Pass the Trash
Hundreds of Florida teachers have molested, physically attacked or harassed their students but been allowed to continue in the classroom, according to powerful stories last week in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. "Broken Trust," by Chris Davis, Matthew Doig and Tiffany Lankes, investigates how these teachers manage to keep slipping through the system, allowing them to harm more students. They report that many schools, when confronted with evidence of misconduct, ask teachers to quietly resign instead of firing them, enabling them to find new job in a process known as "passing the trash." Davis, Doig and Lankes spent two years reviewing more than 14,000 investigations of teachers to develop this story, which is full of astounding examples as well as a careful analysis of why the system for protecting students is broken. The terrific Web package for these stories comes with an interactive map that allows readers to look for instances of abuse in their communities. I learned about this story from the Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families.
www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?CATEGORY=MULTIMEDIA0202