The National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification maintains a list of teachers who committed “misconduct,” as the Herald Tribune of Southwestern Florida puts it.
Thanks to a friend of McHenry County Blog, who found this on The Drudge Report, and Illinois Review‘s John Ruskin for pointing me to the article and list.
“A teacher who gropes a student and has his or her license suspended, but is not convicted of a crime, would not appear in the Clearinghouse,” the article by Chris Davis and Matthew Dlog says.
When I was state representative, I was told of such a case by the mother of a Crystal Lake girl. Delayed so long by State’s Attorney Gary Pack, it ended up a misdemeanor which was wiped right off the court record.
I have reprinted on More McHenry County Blog 202 of those sanctioned in Illinois. The list goes back to at least 1935. Pennsylvania, a little smaller in population has 704 listed.
While Illinois has about 4.2% of the nation’s population, it has 8/10 of one percent of the teachers on the 24,000 teachers’ names on the list. (The story’s side bar says 204, but I can only find 202.)
The figures make it pretty obvious that it is difficult to discipline teachers in Illinois.
This is apparently a tightly held list. Under the State of Florida’s really good Sunshine Laws, the Herald-Tribune managed to pull it out of the educational bureaucracy.
From McHenry County, I recognize William Saturday, who had an affair with his North Junior High School “girl friend” after she entered high school. He was so cheap that he took her to the McHenry County Health Department for shots of Deprovera, which the county administered without parental knowledge, let alone permission.
That revelation led to McHenry County’s pulling out of the Federal government’s Title X birth control subsidy program. It prohibits discrimination in the dispensing of birth control drugs and devices based on age. (In other words, a 10-year old girl could get birth control drugs or devices without her parent’s being asked if it’s OK.) Saturday served time and is now back in the area.
The paper’s introduction to the list says,
”These results shows a list of licensed educators who states report have had action taken against their certificate. The types of behavior that lead to sanctions may include serious misconduct or relatively minor issues, including contract disputes or failure to repay student loans.”
Below the list is the following:
“The list is compiled by a the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification, a non-profit group made up of education officials and school districts in all 50 states.
”The Herald-Tribune obtained a partial copy from Florida’s Department of Education, a NASDTEC member. The list has never before been made public and is normally available only to NASDTEC members. However, because Florida officials kept a copy of the list, the list is considered public record under Florida statute. The Herald-Tribune chose to publish the list over NASDTEC’s objections to give parents and organizations that are not NASDTEC members the ability to check for red flags.
”The roughly 24,000 names in the list represent most of the estimated 34,000 maintained by NASDTEC. Several thousand Florida teachers are not on this list because of the way state officials stored the data.
”The data obtained by the Herald-Tribune did not include a description of the allegations or punishment, but that information can usually be obtained from education authorities in the state that took action. In most but not all cases, the database contained a full name and date of birth.”
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The circulation area of the Herald-Tribune is shown above.