Teacher Misconduct

Abstract

The definition of teacher misconduct is not universal. Many teachers belong to unions and are protected from disciplinary action following an allegation of misconduct. As such, school districts can spend a great deal of time and money to pursue such allegations. Consequently many do not, and instead either reassign teachers who face allegations or buy out their contracts, leaving those teachers to obtain jobs at other schools. Several studies are cited that describe the perceptions of teachers and students regarding teacher misconduct. While sexual contact is identified by most teachers as unethical, students consider teacher preparation and confidentiality issues to better represent a teacher's ethical conduct.

Overview

The Florida Department of Education defined teacher misconduct as any behavior that is damaging to a student or that negatively affects the teaching profession. The former generally includes "physical or sexual abuse" while the latter can include anything from cheating on certification exams and drug use (which may not directly affect students) to giving students grades they do not deserve because of pressure from parents or school administrators ("Parent FAQ: Misconduct," 2005). In contrast to Florida's definition, the National Education Association (NEA), a professional organization that provides leadership to the education community, offers only a generic overview of what it considers to be "unethical or unprofessional teacher behaviors" (Barrett, Headley, Stovall & White, 2006, p. 422).

There is an issue larger than the lack of a common misconduct definition, however. Because much of the teaching profession is unionized, many teachers are protected from being fired due to an accusation of misconduct. This protection makes it difficult for a teacher to be fired or even investigated without costing the school district a great deal of time and money.

For example, New York City has dealt with a teacher discipline process so indecisive, it cost the city over 30 million dollars in teacher salary in 2009 (Medina, 2010). An article published in the New York Times described "rubber rooms"—offices that contain no students, no class work, and no specific assignments for teachers who have been reassigned due to misconduct allegations. Rubber rooms were not a popular concept with NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but he did not put a procedure into place to combat "teacher reassignment" (Medina, 2010).

The United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the union that represents teachers in New York City, agreed with Mayor Bloomberg and the public outcry that followed the New York Times article that reassignment to a rubber room is not the best solution to any misconduct case. The union agreed to hire more arbitrators to hear cases and to have cases heard more quickly than in the past. This was a positive step, especially for a teacher who has been wrongly accused of misconduct. However, if a teacher is simply ineffective, the City of New York has no more recourse than it did before this agreement was recognized: "Administrators still must spend months or even years documenting poor performance before the department can begin hearings, which will still last up to two months" (Medina, 2010, 6). In other words, teachers who are accused of misconduct will be investigated more quickly than teachers who are simply bad at their jobs. Under the agreement, once an instructor is removed from the classroom,

"Education Department officials will have 10 days to file incompetence charges and 60 days for charges of misconduct. Any teacher not formally charged within that time will be sent back to the classroom. In more serious cases, typically when teachers are charged with a felony, education officials can suspend a teacher without pay" (Medina, 2010, 10).

According to Medina, one teacher was assigned to a rubber room for five years, earning his full pay yet not teaching for a second of that time. He was removed from the classroom because of a student allegation of sexual misconduct. Even though "he was acquitted on charges of endangering the welfare of a minor in a criminal trial" he was not allowed to return to the classroom as per the Education Department (Medina, 2010). That teacher was one of over five hundred teachers in reassignment centers earning full pay and benefits (Medina, 2010).

According to a report in the Huffington Post ("Rubber Rooms," 2012), even though there was agreement to shut down rubber rooms in 2010 and the number of teachers "sitting idly" has improved, the city has still been using empty offices and sometimes even utility closets for teachers awaiting hearings. In 2012, approximately 200 teachers collected their salaries while being prohibited from the classroom. Many of these teachers were supposed to be given administration work but were not. These teachers cost the city $22 million in 2012.

Of course, paying teachers to do nothing is bad business and sends a bad message. Nobody is above the law, and those who come in direct contact with children should be held accountable to the law in ways that are clear and concise. Otherwise, the purpose of public education loses credibility and so does the authority of school districts who are supposed to be representing the public.

