Sexual assault training could become mandatory at the nation’s high schools should the U.S. Senate’s bipartisan bill to rewrite the No Child Left Behind Act become law.
The Washington Post reported that the Every Child Achieves Act, which passed the Senate last week, includes a measure crafted by a Democratic member that would require high schools to demonstrate how they teach students about safe sexual relationships, consenting to sex, and avoiding sexual violence and coercion.
Sen. Timothy M. Kaine (D., Va.), who introduced the provision now in the Senate’s bill after he met with anti-rape activists at the University of Virginia following the publication of a now-debunked Rolling Stone story about an alleged campus sexual assault, described it as a necessity in the current "public safety reality."
"It was kind of a light-bulb moment for me," explained Kaine. "This is a public safety reality. If we can educate kids and thereby there will be fewer victims but also fewer perpetrators, then it is the right thing to do."
The House passed its own version of a No Child Left Behind rewrite, called the Student Success Act, earlier this month, which does not include such a provision. Instead, it includes language barring schools from having programs that "normalize teen sexual activity as an expected behavior."
A spokesperson for the bill’s sponsor Rep. John Kline (R., Minn.) explained that such language provides clarification for current law and does permit schools to provide "responsible sex education" which could involve discussion of the "role of consent."
The Obama administration has been forceful in its crusade to fight campus sexual assault, launching the "It’s on Us" awareness intiative to curtail campus rape, and promoting the controversial statistic that one in five women is a victim of sexual assault in college.
In a legal filing last week, Rolling Stone confirmed that a UVA sexual assault victim advocate who also served as an adviser to a White House sexual assault task force introduced the magazine to the student who became the subject of its now-discredited report about a violent gang rape on the university’s campus.