The Trenton district was also negligent because state law requires that all computers in public schools have software that prevents -- or filters out -- inappropriate materials. A public school cannot allow students to access pornography, whether it was just a little stunt that some boys pulled to get attention, or whether they were actually curious about a porn site and hoped to access it for a thrill of some kind.
Additionally, the Trenton school district is also potentially negligent because the Connecticut Guidelines for Teacher Evaluation Programs (Duke, 1995) require that before a teacher gets a contract, he or she must pass "…an essential skills examination (CONNCEPT)"; in fact teachers must pass a classroom assessment program based on "the Connecticut Competency Instrument (CCI) (Duke). The question here is, did Ms. Paulson take a skills examination to determine if she was qualified to teach technology to middle school students? And if she did not, then perhaps this should be done before Ms. Paulson can be cleared to continue her teaching assignment.
What should the consequences be for Ms. Paulson?
Assuming that is turns out to be true that pornographic photos were seen by students (all that is known is that one student complained to her parents), and assuming also that the district's mandate (based on state law) to install filtering software in all computers was not followed, the school should not suspend Ms. Paulson. She should not be suspended for a flaw in the technologic setup in the school. What is not known in this case is whether there is a teacher's union in this middle school. If there is a union, the protocol for dealing with a teacher who allowed pornographic material to be shown in her class will be very different than if there is no union.
Ms. Paulson may be a very competent person who has been placed in an assignment she is not fully competent to handle. If so, she should receive professional development training, and should not be singled out among the 80 teachers in this very large school for behavior that may have been lax in terms of classroom functionality but was not egregious or flagrantly in violation of policies and state law....
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