Rodger Williams
November 17, 2025
Public schools claim to protect their students from child abuse with mandatory reporters. But federal data shows no drop in child abuse rates after children start school.
Public schools depend on Child Protective Services (CPS) when their mandatory reporters turn in reports of suspected child abuse to CPS. But research shows that CPS services such as crisis intervention and placement do not prevent child abuse.
A recent National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper suggests the same conclusion that prior research has arrived at: CPS services fail to prevent child abuse. The study also found that in their sample of cases CPS’s investigations, as distinct from any follow-up services, caused a 6 percent reduction in child abuse injuries. That protection ceased when the investigations were concluded.
From the study:
[I]nvestigations cause a 6 percentage point reduction in the likelihood of injury…. While these effects are large, they occur during the period of an intensive treatment: surveillance by a professional social worker with the power to remove the child from the home, and who can visit the house unannounced….
Thus results are most consistent with the hypothesis that child health improvements last only in the 60 days following a referral, when an investigation is likely ongoing….
[W]e find that investigations lead to a 6 percentage point reduction in injuries….
Active surveillance and the threat of home removal during the period of investigation may lead parents to invest resources in child health and safety in the short run.
One counterintuitive implication for public schools is that having earlier reports of suspected child abuse does not reduce the amount of abuse. The reason is that each case only gets one investigation. The protective effect only lasts for that approximately two-month period of investigation. So in a one year span of abuse two months are protected and ten months are not protected, no matter where in the 12 months the investigation takes place.
This working paper is not yet peer reviewed. But it agrees with prior research that CPS services do not reduce child abuse rates. And the idea that scrutiny in a child abuse investigation would cause abusive parents to be careful makes intuitive sense.