The New York Times reports that several of our nation’s most elite boarding schools have taken action against sexual predators. In a boarding school environment, there is an unusual degree of intimacy between teachers and students.
Calling Campbell Brown! She started her career as an education “reformer” railing against sexual predators in public schools. She said these malefactors were protected by their unions and tenure, and she has dedicated herself to eliminating both. That will protect kids from sexual predators.
But wait! The boarding schools in this article have neither unions nor tenure. How shall we protect the children? Home schooling?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Since children are most likely to be molested by someone they know, then home schooling isn’t the answer, either.
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Unions and tenure don’t protect sexual predators; that is absurd. This is obviously a fabrication to help get rid of unions. And this school doesn’t even have unions or tenure? What we have all learned is that if a Lie is put out there, many will believe it and repeat it for years to come even long after is has been debunked (This is what FOX “News” has been getting away with for decades)
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prenestino,
You state “Unions and tenure don’t protect sexual predators”
Last week a school teacher from North Carolina was arrested in Virginia for arranging to have sex with a 13 year old boy, her student in the past. She was arrested by the Fairfax County police.
She was punished alright, she was placed on administrative paid leave starting this Monday.
I know she will get due process. After she is found guilty and sentenced to prison and the Governor refuses to commute her sentence (give or take a few years) the school district will stop paying her. Until that time she will get paid because she has tenure and her union dues are paid up. This is due process!
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Are you saying due process is a bad thing? Should we just fire every teacher accused of any wrongdoing? I could counter your anecdote with one of a good teacher falsely accused of misconduct by a very disturbed student. But I doubt the anti-teacher mobs want to consider that.
But I’ll try another. A teacher in our area was accused of horrifying behavior with children. He was quickly removed, tried, and convicted, but in that order. The union did not make excuses or justify his crimes. There was no “protection” of predators.
The anti-teacher types fail to realize due process also protects good teachers. We can see from o-rings on space shuttles, to air bags in Hondas, to greedy mine owners endangering the employees, what happens when corporations put their jack boot on the throats of workers. Parents should be the biggest advocates of due process for teachers. If teachers are intimidated and threatened into silence, children are at risk.
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Mathvale,
It is not an anecdote. It was in the news. Check it out.
I am not against due process, but paid administrative leave for some one who has been arrested redhanded indeed is beyond due process.
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MathVale: rheephorm words and deeds are aimed at muzzling, punishing and removing the frontline advocates and defenders of children—
Classroom teachers and paraprofessionals.
Fueled in great part by a profoundly indecent, immoral, and anti-democratic ideal: guilty until proven innocent. *Caveat: only to be applied to what Leona Helmsley quite presciently referred to as “the little people.”*
Consider how this works in practice. The defenders of charters and privatization and the like come on this blog and routinely dismiss anything that disturbs their “Happy Place” with such nostrums as “that’s anecdotal” and “studies suggest otherwise” and so on. Yet on the flimsiest of anecdotal evidence, with no support whatsoever, dedicated and hardworking public school staff are supposed to be subjected to career-ending and criminal consequences with no practical recourse whatsoever.
Let’s change perspective a little. The vast majority of rheephorm heavyweights send THEIR OWN CHILDREN to places such as those described in the NYTIMES. Just as the test-to-punish regimen in all its punitive g[l]ory is reserved for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN, so too rheephorm’s faux concern for protecting children is reserved for the schools OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN attend.
For the schools THEIR OWN CHILDREN attend, the most important thing is protecting the brandname of those tony boarding schools by adhering (echoing the words of a frequent rheephormista on this blog, Non Sequitur) to a strict “Code of Silence.”
Double talk. Double speak. Double standards. That’s corporate education reform in a nutshell.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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Raj,
anecdote – a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person.
We do not have “red handed” as a legal system, we have innocent until proven guilty and due process. Arrested does not equate to conviction.
One story you find on the Internet is not a basis for overturning years of legal practice because you think it should be that way. That is called persecution. You might be more comfortable in North Korea if you feel teachers should be convicted without due process.
Laws should not be arbitrary just because the teacher haters have an ax to grind or some past perceived wrong they want righted.
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Raj,
Your explanation of due process on sexual predator is none other than speculation. Far from the fact.
