No, Teachers Shouldn’t Decrease Referrals to Child-Protective Services

“We’re Not Protecting Children. We’re Recycling Their Trauma.” That was the title of a recent opinion piece by policy researcher Mathangi Swaminathan on the education news website The74, explaining why teachers should think twice before reporting suspected abuse or neglect to child-protective services. Swaminathan’s suggestion is part of a growing chorus alleging that educators only contribute to the problems of vulnerable children when they contact child-protection agencies.

A paper released earlier this year from the American Federation of Teachers asserts, “Reporting rarely helps protect children from harm.” Based on results of a nonrepresentative survey of more than 1,000 school staff on their experiences reporting suspected abuse and neglect among their students, the authors conclude that teachers be taught about the “harms” of engaging child protective services, which include “trauma and family separation.”

New York City’s children’s services commissioner, Jess Dannhauser, has said that teachers have alternatives to reporting families in cases where a family “just needs help, such as access to child-care assistance, mental health counseling or concrete resources.” And he has touted reductions in reports from teachers to the state’s register of child abuse and maltreatment as a significant accomplishment. Coming from one of the largest child-welfare agencies in the country, this position represents a troubling trend.

Unfortunately, the evidence presented for pressuring educators to reduce their reports is faulty and may result in too many teachers deciding to say nothing when they see something. As researchers who have read hundreds of reports on child-maltreatment fatalities and near-fatalities, we can say with confidence that teachers are essential early-warning detectors in our efforts to protect children. We ignore or discourage educator reports at our children’s peril.

It has become a common refrain among advocates: Since most children are reported for neglect, if we simply provided children with more material support, there would be no need to involve the child-protection system. Neglect, they argue, is simply another way of saying that the child is living in poverty.

But how are teachers supposed to know whether students just need material resources or whether their parents are having significant mental health challenges or substance abuse issues that mean they can’t or won’t access resources for their children?

The reason states have a centralized child-maltreatment hotline is to ensure that there is a single, unified entity in possession of all concerns of abuse and neglect. It is the job of child-protection agencies to examine patterns of reports, cross-report with law enforcement, and decide whether to investigate. The minute teachers (or others) suspect maltreatment but do not report it, the agency charged with child safety is missing information critical to their role and responsibility.

Due to confidentiality laws, teachers have no idea whether other reports have come in about the same family from other sources. They don’t have all the information, but child services should, and it often takes multiple allegations from adults with different pieces of information before agencies can intervene.

Importantly, despite the AFT paper’s stance against mandatory reporting, there is no indication from its survey data that teachers feel forced to report things that are not maltreatment, nor is there any indication that they do not think they are able to identify abuse or neglect.

Instead, the conclusion that “educators are often making unnecessary reports” comes from the statistic that child-protection agencies verify fewer than 1 in 10 of educators’ concerns. When the AFT survey asked educators about their experiences with reporting to the system, a plurality said they did not observe a change (34.4%) or that the student or family’s relationship with the school worsened (28.5%).

Just because child-protective services can’t verify an allegation doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. People regularly report crimes for which the police don’t have sufficient evidence to press charges, let alone prove. A child may show up at school with bruises that fade before authorities arrive. A child may disclose that their parent was high on drugs and could not feed them over the weekend, only for the parent to be sober when an investigator visits.

Citing concerns about pushing students into the school-to-prison pipeline, the AFT paper also discourages policies requiring teachers to report chronic absenteeism. Instead of reporting students not showing up, the authors suggest “home visiting, programming to increase belonging, school-based health services, and increased access to healthy school meals.”

But in our experience, chronic absenteeism is often a sign that something is seriously amiss in a family, especially when it involves younger children. If a parent is unable to consistently get a child to school, what does that signal about other struggles the parents may be facing?

A year ago, we launched Lives Cut Short, a project that assembles media reports and public records to better understand child fatalities; pushes for more standardized definitions; and advocates greater public disclosure and transparency.

This work to draw attention to the more than 2,000 child-maltreatment deaths that occur in this country each year shows that extended periods of absence from school are not an uncommon feature in cases of child-maltreatment fatalities among school-age children. Take Dametrious Wilson, who missed 60 days of school in the year before he was beaten to death. Before 7-year-old Nia Williams was brutally killed, school district records show she had missed more than 50 days of school.

It is no doubt frustrating when a report to protective services doesn’t lead to a clear or immediate improvement in a child’s situation. Yet, despite the AFT paper’s overall conclusion that educators should make fewer reports, it is notable that more teachers express positive views of their experience reporting to agencies than negative ones (43.9% vs. 28.9%). Maybe teachers realize that, notwithstanding the challenges and imperfections of the system, reporting suspected abuse or neglect is better than the alternative.