To the editor:

The editorial in Tuesday’s Journal-World, “Change for worse” is a prime example of a major problem facing public schools: bad press. Unsubstantiated attacks on public schools are quite fashionable these days. Fabricating a plague of pedophiles, then accusing public schools of hiding it, pushes this fashion to its limit.

Tuesday’s editorial states, “Teachers, above everyone else, should be concerned about the ethical reputation of their profession.” That is exactly why, as a teacher, I cannot allow this trend of vilifying teachers to go unchecked. Sensationalist journalism sells newspapers, but doesn’t disseminate news. Recent news stories have been misleading and create irrational fear of schools and unjustified animosity toward teachers.

Look at the numbers quoted in multiple recent articles. There are 3 million teachers nationwide, and 2,500 cases of misconduct. That sounds like a lot, and I agree it’s 2,500 too many. But a “plague.”

Hardly. Of those 2,500 cases, 1,801 involved minors, and about 80 percent of those involved students. So, we’re down to 1,440; 1,440 out of 3 million is 0.048 percent. Thus, 99.952 percent of teachers don’t molest students.

A Google search for “sex offenders per capita” shows that most states have more than 1,000 offenders per million people (double the per-teacher rate). Some states have nearly 6,000 offenders per million people. The truth is that children are less likely to become victims at school than they are elsewhere. I guess “Your kid is safe at school” wouldn’t sell many papers.

David Reber,

Lawrence