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KrazyTA,
Without due process, children are at risk. If employees in other industries are intimidated to the point customers are losing their lives or the employees themselves are forced into life threatening conditions, that should be a very clear demonstration a lack of due process puts children at greater risk when teachers, the only voice from the classroom, are silenced. As a parent, I want my child’s teachers to have the protections to expose wrongdoing and advocate for my student. Corporate executives won’t. Hedge fund managers and politicians certainly won’t. Why America wants to destroy her teachers is baffling.
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MathVale: this is in response to your 4-21-16, 6:44 PM comment.
IMHO, your comments and mine dovetail nicely. I can speak from firsthand experience that a Campbell Brown-type admin, in charge of SpecEd at the HS where I worked, was furiously (and abusively) in search of supposed sexual predators and went after the innocent. But who was her BFF at the school? With whom did she customarily walk down the school’s hallways during the time between classes, arm in arm, dishing out in a loud voice (so hundreds of students could hear!) the dirt about teachers and TAs? The very person who knew he needed an admin protector because he WAS a sexual predator! Exposed, finally, by another TA. Convicted, sent to prison for three years.
I had my suspicions—as did others—but when I asked about how to report them, I was told that I had to go through the very admin that was part of the problem! And if I didn’t, the only thing that counted was that I had disregarded the chain of command and could face disciplinary action, if not outright dismissal, for not following proper procedure. A painful reality that job protections were insufficiently strong to right, sooner rather than later, a terrible wrong.
So for the benefit of Non Sequitur Jr. I quote the first sentence of your last paragraph: “Without due process, children are at risk.” And even then, it’s very very tough sledding.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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In California, the law says that the teacher is responsible to report these alleged sexual crimes to the police even if admin won’t do it. I know, because, back in the 1990s, when I reported to the principal that a student I was teaching told me he had almost been raped by two men on the way to school, the principal dismissed the student’s story and shrugged it off as not worth his effort to report to the police. But the law in California says the teacher is ultimately responsible to report it so I did. That same day after school I drove to the police station and filled out the report and the police investigated.
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The heinous LA Times editorial board recently supported due process for state senators accused of such wrongs as taking bribes, but railed against due process for teachers with Vergara. Talk about hypocrisy, according to the Eli Times, big wigs should get the gold mine and little people should get the shaft.
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No place is immune – not even Catholic churches and schools where priests have been passed around from parish to parish to avoid legal exposure for child molestation.
Campbel Brown has a very selective focus to serve her own agenda. In Indiana, we found that 99% of accusations against public school staff were unsubstantiated by Child Protective Service investigations.
Students today are very worldly and vindictive against teachers who discipline them for bad behavior, give them poor grades, or deny them ability to play on sports teams. Sometimes it’s safer for students to blame school staff for abusive marks on their bodies than to reveal that the real abuser is a parent or Mom’s boyfriend.
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Due process through union representation actually protects children. Teachers are free to speak out without fear of losing their job as in an at-will environment. In non-union workplaces, whistleblowers are quickly fired or forced to resign. Here in Ohio, when teachers in the Gulen schools reported issues, the state and powerful money interests lined up against them. As a parent, I want a teacher I know can be an voice from the classroom, not under the thumb of corporations and the politically well-connected.
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The article reflects a cultural shift which has gradually been emerging into mainstream consciousness for more than 20 yrs. And it isn’t just ‘tony’ boarding schools. There were a couple of sexual predators for sure at the boarding part of the private school where I worked in the ’70’s, but it took me years to piece that together in retrospect. It’s hard to imagine the social oblivion prevailing on this subject during the decades in which the article’s perpetrators were active. (Keep in mind, the 1st network TV-movie [‘disease of the week’] on the subject of incest did not appear until the mid’80’s!)
What’s shocking to me is that it took such schools more than a decade after the Catholic priest scandal hit the Boston Globe– i.e., the Sandusky case– to connect the dots and institute preventive measures.
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To the avarice worshiping, for-profit corporate public school demolition derby, if there is one bad teacher or sexual predictor in the country out of several million, take away due process rights for all public school teachers and fire them whenever you feel like it for any reason.
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Frankly, when I recently read that Hillary thought that boarding schools for poor students might be a sound option, I was shocked. While I am wary of her business connections, I always considered her a social liberal. Her support for boarding schools for the poor paints a different picture. When I read that Kipp was developing a boarding school for Camden’s poor, I felt very uneasy about this proposal. I wonder if this school will turn out to be a juvenile detention facility rather than a school. Many of these types of schools were popular during the depression, and they have been long closed due to reports of abuse and neglect. In my mind the concept is modeled after many such failed human experiments and smells of colonialism and social engineering. http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2016/04/hillary-proposes-boarding-schools-for.html
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And a reason I will not be voting for Clinton. Maybe she should look to our infamous boarding schools for Native Americans.
