Teachers and Sex

USA Today recently reported in a headline "Thousands of Teachers Cited for Sex Misconduct". They claim that in a seven month study of schools throughout the United States they uncovered over 2,500 cases of sexual misconduct by teachers. In every case, a teacher molesting a student is a terrible travesty and safeguards should be implemented to prevent the occurrence of any such activity, but is this widespread throughout our nation?

The headline is obviously designed to capture the reader's attention and they go on to cite some egregious examples that will no doubt infuriate readers and more than likely result in local school districts implementing policies that will insure separation of students from teachers.

Let's look at the numbers that USA Today reported to get an idea of the extent of this problem. They reported that they found 2,570 examples of teacher sexual misconduct that spanned a period of five years and that young people were the victim in 1,801 of those cases. In other words, in 769 cases of sexual misconduct, however that is defined, adults were the victims. Further they state that of the 1,801 involving young people, 80% were students. So in actuality they uncovered 1441 cases of sexual misconduct by teachers upon students over a period of 5 years.

USA Today did not report the number of cases by year so it is difficult to determine if there is a trend, but if one was to divide the 1441 cases by the 5 years which constituted the period of their analysis it would be equal to a little over 288 cases per year of sexual misconduct by teachers upon students. One case per year would be unacceptable for America's children.

They also reported that there were about 3 million teachers in the United States. So for every 3 million teachers, there are a reported 288 sexual misconduct cases involving students. In other words USA Today has reported that for every 10,000 teachers there is one sexual misconduct case.