Relax, I am not anti teacher, but ever since the Catholic Church scandal broke, anytime you mention you want to be a priest some "Richard Cranium" (figure it out) who thinks he is being funny always asks "What are you a child molester or something? Ha ha" Well the truth is finally coming out, that this problem exists everywhere, only because it is not the Catholic Church it is not as big a news story, well people pass it on.
The number of teachers who have lost their licenses because of sex offenses has increased nearly 80 percent since 1994.
Several of those who lost their licenses were caught only after they had been molesting students for many years.
Offending teachers sometimes get help landing another teaching job from a unexpected source -- their former bosses. The practice is so well-known among educators that they refer to it by name. They call it "passing the trash."
Individual states' aggressiveness in detecting and removing predators from the classroom varies widely, and some states do no background checks on teacher applicants at all. There is a private, national clearinghouse that tracks problem teachers but its director admits that states' reporting can be spotty, leaving everyone vulnerable to the so-called "mobile molester."
Even when caught, offending teachers can launch appeals that allow them to retain their teaching certificate for two to three more years. In some cases, those teachers have moved to another state and used that certificate to get a new teaching job until their appeals run out.
Weak communication between the education and criminal branches of state governments means that education officials don't always find out if a teacher has been arrested for sex crimes or other offenses.
Oh, and my fellow Tennesseans, "sexual impropriety is the No. 1 reason teachers lose their licenses in Tennessee."