Further Insights

Examples of Misconduct: Dishonest Test Scores. In an annual report submitted by Nevada's public school administration, "incidents involving student cheating and teacher misconduct increased by more than 50 percent in 2003–04 [including] 24 incidents of student cheating and 10 incidents that involved the improper disclosure of testing materials to students by teachers in the past school year" (Hurst, 2004, par. 2). In defense of these numbers, then Nevada Superintendent of Schools, Keith Rheault, stated that half of the testing irregularities were identified as test administration errors. Rheault said that the testing required by the No Child Left Behind Act "and the demand for schools to meet targets for adequate yearly progress have put more pressure on teachers and students to get better scores" (Hurst, 2004, 6). In Nevada, instructors caught cheating to improve grades or standards can have their teaching licenses revoked, which has happened in at least one case. Dishonest testing practices is not a topic that has been vigorously researched and some suggest that it is likely that it occurs frequently because of federal mandates for school accountability (e.g., No Child Left Behind, Common Core State Standards). In response to Nevada's situation, more training for teachers who administer standardized tests is now required.

Crossing Boundaries. For most teachers, giving students answers to test questions is clearly a violation of professional conduct. However, because there is no universal definition of misconduct, teachers have to figure out on their own what is ethical behavior for someone in their profession. That is not always an easy task. Barrett et al. (2006) note that, "when education is compared with other human service-delivery professions such as medicine, psychology, and law, a carefully conceived, professionally recognized, and enforceable code of ethics is conspicuously absent" (p. 422). As such, Barrett and colleagues conducted a study to discover what public school teachers considered unethical conduct (p. 421). For their study, they categorized behavior into three groups:

• Violations of boundaries between teachers and students (p. 430);
• Violations of interpersonal behavior and in instructional management (p. 431); and
• Violations of subjectivity in grading and delivery of instruction (p. 431).

For each category, specific scenarios were created in which respondents had to identify (using a five-point Lickert scale) both how often the scenarios occurred in their schools and how unethical the teacher conduct was. The majority of the respondents were classroom teachers, while school administrators and other personnel made up the rest of the 235 study participants (p. 424). The following behaviors were identified by over a quarter of the respondents (shown in percentages) as occurring frequently in their public schools:

• Gossips to other teachers about a student (56.6%),
• Makes a derogatory comment about a colleague to another teacher (40.2%),
• Knowingly allows a student to violate a school rule in his or her classroom (35.1 %),
• Raises a child's grade due to parental pressure (28.1%),
• Spends considerable class time engaged in activities irrelevant to the subject area (26.6%),
• Raises a child's grade due to pressure from an administrator (26.3%), and
• Gives a higher grade than the child deserves because the teacher likes the child (25.8%) (Barrett et al., 2006, p. 425).

Similarly, almost all of the respondents (again, identified by percentages) identified the following situations as being serious violations of teacher ethics.

• Engages in a romantic relationship with a student (94.1%),
• Allows students to engage in romantic behavior in the classroom (94.1%),
• Makes a derogatory comment about a colleague to a student (92.6%),
• Gives students high grades in return for favors (90.8%), and
• Makes a sexually provocative statement to a student (90.7%) (Barrett et al., 2006, p. 427).

Not surprisingly, violations involving crossed boundaries between teachers and students were deemed as the most serious in this study: "Although personal relationships with students involving physical contact are thought to occur less frequently than other violations, 6% of respondents viewed such relationships as occurring frequently" (p. 430-431). It is important to point out that education professionals who suspect that a student is being abused must report that suspicion. Therefore, it is possible that the actual representation of teacher-student relationships is much higher than identified here.

Perceptions in Higher Education. To examine how students interpret teacher misconduct, Owen and Zqahr-Castro (2007) conducted a study with more than four hundred college student participants who responded to a survey similar to the one used in the Barrett et al. (2006) study. Higher education research can offer valuable insight regarding student/instructor interaction, as it represents a more informal setting and more relaxed beliefs regarding faculty behavior as compared to public secondary schools. Indeed, although college students are considered adults, a range of behaviors were widely considered unacceptable by the respondents. Inappropriate faculty behaviors identified by participants in were:

• Professor giving a student an expensive gift,
• Professor allowing student likeability to influence special treatment,
• Professor borrowing money from a student,
• Professor engaging in a personal friendship with a student during class,
• Professor accepting an expensive gift from a student,
• Professor talking about his or her personal problems with a student,
• Professor giving money to a student,
• Professor accepting a student invitation to a non-school-related party,
• Professor inviting a current student to dinner, and
• Professor going out for drinks with a student (Owen & Zqahr-Castro, 2007, p. 122).

