Oregon’s Teacher Standards and Practices Commission is the official watchdog over the state’s educators, disciplining teachers who run afoul of the rules. Parents and others rely on TSPC to keep children safe from the occasional bad apple and to let them know about problems in the process.

Only sometimes it doesn’t let the public know.

Instead, it allows what it decides are relatively minor infractions to be dealt with privately. It’s a practice that hides from the public not only the original problem, but the action to correct it. A private letter is sent to school district officials and the teacher in question.

It’s legal, but it fails the public. First, the public may never know if Teacher A has broken the rules, nor what rules were broken. It may be that a brand-new educator had a drink at dinner during an overnight field trip, a no-no by state standards, but one the public might agree deserves a figurative slap on the wrist. The other problem is that the practice keeps the state’s and a school district administration’s response to such incidents secret, and that can have terrible consequences.

TSPC has used the secret disciplinary process 71 times since 2015, according to The Oregonian, and the agency defends the process. It saves time, money and legal fights, a TSPC member told the newspaper, and it’s often used when a teacher’s failure was due either to a mistake or to an administration’s failure to make rules clear.

Yet even what appear to be minor missteps can be more serious than they first seem. Too, the decision to resort to secrecy is left up to TSPC’s discretion. It’s time the Legislature rescinded the secret discipline law.