Report > Title IX and Equal Protection, Teacher Unions
Catching the Trash: Holding Teacher Unions, School Districts, and the U.S. Department of Education Accountable for the Epidemic of Sexual Abuse in Public Schools
By Paul Zimmerman | May 3, 2023
Key findings
- Federal data documents an epidemic of sexual abuse in public schools. Between 2010 and 2019, the number of complaints filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) alleging sexual violence against K–12 schools more than tripled. The most recently published Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC)—from 97,632 schools— underscores this unfortunate trend. For 2015–16, the CRDC reported 9,649 incidents of sexual violence; of that number, 394 constituted instances of rape or attempted rape. For 2017–18, the numbers were 13,799 and 685, respectively—an increase of 43 percent and 74 percent.
- The latest CRDC dates from 2017–18, so parents, teachers, and students do not have timely, reliable, and publicly available data about sexual abuse in their schools. Compounding this problem are instances in which a local education agency (LEA), often acting in concert with the local teacher union leaders, conceals sexual abuse by permitting accused employees to resign and move to a new school or district rather than face investigation and possible punishment—a practice called “passing the trash.”
- LEAs and unions use collective bargaining and nondisclosure agreements to conceal the records of abusive employees, and union leaders wield their powerful influence in many state legislatures to stymie legislation that would hold public employees accountable for their sexual misconduct in schools.
- States should penalize public school employees who fail to report sexual abuse committed by colleagues; establish penalties for school district personnel who help employees find jobs in other school systems when they have “probable cause” to believe that these employees have engaged in sexual abuse; and prohibit agreements that conceal records of sexual misconduct by teachers.
- OCR must do more to enforce Title IX in public schools so as to protect students from sexual assault and other abuse, provide support to victims, and investigate abuse allegations fairly and in a timely manner.
- Congress should require LEAs to report and publish annually school-level data on the violent crimes, including sexual assault, occurring in their educational activities and programs. Congress should also mandate financial penalties for an LEA’s failure to report this data.
Executive summary
Media reports and academic studies on K–12 school employees sexually abusing students have led to calls from lawmakers and children’s rights groups across the country to expand the public’s ability to scrutinize employee discipline and penalize administrators who look the other way—or, worse, actively help offenders move to different school districts—when such abuse occurs. In spite of these broadly supported pushes for change, most parents, students, and teachers remain in the dark about the prevalence of sexual abuse and other criminal activity in their local public school. Legislative efforts at the state level to prevent school districts from moving sexually abusive teachers from school to school and passing them off on other districts (a practice known as “passing the trash”) have often collapsed under pressure from union leaders.
This report reviews the current state and federal policy on preventing sexual abuse in K–12 schools, then offers case studies illustrating how various actors—school and district personnel, teacher unions, and the federal department charged with enforcing laws against sexual assault in public schools—bear responsibility for a systemic failure in preventing, and responding to, sexual assaults in public schools.
State lawmakers must pass reforms that protect students, empower parents, and hold abusers accountable while respecting due process. The U.S. Department of Education must vigorously use any available enforcement authority under federal law, particularly Title IX, to ensure that LEAs comply with their obligations to prohibit the practice of passing the trash and that districts investigate
and address sexual abuse in their schools. Congress should also strengthen existing federal legal requirements that prohibit school districts from passing the trash to provide for appropriate penalties when violations occur.
This report further demonstrates the need to improve upon the Civil Rights Data Collection with a federal transparency act that would require, on an annual basis, a detailed picture of violent criminal activity, including sexual assault, in K–12 public schools. An annual public disclosure of such data by schools and school systems would allow parents, students, and teachers to understand and scrutinize safety conditions on campus. The data would also serve as an important starting point for educating federal, state, and local policymakers about the prevalence of sexual abuse and other violent criminal activity on campus and assist in tailoring meaningful policy solutions. For these reasons, the report calls on Congress to require LEAs to publish school-level data each year revealing the frequency of violent and sexual criminal activity on K–12 school property, on school-sponsored transportation, and in school-sponsored educational programs and activities.
