The U.S. Department of Education has launched a new initiative aimed at ensuring schools promptly respond to allegations of sexual misconduct by teachers and don’t allow educators facing such allegations to move to different positions undisciplined.
The Education Department said in a statement that it’s cracking down on a practice dubbed “passing the trash”—when instead of firing or disciplining educators accused of sexual misconduct, districts reassign the staff member to a different role or the employee is allowed to move to a different district, “enabling them to continue harming kids in another environment.”
The initiative includes new guidance to school districts about their existing legal obligations to respond to sexual misconduct allegations under federal education laws and investigations into how 20 school districts in 15 states are handling allegations of sexual abuse and harassment.
The guidance cites past studies of and investigations into sexual misconduct by educators, including a 2010 Government Accountability Office report that examined 15 cases in which public and private schools hired staff with histories of sexual misconduct. In six of those cases, GAO found, the employees went on to abuse more children. The contributing factors, according to GAO, included districts allowing staff to resign rather than face discipline and often providing positive references to new employers, conducting incomplete criminal history checks before hiring staffers or not conducting them at all, or failing to look into troubling criminal history information on employees’ job applications.
The guidance also cites recent reporting by ProPublica and the public radio station KQED that found 67 California teachers determined by their schools to have committed sexual harassment or misconduct retained their teaching licenses. In these cases, schools reported these teachers to the state’s teacher credentialing commission, and the state board didn’t revoke their licenses, telling ProPublica that criminal convictions, but not necessarily school district findings, trigger license revocations.
The Education Department called on districts to evaluate their policies to ensure they meet legal obligations to respond to incidents of sexual misconduct under Title IX, the law outlawing sex discrimination in federally funded schools, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the nation’s primary K-12 law.
“Our schools must protect America’s children. Parents should never have to wonder whether their kids’ school employs and protects sexual predators,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement.
The fresh Education Department guidance instructs schools to respond promptly to allegations of sexual misconduct; institute policies that prohibit employees from obtaining new roles within the district if there is knowledge or probable cause to believe they engaged in sexual misconduct with a student; accurately collect and report related data; and conduct prompt and thorough investigations when allegations of sexual misconduct arise.
The Education Department threatened to withhold federal funding from districts it finds aren’t complying with the federal regulations. The federal government, however, doesn’t have the power to revoke teachers’ licenses, as licensing is generally handled by state departments of education or licensing boards.
In the same statement announcing its sexual misconduct crackdown, the department said its office of civil rights is opening 20 investigations into districts whose civil rights data from the 2023-24 school year “suggest that districts might not be addressing staff on student sexual misconduct appropriately.”
The inquiries will examine the districts’ policies and procedures to ensure accurate data collection and reporting, as well as “if their handling of allegations of sexual harassment, including sexual assault by district employees, complies with federal law.”
The districts span 15 states, including three each in Georgia and Michigan and two in California.
The department says it determined the 20 districts based on their responses to the 2023-24 edition of the Civil Rights Data Collection, a mandatory survey designed to assess schools’ compliance with federal civil rights laws and students’ access to educational opportunities.
But the department hasn’t yet published that report, despite previously saying it would be available last December. A senior department official told Chalkbeat last month that the report will be published “later this summer.”
That data release typically comes out every two years. The last edition was released in November 2023, close to three years ago. The office for civil rights, which administers the survey and publishes its findings, is moving to the Department of Justice, the Education Department announced on June 16, and it’s been the target of Trump administration staffing reductions and office closures since early last year.
“The protection of children is a bedrock obligation of every educational institution, especially those that accept federal funds,” McMahon wrote in the guidance letter outlining schools’ obligations to address sexual misconduct allegations.
(McMahon and her husband, WWE co-founder Vincent McMahon, are fighting a lawsuit that alleges the pair knew about and failed to stop sexual abuse of underage “ring boys” in the 1980s. The McMahons have denied the allegations.)
AASA, The School Superintendents Association, recommended district leaders undertake “proactive compliance reviews” of their policies and practices for reporting and investigating sexual misconduct, and ensure the information they submit through the Civil Rights Data Collection about reported incidents and district responses to them is accurate.
“Regardless of changes in federal administrations or enforcement priorities, maintaining a safe learning environment for students remains both a legal obligation and a core moral responsibility,” Sasha Pudelski, the association’s advocacy director, said in a statement.
A number of states over the years have passed laws prohibiting schools from using some of the practices outlined by the Education Department, and some have made information about employees’ sexual misconduct more transparent.
In June, for example, the Texas Education Agency launched an Educator Misconduct Reporting Dashboard, an interactive overview of educator misconduct cases at various stages of investigation required by legislation passed last year.
In Texas in the 2025-26 school year, the state had 1,722 active investigations into allegations of inappropriate sexual or romantic relationships, improper or unprofessional communication, grooming behaviors, and failure to maintain professional boundaries with a student. Those made up close to 15% of investigations into educator misconduct last year.
Of the 1,722 cases, 1,242 are under formal investigation, 399 were closed after a preliminary review, and 58 are complete.
