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

[Happy New Year]

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/