Teachers That Sexually Abuse Students Still Finding Classroom Jobs

School officials didn’t want Kip McFarlin around their students because of one thing: McFarlin was a teacher in East Texas that crossed the line with a few students. He’d tell teenage girls that he’d date them if he were younger. Administrators at Orangefield Independent School District investigated complaints by six different students.  Instead of taking McFarlin’s teaching license away, they sent him off to a different school. Letting him be someone else’s problem. Sexual harassment could eventually lead to sexual abuse and we need to be aware of such things.

Despite decades of repeated sexual scandals, America’s public schools continue to conceal actions of dangerous educators that are still allowed in classrooms.  After a year-long investigation, USA Today found that education officials continue to put children in harm’s way by keeping allegations secret and making it easier for predators to find jobs.  They also found that there more than 100 teachers who lost their license but are still working with children or young adults today. As a result, school children everywhere continue to be silently beaten, raped, and harassed by teachers.  

Even though abusive teachers are only a fraction of 1% the nation’s education corps, there were dozens of teachers that lost their job after being accused of abuse and had no trouble finding another. USA Today identified teachers across the nation that continued working with children after losing their credentials.  Out of one hundred offenders, twenty-two still teach in public schools. Charles Hobson, a professor of business management at Indiana University Northwest said, “It’s enraging when I read these cases about a teacher who has been well-known for abusing little children for over 20 years, and nobody — nobody– has picked the phone up and called Child Protective Services or police. That’s crushing.”

Most states have laws in place requiring licensed public-school teachers to undergo background checks, and if every district made background checks a must, it’d probably keep these teachers out of schools and in other fields. What do you feel would be a solution to this issue? How are we going to prevent abusive teachers from getting more jobs at our schools?