Texas schools filed more than three times as many educator misconduct reports in the 2025-26 fiscal year as the year before, the Texas Education Agency's new misconduct watchdog told a Senate committee, a jump he credited largely to a 2025 law that tightened reporting rules.
Levi Fuller, whom the agency named in February as its first inspector general for educator misconduct, testified at an interim hearing of the Senate Committee on Education on Tuesday, Oct. 6, according to accounts published by Texas Scorecard and KSST Radio. The hearing reviewed Senate Bill 571, written by committee vice chair Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston.
The numbers
According to Fuller's figures as reported by the two outlets:
- Misconduct reports rose to 19,766 from 5,707 the prior year.
- Reports filed by superintendents rose to 14,630 from 3,140, roughly three of every four reports received.
- The agency also received 27,655 criminal history hits from law enforcement, up from 23,369.
The figures count reports and alerts, not confirmed wrongdoing. Fuller said preliminary reviews narrowed the total of about 47,400 to 6,587 formal investigations. Of those, 1,177 have been completed, 714 are on hold mostly because criminal cases are pending, and 4,696 remain open.
He told senators the agency expects about 550 of the open cases to end up at trial rather than settle, which he said would double the agency's caseload.
"The superintendents are getting the message across the state of Texas that they have to report to TEA," Fuller said. He called the superintendent figure "an important number we should be celebrating," then added, "But that being said, this number is high."
