Biden administration aims to rollback Trump-era effort to catalog teacher sex crimes
Last Thursday, the Department of Education proposed changes to its data collection for this school year, including a rolling back of a Trump-era policy to collect data on teacher-on-student sexual…
Last Thursday, the Department of Education proposed changes to its data collection for this school year, including a rolling back of a Trump-era policy to collect data on teacher-on-student sexual assaults. Critics say this will make it easier for school districts to hide such incidents, putting students at risk.
“This is the ultimate act of bowing to the teachers’ unions,” Kimberly Richey, former assistant secretary in the Office for Civil Rights during the Trump administration, told the Washington Free Beacon. “Through this proposal, the Biden administration is actively helping schools cover up these incidents, which we were intentionally shining a light on.”
Critics say the teachers unions have no incentive for such data to be collected. âData 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,” Max Eden, an American Enterprise Institute fellow said.
The rollback comes at a time when public schoolsâ mishandling of sexual assaults, parental grievances, and curriculum concerns, have led to big shifts in the way parents and concerned citizens are thinking about education.
According to a Department of Education spokesperson, the reversal is aimed to “reduce burden and duplication of data.â Data on documented cases of sexual assault and rape will continue to be collected, but allegations of crimes that results in a resignation or retirement of a teacher will not, the Free Beacon reports.
Former Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, sought the collection of additional data to prevent teachers who committed such crimes and left the schools before the cases concluded from effectively flying under the radar.
The proposed changes now enter a 60 day public notice and comment period, after which the department will put together a final proposal which will enter a 30 day notice and comment period prior to potential approval.
