Setting the Record Straight

Continued from here.

An Illinois teacher was arrested and found not guilty three years later. He told FOX that no one covered the not guilty verdict. We found the same thing.

TT - It isn't unfairness on the part of the media. Most news stories about teacher misconduct in the media are based upon police press releases and there are no press releases issued to the media at the conclusion of criminal proceedings or if charges are dismissed or dropped or the case is no billed. High profile cases attract sufficient attention but anything else depends the whim of local coverage.

Recently we visited a county district attorney's site that listed the outcome of criminal cases in that jurisdiction. There is absolutely no reason why every district attorney's office couldn't provide such information for the victim, their families and the public.

That is, in fact, why we started this blog - because we couldn't find out what happened with a local teacher who was arrested and charged with sexual abuse.

No Interest
Major newspapers like the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times have absolutely zero, zilch, nada concern for the problem. We have six stories about Los Angeles teachers arrested or charged or convicted of crimes, which defies logic or odds. The Los Angeles Unified School District is the second-largest in the country. They have 74,000 employees and 710,000 students (2005 figures.) Wikipedia entry. New York schools are the first in size of enrollment. You can count on one hand the number of arrests, convictions or other actions against teachers we could find online for NYC teachers, including those found at the office of the New York City Schools Special Commissioner for Investigation.

Yet, the number of teacher discipline actions reported to NASTDEC (National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification) from these two states says something else.
Reported from California: 5,997
Reported discipline actions from New York: 897
(New York reports almost the exact same number as reported in South Carolina.) We have our suspicions why these numbers are so out of whack.

Actions reported to NASTDEC form the basis for a "clearinghouse," the database most states say they rely upon to learn about possible discipline of teachers in other states before a hiring decision can be made in their state.

No information is available to the public from NASTDEC. It's strictly for member states. And the only reason we have the numbers is because the Sarasota Herald-Tribune (owned by the New York Times) investigated and gained access through the Florida Department of Education and Florida open records law.

The states decide what actions they will report. In Pennsylvania, they only report discipline actions that are public. Settlement agreements, however, may dictate that the action not be part of a public record. TT - entry

Media Coverage
Follow-up coverage isn't routine in news outlets. In states like Louisiana, you can almost guarantee with suprising accuracy that there will be no story beyond the police press release, if even that is printed. That lack of interest may also be a factor in reporting cases to NASTDEC as well.

From 1980 to 2007, Louisiana reported a total of 78 teacher discipline actions to NASTDEC. Teacher misconduct, however, has to have been a bigger problem than the 78 figure suggests. The state passed a law last year to criminalize teacher-student sex. You don't do that if you only have 78 educator discipline cases in 27 years.

Unresolved entries
We have many unresolved entries that we would dearly like to know about. We actively search for updates on a regular basis, but we are limited by media coverage because that is what we can link to and verify.

In the early days of the blog, we made it a policy to remove the name of the accused when they were found not guilty or the charges were dropped until a teacher in Maine asked us not to do so. He pointed out that the 'not guilty' stories were less sexy, usually had far less coverage and were less likely to still be found on the Internet. It has been our policy since not to remove the name.

As for that local teacher who was arrested? The newspaper report of his arrest had this quote from a "family friend."

"If anything, he should be lauded for all the kids he helped out," he said. "Instead, they're looking at this one little girl, who for whatever reason decided to turn around and say what she said."

That "one little girl" was 12-years-old. The newspaper never did cover what happened to him. We made a phone call to state prison authorities to find out he was in a state prison.