In the last decade, more than 150 teachers in Washington were disciplined for sexual misconduct.
But new reporting from Investigate West found that many of these cases weren’t easily accessible to the public.
The reason the information is hidden?
When a teacher voluntarily surrenders their license, their information in the state’s misconduct database is shielded from public view.
Nearly 45% of teachers on this database volunteered to surrender their license.
Moe Clark is a collaborative investigative journalist for IW and a Murrow News Fellow through Washington State University. She joins us to share more.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. 160 teachers in Washington state were disciplined for sexual misconduct over the last decade. But new reporting from InvestigateWest found that some of these cases were not easily accessible to the public, and it’s possible that these teachers could end up in other schools without anyone knowing their histories. Moe Clark is a collaborative investigative journalist for InvestigateWest and a Murrow News Fellow through Washington State University. She joins us now with more details. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Moe Clark: Thank you for having me, Dave.
Miller: So your reporting focused on Washington’s statewide teacher misconduct database. Can you describe this database?
Clark: Sure. So Washington’s State Education Oversight Agency is charged with both certifying teachers and decertifying teachers if they’ve been found to have conducted misconduct of some sort. And once an action is taken on a teacher’s license, they get added to this teacher misconduct database. You can search on the state’s website, and there’s some information that’s available if a teacher has had their license mandatorily revoked by the state for various reasons. And then there are some cases that you can’t access and that was the focus of our investigation.
Miller: Right. You note that Washington is actually ahead of many states in terms of tracking and publishing the names of teachers who faced disciplinary action, but that gaps remain. What are those gaps?
Clark: The biggest gaps we found was, the database doesn’t prominently show why a teacher lost their license or had it suspended. It also doesn’t show what school district they were at when the discipline happened. And then the main one is you can’t view a teacher’s case file if they had voluntarily revoked their own license, and that can happen. A teacher can revoke their own license for any reason other than the state doing it before them or if they were convicted of a felony.
Miller: I’m curious, let’s say that a teacher was accused of sexual misconduct, but then they resigned and voluntarily surrendered their license before an investigation was completed, and then five years later, they wanted to teach again. They want to try to get a license. What would it take to get relicensed?
Clark: They would have to submit a new application with the state and they are required to disclose why they voluntarily revoked it in the first place. From the data that we received, it’s pretty rare for a reinstatement to occur. Though there are a handful of instances where that does occur. Also, if a teacher voluntarily revokes their state teaching license, they can still teach in private schools, they can coach or be involved with children in other ways.
Miller: One of the points that was a little bit unclear about is the extent to which school officials would have access to information that maybe the public wouldn’t. So if a teacher voluntarily gives up their license, we, the members of the public, have a hard time finding out the details of what they may have done. Is the same thing true for districts?
Clark: Yeah, they would face a lot of the same challenges. On the back end, school districts can see like a different database that the state also oversees, and if there’s been some disciplinary action that has been taken against a teaching license, it’ll appear in the system as like a flag, but it doesn’t say why the flag was put on this educator’s file. It would be up to the school district to investigate further, so it also shields it from them as well.
Miller: Now, cases are only even gonna make it into this database if schools do proper investigations into allegations of misconduct. But your reporting found that that often doesn’t happen. Why not?
Clark: Yeah. Like you said, the state can only investigate teachers that are brought to their attention, and so a lot of the accountability is on school districts to conduct robust investigations. There are a handful of reasons why investigations don’t occur. It might not be reported. A victim might feel ashamed or pressured or in danger. It’s also common for survivors to not speak about the abuse for years or decades.
And if a fellow teacher reports a teacher like, this seems off, [or] if the school leaders or the district don’t do their due diligence to actually investigate those claims, it’ll never reach state investigators’ desks. So it’s really on them to be doing these robust investigations and going through the proper channels to do that.
Miller: I mentioned teachers there because that’s the focus of this database, but who’s excluded from this database?
Clark: The database only includes educators that have a state teaching license, so it doesn’t include custodians or coaches or bus drivers. It only includes those that have a teaching license, so it is just sort of a very small window into this issue.
Miller: So let’s say that a district wanted to be extra careful in their vetting and extra careful in safeguarding their students. What are the limits of what they can do, what they can know?
Clark: I don’t know if I have a great answer for that, but I think school districts, the majority of the time, are doing everything they can to vet teachers before they are hired. All teachers have to get background checks, but a lot of these cases don’t land in the legal process, so that won’t show up in a background check. And if they don’t have access to full case files about their disciplinary action, that also limits what they can do. It’s a hard task for school districts. They can only go off of what they have access to. And if those investigations aren’t happening at the previous school, that’s how teachers can move from district to district without too much scrutiny.
Miller: A practice that is known colloquially as “passing the trash,” you note in your article. What happens if a teacher is coming from a different state? How does that complicate everything you’re talking about?
Clark: Yeah, kind of when you look nationally, it gets even more complicated, but if a teacher is found to have engaged in misconduct in another state and has their license revoked or suspended or they voluntarily surrender it, it gets submitted into a national database that Washington’s education oversight agency and others have access to. There’s a whole lot of gaps in that process. Again, if the investigation wasn’t properly done in the other state or if there’s a delay in the investigation, a teacher might move on to a different district before any disciplinary action even happens at the state level.
Some of these investigations can take years. I mentioned a case in our story about this exact thing where a teacher lost their license, I believe it was Arizona, and got a job in a Washington school district before the investigation was completed and lied on his application, saying that he had never been under investigation.
Miller: Just briefly, did you hear any suggestions for changes that would make the system better?
Clark: I did hear from a variety of sources, a desire to make those voluntary surrender cases more transparent and publicly available. I think that would go a long way. Also requiring that an investigation occur even if someone voluntarily revokes their license because under state law right now, you, they don’t have to investigate unless there’s a formal complaint filed by the local school district.
Miller: Moe, thanks very much.
Clark: Thank you for having me.
Miller: Moe Clark is a collaborative investigative journalist.
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