Teachers molesting students: why do we let this go on?

after other lame reasons are cited in this article as to why school administrators allow these incidents to be resolved quietly--"fear public embarrassment", "want to avoid the fallout from going up against a popular teacher", the article gets to what i think is the main reason: the teacher's union.

so, what happens?

Too often, problem teachers are allowed to leave quietly. That can mean future abuse for another student and another school district.

"They might deal with it internally, suspending the person or having the person move on. So their license is never investigated," says Charol Shakeshaft, a leading expert in teacher sex abuse who heads the educational leadership department at Virginia Commonwealth University.

this line in the article really caught my eye:

It's a dynamic so common it has its own nicknames - "passing the trash" or the "mobile molester."

exactly who uses these phrases? teachers? administrators?

Kansas State University professor Robert Shoop refers to "passing the trash" here...

here's how a Hoover Institute study described the process:

Often, as a way to save time and money, an administrator will cut a deal with the union in which he agrees to give a bad teacher a satisfactory rating in return for union help in transferring the teacher to another district. The problem teacher gets quietly passed along to someone else. Administrators call it “the dance of the lemons” or “passing the trash.” Howard Fuller, the superintendent of Milwaukee public schools from 1991 to 1995, explains: “Administrators found they needed to trade bad teachers because it’s easier than getting rid of them. We had one teacher who put a student’s head down the toilet. He simply got moved to another school.”