CERTIFICATION QUESTIONS

When a lawyer is disbarred or a doctor’s license is revoked by the state, the public can easily find out. If a teacher’s certification is revoked or surrendered, however, this information is kept confidential. The public has a right to know when a teacher’s certification – akin to a license to teach – is taken away and why.

Last week, The Associated Press reported the results of a lengthy national investigation of sexual abuse of children by teachers. The report noted that Maine was the only state that refused to provide information on teachers who lost their certification because state law requires that such information remain confidential.

This prompted the governor to call for a change in state law to make such information more readily available.

He may be right, but conversations with education officials indicate there is confusion as to what and how much information can be revealed.

The Department of Education maintains a list of teachers who have been de-certified, but, under the guise of an opinion from the state attorney general, it does not share this information. In 2001, the attorney general issued an opinion advising that the release of “personally identifiable information” by the commissioner of education was prohibited by state law.

So, if a school district in Maine or another state inquired about the certification status of a job applicant, the department would say only whether the person was certified or not. It would not divulge that a person’s certification had been revoked or voluntarily surrendered, according to department spokesman David Connerty-Marin.

The Maine Education Association, which was instrumental in ensuring that information surrounding teacher fingerprinting and background checks remained confidential, says this is an overly broad reading of the law.

According to Shawn Keenan, the group’s counsel, state law requires that the commissioner of education file papers with a District Court to revoke an educator’s certification. Such filings would be a public record and hence, certification decisions should be public.

The first matter for lawmakers is to sort through the various interpretations of current state laws to determine what information can be released. If certification decisions are in fact confidential under current law, they should work to change that.

The simplest solution is to create broad categories for de-certification, such as health reasons, criminal activity and job performance.

The public has a right to know that a teacher was barred from the classroom for violating state certification standards. The public also should know if the teacher was barred for sleeping in class or molesting students.

Clarifying state law, and its application, will help reassure the public that Maine educators are held to the same standards as their peers in other states.