Meanwhile, there will never be enough laws to protect children from sexual predators. Teaching children the world is not filled with loving saints is the real solution. Also, not blaming the victims would go along way as well. MS Brown knows full well that it is about parental supervision that keeps kids safe, not pretending that childhood from birth to 18 is a rosy, sunlit idyllic place for all. The majority of cases of sexual exploitation that have received a good deal of press seem to be in private and parochial schools. Think I am better off sending a kid to public school. She also overlooks the very real sexual exploitation of kids by other kids, as recently the case in a NYC private school. Home schooling should solve the problem for her if she can trust her relatives.
And I suppose she is advocating for clean water in N. J. and Flint as well?
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A public boarding school opened in Miami. Students go home for the weekend. The state gave them $4.6M this session. Enrolled 60 students in 2014 and expect to grow to 400.
http://www.miami.seedschool.org/about-seed-miami
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Even the British are backing off boarding schools for young children. I can recall Kipling’s essays that recounting the horrors of older students terrorizing the young. The scars of the experience stayed with Kipling for life. http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/10/campaign-boarding-schools-young-children
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http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/21209-education-secretary-s-dangerous-public-boarding-schools-agenda
old news?
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OMG, substitute teacher – the politicians and billionaires have found a way to fleece the education tax dollars by combining it with kids “in the system” by giving them a “safe place” to live, and substantively, learn. One stop shopping for foster kids – a home/ a school. Bam. Who wins? This is the new orphanage. I just don’t know what to say except…who benefits?
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From Seed’s website: “The vast majority of SEED graduates are first-generation college students. Virtually all SEED graduates attend college.”
THEY OPENED IN 2015 as a 6th grade. How can Seed make such a statement that virtually all seed graduates attend college – are they living in Back to the Future?
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Donna-Great response and reaction to the idea of “boarding schools” for the under class. As far as the out of the gate claims of success, they are using “reformer” math, which we have all seen before.
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Donna
It is a spin-off of a school in DC and Maryland. I can’t find the IRS 990 for the Miami school, but here is the 990 for the Maryland school. The Maryland corporate secretary gets paid $56K for working 2 hrs/week. Here are the DC and MD 990s.
http://990finder.foundationcenter.org/990results.aspx?990_type=&fn=seed+school&st=&zp=&ei=&fy=&action=Find
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Speaking FOR Campbell Brown – this type of predator would be eliminated by utilizing TFA exclusively, because TFA doesn’t stick around long enough to cement “grooming” relationships with students–especially those TFA that leave after 6 months.
Campbell Brown? Crickets on the subject. Is she keeping a low profile these days (except insipid tweets)?
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Nope, they just have to also be a soccer coach.
“She was teaching through the program called Teach For America, which is a national teacher corps of recent college graduates who commit to teaching in under-resourced urban and rural public schools.”
http://www.wmcactionnews5.com/story/27557687/mississippi-teacher-arrested-on-sexual-battery-charges
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Campbell Brown is so irrelevant. Does anyone listen to her or thar awful 74?
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Charter Arasment policy . ” They have 2 difrents policy’s as Chaters schools should help studying with disabilities , Chaters schools are companies , they have they owe rules . MONEY OVER ALL . BY THE WAY THEY OWNERS , MAYORS CITY’S GOBERMENTS CORRUPTS INDIVIDUALS THEY DON’T PROTECT KIDS . WHAT PARENTS CAN DO IF THOSES INDIVIDUALS ARE SCORT BY POIICE , IF YOU COMPLAIN AT ONE OF THOSES CHARTERS SCHOOLS YOU HAVE TO MOVE FROM THE CITY OR POLICE SEND YOU TO JAIL . WHY ? THE TEACHER WHO IS SEX-ARASMENT GIRLS FREE AND PARENTS CAN’T DO NOTHING . WHY FLORIDA IS IGNORING ? PLORIDA EX-GO ERMENT BUSH IS A VERY GOOD FRIENDS OF THE MOST CORRUPT CHARTER IN DOWN SOUHT . WHERE IS THE MOST CORRUTC CITY IN THE NATION ? WHERE IS THE CITY HOLDING RECORDS MOST MAYORS ARESTED ?
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