Steve Reilly

USA TODAY

A state-by-state audit of the nation’s only database for tracking teacher misconduct is being ordered in the wake of a USA TODAY NETWORK investigation that found thousands of missing names in the listing of troublesome educators.

Education agencies in every state voluntarily report to a privately run database operated by the non-profit National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification when they take a disciplinary action against a teacher for anything from minor infractions to serious cases of physical or sexual abuse.

However, the USA TODAY NETWORK’s examination of records about teachers disciplined in all 50 states found more than 1,400 cases where a teacher permanently lost his or her license but was not listed in the NASDTEC database — potentially allowing teachers to flee instances of misconduct by moving to new states.

NASDTEC executive director Phillip Rogers said Monday that education agencies in every state will be required by his organization to audit all of their submissions to the data since they joined the system to ensure their submissions are accurate and complete.

The state-by-state audits, Rogers said, are being required in the interest of “trying to address what you guys (the USA TODAY NETWORK) found on the number of cases that were not entered that should have been entered.”

Rogers said the directive for the state audits is expected within the next 10 days, and several states have already undertaken reviews of their data on their own accord. As part of the changes, he said, states will be required to validate that submissions are accurate and complete before sending them to the national database.

“The purpose for that is (to verify) that they are checking the spelling, checking the numbers, checking all of the information as being accurate,” Rogers said. “I guess people get in a hurry or whatever. So we’ll have to make sure.”

Measures also are being taken at the state and local level to address problems identified by the USA TODAY NETWORK investigation.

Broken discipline tracking systems let teachers flee troubled pasts

In Iowa, the Board of Educational Examiners has ordered a full internal audit and a third-party external audit of NASDTEC submissions. “What I can tell you is, we are focused on protecting students,” Iowa Board of Educational Examiners director Duane Magee told The Des Moines Register. “Our procedures call for us to put licensed sanctions in (the national database), and we want 100% compliance.”

In Georgia, state officials said a new layer of oversight has been added to its NASDTEC submission process.

Teachers in North Carolina and Louisiana who moved to new states after losing their teaching credentials as a result of misconduct in states where they previously worked have been removed from classrooms following inquiries by the USA TODAY NETWORK.

A Delaware lawmaker said he will propose legislation to require the state’s Department of Education to fully disclose details to the public when an educator’s teaching license is removed.

“This is simple,” Delaware Sen. Ernesto Lopez said in a statement Monday. “Parents have a right to know, especially when, according to The News Journal, ‘Most of the cases … involve physical aggression or sexual misconduct.’ It is critical that we remove these teachers from the classroom, but equally critical that we are fully transparent with the parents of children who interacted with these teachers.”

Why the U.S. government doesn't have a teacher discipline database

While teachers accused of misconduct account for a very small minority of the millions of educators nationwide, many public officials have pushed for more transparency between states and with the public in teacher discipline cases. There have been several efforts by federal lawmakers in recent years to require that the U.S. Department of Education maintain a centralized, national database of teachers found to have engaged in the most serious type of misconduct, but the proposals have not moved forward and NASDTEC is the system used by states to share information with one another.

Some state legislators say stronger measures are needed to look into the histories of teachers beyond state boundaries. Iowa Representative Megan Jones said she believes the state should require nationwide background checks for all school employees.

“When it comes to something like this,” she said, “the lines that create our state are arbitrary.”

Contributing: Matthew Albright and Saranac Hale Spencer at The News Journal in Wilmington, Del.; Jason Clayworth at The Des Moines Register; Rebecca Lindstrom at WXIA in Atlanta.