Teacher background checks are legally required in all 50 US states and include criminal, driving, employment, civil, education, health, credit, and bankruptcy records. Private agencies offer services with varying levels of investigation. Parents should ask schools about their background check policies.
A teacher background check is a process that provides educational institutions with more information about a candidate or prospective teacher. The information collected through the investigation includes criminal history, driving history, employment history, civil records, education records, health and medical records, current and past addresses, credit history, criminal records, criminal and bankruptcy records, among others .
Teaching may be one of the few professions where experience and professional history are as closely scrutinized as personal history. An educational institution conducts background checks as part of its pre-screening process to ensure student safety. This procedure is legally required in the 50 US states. Individuals such as parents can also hire agencies to do background checks.
For a new teacher, or one in a new district, the application process includes several elements that allow for a complete teacher background check. Drug and alcohol tests are not uncommon, for example. Calling the references provided and checking for previous work experience is also something that will be done as part of this process. Especially in public school districts in the United States, fingerprints are usually taken and sent to a national organization, such as the FBI, for verification.
Many private agencies also offer teacher background check services. The latter are websites that provide quick, correct and comprehensive results displayed in an instant. Prices depend on how extensive the control is; the more information produced, the higher the fee. These services require a certain degree of specificity to make sure they are screening the right person. Therefore, some agencies and websites will provide limits and boundaries to their investigation.
There are three options usually offered for background checks. The first is the standard background check, which provides publicly available information. The second is the criminal background check, which combines the standard criminal background check with the current criminal history of the state or states in which the applicant recently lived. The last is background checks with a national scope, which combines standard and criminal background checks with broader national information.
As mentioned above, teacher background checks are legally required in all 50 US states. States have widely different standards, however. It is important for parents themselves to take action and ask the school some basic questions such as: Does the school require criminal background checks of their professors, teachers and instructors? Are background checks also performed for former teachers or only for new hires?
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