From a college student's perspective, certain teacher behaviors cross the misconduct boundary. It should be noted that female respondents tended to view more situations as inappropriate than did the male participants (Owen & Zqahr-Castro, 2007, p. 122). Also, it is important to have both teachers and students identifying the same behaviors as unethical. However, faculty interpretations were not part of the Owen and Zqahr-Castro (2007) study. They were, however, an integral part of a study conducted by Morgan and Korschgen (2001), in which students and faculty responded to identical surveys to determine if the two samples held the same belief about teacher misconduct.

Almost 160 students and 115 faculty members participated in this study by rating specific behaviors as ethical or unethical based on a five-point scale. The student sample had attended at least two semesters of college, and the faculty sample taught mostly liberal arts courses and were over 60 percent male. A summary of the research results follows:

"Faculty saw ensuring popularity with easy tests . . . accepting a textbook rebate and using profanity in lectures as more unethical than did the student sample. Additionally, there was a strong trend for faculty to see sexual involvement with a student as more unethical than did the students. . . . Students saw the use of old lecture notes as more unethical than did faculty, and had a strong trend toward viewing the breaking of confidence and the teaching of unmastered material . . . as more unethical than did the faculty" (Morgan & Korschgen, 2001, 1).

Interestingly, students in college view a sexual relationship between a teacher and a student to be a minor infraction when compared to having to study outdated notes. This is perhaps the case because at the college level, students are paying for their education and are considered adults. As such, an adult relationship would be viewed as more ethical regardless of the status of the people in the relationship than a teacher not being prepared for a class in which the student has paid to attend. In contrast, teachers identifying sexual relationships, swearing, and giving easy exams as unethical leans more toward the views of public educators and again may involve responses that are expected rather than truthful.

Issues

Difficulty Firing Teachers. Rubber rooms are not exclusive to New York City, and neither is protecting the rights of unionized teachers to the detriment of students and school districts. Following a lengthy investigation, a columnist in Florida reported in 2008 that almost 25,000 teachers had been disciplined for some type of misconduct offense. The list, "gathered and maintained by the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification (NASDTEC), does not tell why the teachers were disciplined, but criminal convictions, insubordination, sexual misconduct, and student abuse are common causes for such actions" (Neal, 2008, 3). Since personnel issues are considered confidential, it is nearly impossible to find out the details of any disciplinary investigation. Florida does have a website that the public can search to find out the current status of a teacher's license, but that site does not report the findings of criminal investigations. It reports only on whether a teacher's license has been suspended or revoked.

If a teacher does not lose his or her license, he or she is free to work at another school, and many who experience misconduct charges end up doing just that. According to Neal (2008), more than 750 teachers were disciplined due to misconduct allegations, and "at least 150 from that group are still teaching today" (Neal, 2008, 7). So are many teachers in the Detroit area who were faced with "allegations of impropriety and incompetence" following another investigation (Neal, 2008). These teachers had their contracts bought out and were given a clean record of employment following the allegations against them. Several moved on to teach in other districts.

Scott Reeder, who conducted the investigations, "had to lodge 1,500 Freedom of Information Act requests with various government agencies and interview hundreds of educators, union officials, and experts" to gain access to information he states should be available to the public because it involves public teachers (Neal, 2008). With regard to misconduct cases against teachers, Reeder learned that something like a minor change from procedure can cause a teacher facing misconduct to win his or her case. In addition, the cost of investigating a teacher can cost a school district up to half a million dollars. That means that in most cases, it is cheaper to buy out a teacher's contract or accept the teacher's resignation in lieu of a positive recommendation (or both) and send the teacher to a school across town than to file charges of misconduct against him or her (Neal, 2008). With that in mind it is not surprising that, according to Reeder's investigation, "94 percent of the 876 school districts in Illinois have never attempted to fire any tenured teacher" in almost twenty years (Neal, 2008, 15).

