These days...these days...these days....

they can't get away with anything. a teacher got suspended for trying to have an academic discussion about the n-word with his students. they can adjust class sizes and lay off teachers. schools tend to not just hand out tenure like its going out of style. you have to work hard for it, and for a long time. most teachers (both college and primary/secondary) aren't given the opportunity to be at their school long enough to even get tenure.

Also...teachers are in a union. Its called either the American Federation of Teachers or the National Education Association.

Yeah! come live in California!!! High taxes, high crime rate, high unemployment, lots of traffic, messed up politics, poor education system and its pathetic 'justice' system.

I think you need to learn more about this before you jump to conclusions. Substitute teachers are not at all difficult to "get rid of" in most school districts and are seldom part of any teachers union. Background checks are generally conducted by local law enforcement agencies, not by the schools. There is no evidence whatsoever that either the school districts or teacher unions protected this individual.

Point noted, but al la background check does is show arrests and convictions, not allegations. It doesn't do much to catch the ones that haven't been caught, before. I think its about time video cameras are put in the class rooms.

a "background" check that you are talking about usually just involves a criminal background check in a local database (IE your municipalities police dept)... true background investigations with employment investigations, in-depth association interviews, national criminal checks etc can cost well over $100,000.

In this case a "background" check would have turned up nothing because he switched districts and there was never a criminal charge filed.

A background check doesn't find anything until they've been caught.

I hate to tell you, but yes, you can. You can sub, teach, par-pro, and be president of the PTA w/out a background check. All you have to do is apply to a crappy inner-city or rural school.

Watch Waiting for Superman to see how teacher's unions keep crappy teachers in our public education system!!!

That is correct, teachers do get fired all the time. The problem comes because kids need only make an accusation and the teacher's whole life could be ruined; even if they are exonerated their life is never the same. Teachers need fair protection from false accusations at the hands of someone's brat, there is so little incentive to be a teacher these day that nobody should have their life ruined because some spoiled brat was upset at them. That being said, it sounds like there was more then enough to demonstrate this teacher was guilty so he should be in jail right now.

These things happen in right to work states, too. This kind of comment is just union bashing. Unions protect the middle class so the right wing hates 'em. Texas has NO unions and ranks 47th in quality of education. How's that right to work stuff working out for Texas children?

Where are you getting this idea that "Teachers get fired all the time."?

The Albany Times Union looked at what was going on outside New York City and discovered some shocking data: Of 132,000 teachers, only 32 were fired for any reason between 2006 and 2011.

Do you understand how low that percentage is? It's a far cry from "all the time."

In ten years, only about 47 out of 100,000 teachers were actually terminated from New Jersey’s schools. Original research conducted by the Center for Union Facts (CUF) confirms that almost no one ever gets fired in Newark, New Jersey’s largest school district, no matter how bad. Over four recent years, CUF discovered, Newark’s school district successfully fired about one out of every 3,000 tenured teachers annually.

All the time?!?

Out of Tucson, Arizona’s 2,300 tenured teachers, only seven have been fired for classroom behavior in the past five years. Des Moines, Iowa a school district with almost 3,000 teachers, has fired just two for poor performance in five years.

Can I see your citation??!?!

As a heads up, Average rate for firing in the private sector is 3%. Government is 0.5%

http://ohmygov.com/blogs/general_news/archive/2011/07/27/holding-federal-employees-accountable.aspx

Liz-1105926: Teachers need fair protection from false accusations at the hands of someones brat #4.1

While there are a fair number of false accusation leveled towards teachers, there are a fair number that are accurate. Schools do not want the stigma that they harbor molesters so they do in fact investigate allegations. your ignorant comment refering to children as brat can only make one hope that you are not a teacher.

Jesse-Az: Yours is a excellent post, and a great counter to the absurd "teachers do get fired all the time" rant. Well done.

Letusreason

Before you reason, you need to make sure you have all of the facts. First, this has nothing to do with political correctness and your use of the term in this context only reveals that you do not understand what it means.

Second, the accused abuser is a substitute teacher and there is no indication that he is in a union. Substitutes are, to my knowledge, not part of teacher unions anywhere in the country. There may be some exceptions but that would be an extremely rare circumstance.

You have already decided that this guy is a "pervert". That may be true, but we should be very careful before we jump to conclusions. Perhaps you have heard of the McMartin and Stoll cases in Kern County, CA, in which innocent people were railroaded by overzealous citizens and prosecutors.

gino

How would you react if you were wrongly accused of sexual contact with a minor and the investigation was conducted in public? People have a right to privacy for very good reasons. There may have been a mistake in this case, but there is no justification for conducting very private matters in the public arena. Innocent people and child victims must be protected.

In the case of Joe Paterno, it is pretty clear that he dropped the ball on that one. He never even discussed the matter with his long time employee Jerry Sandusky. He also was not apparently shocked enough about allegations of sexual misconduct with a minor in the shower of a facility under his supervision to follow up with either the person who reported the incident to him or the supervisor to whom he reported.