The SEC requires investors to be warned in a prospectus that past performance is no guarantee of future results. I think state licensing departments should warn teacher candidates that their past behavior is guaranteed to come back to haunt them.

I was reminded of this by the case of Tiffany Webb, a 37-year-old high school guidance counselor in the New York City system who was fired after 12 years of exemplary service because she seductively posed in her undergarments several years before she became a teacher in 1999 ("Manhattan HS guidance counselor stripped of job over steamy-photo past," New York Post, Oct. 7). These photos are not pornographic any more than Victoria's Secrets are. Nevertheless, she was axed, even though she disclosed her former career when she was first hired.

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