Making Information Available. In South Carolina students can consent to sexual intercourse at the age of 16. However, in 2010 the state instituted a law to charge with a felony any teacher who has sex with a 16- or 17-year-old student. As a criminal charge, a teacher found guilty is subject to up to five years in prison ("Teacher," 2009). This law is explicit and concise, and the misconduct is clearly defined. Where student safety is concerned, a universal definition for misconduct needs to be created and procedures for keeping students safe made a priority. It is unfair that some teachers get falsely accused of misconduct, but protecting all teachers based on a handful of false accusations places every student at risk of harm and every school in jeopardy of losing credibility. Teachers who falsify records to make themselves (or a school district) appear more productive do as much harm as those who directly supply students with answers to standardized tests. Similarly, teachers making sexual advances toward students of any age cross ethical boundaries that jeopardize the very concept of teaching.

To decrease the possibility that parents will not know a teacher's history, the Florida Department of Education's Bureau of Professional Practices developed a fact-center website in 2007. Using the name of a specific teacher or school district, parents can access information regarding the professional status of an instructor who gained his or her teaching certificate after January 1, 2007. According to the Department's press release,

"Using an online database, visitors to the site are able to obtain information on teacher misconduct cases brought to the state level. Currently, the available information includes action dates, complaint summaries and descriptions of final outcomes, including any penalties that may have been applied to an educator's certificate" (Butler, 2007, 1).

As investigations that are ongoing are considered confidential, it is possible that information about a teacher will not be up to date using the website. In addition, the site lists charges rather than convictions of various offenses. In other words, a teacher may have been accused of a criminal act but whether the teacher was found guilty or convicted of the misconduct will not appear on the site, as its purpose is to provide information regarding a teacher's certification status.

Conclusion

Websites, laws such as the one in South Carolina, and policies like New York City's to hinder teacher reassignment are all ways individual US states have held teachers accountable for their actions. However, a nationwide set of procedures for investigation and discipline would likely make more sense. According to Barrett, et al.:

"The failure of educators to develop a clear and enforceable code of conduct for teachers is particularly glaring given the national attention on recent cases of criminal misconduct by teachers, particularly in the area of relationships with students (ABC News, 2004; Archibald, 2004; Bower, 2004; Hennessey, 2004). The lack of attention to a formal code of ethics is also noteworthy given the attention by educators to matters of student morality and the attempts to build character, integrity, and social skills (Elksnin & Elksnin, 1998, 2000). In view of the high level of both public and research attention given to topics such as cheating (Chaker, 2003), bullying in school (Hoang, 2001), and peer sexual harassment in the schools (Lee, Crononger, Linn, & Chen, 1996), it is surprising that teachers have not taken a more systematic look at their behaviors within and outside the classroom" (2006, p. 422).

When compared to doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, teachers are granted far more freedom—yet they have direct contact with children on a daily basis, and there is very little recourse if they step out of line. Rubber rooms, suspensions with full pay, and contract buyouts are ineffective and inappropriate responses to teacher misconduct, as is purposefully pushing a teacher suspected of misconduct toward another school district without a word of disclosure. It could be argued that such an action is equally as unethical as the teacher's misconduct.

Terms & Concepts

Boundaries: The application of ethical standards applied between teachers and their students.

Ethics: The principles of right and wrong that guide people's behavior in various situations.

National Education Association (NEA): The leading organization that supports teachers and is organized in some states as a union.

Sexual Behavior: Any explicit or implicit interaction that implies the advancement of sexual activity.

Teacher Misconduct: Defined differently from state to state. Generally, any behavior that is considered harmful to students, a school, or other faculty members ranging from inappropriate sexual advances to providing exam answers to students or changing grades due to pressure from parents or school administrators.

Bibliography

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