There is no federal law or state laws that requires teachers to be drug tested before they are hired or tested randomly after they are hired. It is up to individual school districts to decide whether or not they are going to require drug and/or testing new teachers as part of the hiring process. Also, there is no law that requires active teachers to be drug tested.
I did a survey of 313 teachers throughout the United States to get some data of how often school districts test their teachers for drugs. I created a survey with the wonderful teachers on the Subredditt Teaching Resources.
I asked them a simple question: Have you even been drug tested before being hired or after you were hired to a K-12 teaching position?
I included a screenshot of the results below. As you can see 85.6% of the 313 teachers said that they have never been drug tested before being hired or after being hired.
Here is a summary of what I found.
268 out of 313 teachers responsed that they were not drug tested before being hired and have not been drug tested since being hired
39 out of 313 teachers said that they were drug tested before being hired.
2 out of 313 said that they were drug tested after being hired while working as a teacher.
4 our of 313 said that they were drug tested before they were hired and while working as a teacher.
Do New Teachers Get Drug Tested?
Typically new teachers don’t get drug tested but there are school districts that do test for drugs and it may depend on if you are applying to a public or private school.
Private schools have a greater chance of requiring their prospective teachers take a drug test because they are not funded by taxes and have more freedom to create their own hiring practices.
If you are worried about drug testing then do your homework and find out if you will need to by calling the schools district office ahead of time, just don’t leave your name if you don’t have to.
If you are using drugs and trying to become a teacher then the responsible thing to do is stop using drugs.
Do the responsible thing and take control of your career by making decisions that are going to give you the highest chance of getting a teaching job.
Do you really want to be denied your first teaching job because of drug use? No way. Stay clean and be responsible.
Check Your Contract
If you aren’t sure whether or not the school district you are working has random drug tests then check your contract.
The work contract between you (via your union) and the school district outlines specific details about your pay, workday, and benefits. It’s the place to look in order to find out if your school district does random drug tests or any drug testing at all.
If your district does do random drug tests then you probably already know.
Pros Of Drug Testing Teachers
- No Drugs: the obvious answer is if teachers are found to be using drugs that are not legal then the school district can either help them or terminate them. For a community this sounds great, they are going to “clean” the system by getting rid of teachers.
Cons Of Drug Testing Teachers
- Money: Drug testing costs money and most school districts are already low on funds. The money it would take to conduct drug tests isn’t worth it. So what, you find a teacher that uses drugs. What’s next? Do they get fired? Do they get treatment? There are a lot of unanswered questions.
- Violation of privacy: Teachers have an expectation of privacy. During the drug tests it may be found that a teacher is taking something like antidepressants. Teachers may not want this invasion of their privacy if they are teaching as they should be.
- Unions: I know that the union I belong to would be against random drug tests. The school district would have a hard time adding random drug tests to our contract.
- Timing: Okay, lets say that a teacher is tested in February and is found to be using illegal drugs. The school district decides to fire the teacher right away. Great. Now you have to scramble to fill that position in a hurry and that is not an easy thing to do. The distict is really going to have to see how good of a teacher that person is before they let them go. The question may turn into: This is a good teacher, is it worth it for us to fire them even though they are using drugs?
- Does it matter?: Let’s say a teacher goes home after working and uses drugs, should they be fired for that? Maybe. Maybe not. If it isn’t impacting their performance at work then what good does it do getting rid of them?