Biden's Education Department Wants to Roll Back Effort to Catalog Teacher Sex Crimes

Critics say the move is an attempt to appease teachers' unions

The Department of Education wants to roll back a Trump-era effort to 
collect data on teacher-on-student sex crimes.

The department's Office for Civil Rights will not ask school 
districts questions regarding teacher-on-student sexual assault 
allegations as part of its 2021-2022 Civil Rights Data Collection, 
proposed Thursday. The change is designed to "reduce burden and 
duplication of data," an Education Department spokesman told the 
Washington Free Beacon. But critics say eliminating the question is 
the Biden administration's attempt to appease teachers' unions.

"This is the ultimate act of bowing to the teachers' unions," 
Kimberly Richey, who served as acting assistant secretary in the 
Office for Civil Rights in the Trump administration, told the Free 
Beacon. "Through this proposal, the Biden administration is actively 
helping schools cover up these incidents, which we were 
intentionally shining a light on."

The Education Department will still ask districts to report 
documented cases of rape and sexual assault. But it will not ask 
school officials to report allegations that resulted in the 
resignation or retirement of the accused. Former secretary of 
education Betsy DeVos added those optional questions to the 2020-
2021 data collection, which was delayed one year due to the 
coronavirus pandemic. The department also won't ask districts to 
report pending cases or cases in which a school staffer was 
reassigned to another district school prior to the conclusion of an 
investigation.

Reporting alleged sex crimes in addition to documented cases 
provides a fuller picture of sexual violence in schools, as the 
accused may retire, resign, or seek employment elsewhere before a 
district can reach a conclusion in the case.

Public schools' mishandling of sexual assault cases has become a 
political liability for Democrats across the country. Allegations 
that school officials in one Northern Virginia school district 
covered up a double sexual assault case roiled parents just weeks 
before the gubernatorial election. Teacher-union-backed Democrat 
Terry McAuliffe lost to Republican Glenn Youngkin by 2 points in the 
commonwealth, where President Joe Biden handily won by a 10-point 
margin.

Office for Civil Rights data collected during the Trump 
administration found that sexual assault and rape cases surged in 
public schools over the past decade. DeVos added those optional 
questions to the 2020-2021 data collection after the 2017-2018 
survey found that nearly 15,000 allegations of rape, attempted rape, 
and sexual assault were reported during that school year, according 
to an October 2020 brief on the statistics. That data set did not 
distinguish between teacher-on-student and student-on-student 
crimes.

The Education Department's proposal will enter a 60-day period for 
notice and public comment. The Office for Civil Rights will respond 
to each individual comment and create a final proposal, which will 
then undergo an additional 30-day public comment period before being 
sent to the Office of Management and Budget for final approval.

American Enterprise Institute research fellow Max Eden tells the 
Free Beacon that the Education Department's move is unsurprising, 
given the Biden administration's ties to teachers' unions.

"Teachers' unions have a structural interest in protecting all of 
their members—including alleged pedophiles," Eden said. "Data 
suggesting systemic nonchalance about child sexual abuse in public 
schools would be quite politically inconvenient for teachers' 
unions. Now the data won't be collected."

One top Education Department official has been accused of 
mishandling allegations of sexual abuse. Four women allege that 
Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten ignored their complaints 
against a teacher while she was the superintendent of San Diego 
Unified School District. One of the accusers, Loxie Gant, told the 
Free Beacon in March that when she met with Marten to discuss the 
allegations, Marten implied Gant was using the meeting as a 
"publicity stunt."


https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/bidens-education-
department-wants-to-roll-back-effort-to-catalog-teacher-sex-crimes/