone noticed.
Out-of-state teachers are Garrett's biggest fear.
Oklahoma participates in a voluntary national clearinghouse, run by the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification, that reports to the state when a teacher is convicted of a felony.
But teachers fired from out-of-state jobs who aren't convicted of criminal offenses could easily slip through. Garrett would like to see a national reporting system, similar to that in other states and the one she's proposing here.
She also wants lawmakers to allow the state Department of Human Services to share information about teachers accused of child abuse. Now, reported child abuse is kept confidential unless police investigate or criminal charges are filed.
The Jones case highlights that need.
"It certainly appears in his case the system is broken," she said.
Garrett and other educators also suspect there's no foolproof way to stop teachers who resign before they're fired.
"If you're checking people out, the problem usually isn't in finding out if they're fired," Wetumka Superintendent Stephen Haynes said. "The problem usually is that they've resigned and why they resigned is rarely a matter of public record. You don't find out there's a problem until it's too late."
Haynes said he didn't want to talk about specific instances, citing confidentiality laws.
Some mistakes shouldn't permanently blackball teachers and follow them to other jobs where they may have a better chance at success, said Sconzo, Oklahoma City's interim superintendent.
In a highly publicized case last year, then-Oklahoma City schools Superintendent Marvin Crawford wanted to fire Manuel Siemens, an elementary school art teacher.
Siemens, a first-year teacher, placed tape on the lips of a student. The teacher said his action was "in jest" and didn't harm the student. When the tape fell off, the student even asked for more tape, according to the teachers union.
"I feel that he does not need to be teaching our children," Crawford said when Siemens resigned the day before a termination hearing.
Despite his resignation, the district re-hired Siemens this year as a high school art teacher. Siemens was a good teacher who made a mistake, top district officials decided.
But Sconzo said he won't hesitate to notify a district if he thinks they may hire a teacher who would endanger students or cause other serious problems.
He's received such "warnings" from other districts and has even made a few of his own.
"You have to be cautious not to blackball someone. You have to be fair and consider everything, but an employer also should have all the information they can to make the best decision."
Children come first
Haynes of Wetumka said making the termination process less lengthy and far less expensive may be part of the ultimate solution. He said he'd also be less likely to ask a problem teacher to resign if he thought a firing would result in a state-level disciplinary investigation.
But Garrett is leery of committing to any system that would bog the state Education Department down with lengthy investigations.
"We don't want to have 100 investigators. We don't want to have to investigate everything, and don't need to," she said.
"But we do want to ensure the safety of our children."
