I was very angry to read of the latest intrusion into the lives of our children and families.
Some K-8 students are being subjected to blanket screening by untrained, unlicensed personnel, with serious questions about use or protection of the resulting records. And parents not only haven’t consented to this process, they haven’t even been told it’s happening.
. . .
This psychological assessment is administered not by licensed mental-health professionals but rather by teachers … every month the teacher must answer 72 questions about each of the perhaps dozens of students in her class. She must assess whether the student “carr[ies] himself with confidence,” whatever that means for a 5-year-old, and whether he can “cope well with insults and mean comments.”
. . .
The point of these amateur mental-health assessments is to determine which students need further intervention. The educrats seem unconcerned that these determinations could be influenced by inevitable biases of the untrained teachers making the subjective assessments. Might a teacher who appreciates an exuberant child rate him differently than would a teacher who values quiet attention? Would one teacher flag a bouncy child for possible Attention Deficit Disorder, while a teacher with a different personality assesses a quiet introvert as abnormally withdrawn? Would both of these students be destined for mental-health treatment — and possibly dangerous medication?
And what about the confidentiality of these “assessments”? … if they were performed and recorded by medical professionals, they would be kept strictly confidential under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). But that’s not the case when the administrators of the assessment are teachers … schools and education agencies may now share a student’s records with literally anyone in the world as long as they use the right language to justify the disclosure — and they need not tell parents they’re doing so.
There’s more at the link.
The infuriating thing about this gross invasion of our children’s and our families’ privacy is that it was never debated, discussed or authorized in a public forum by our elected representatives. Instead, it’s been pushed through by unelected, faceless bureaucrats who are seldom, if ever, held accountable for their decisions, or the results of those decisions. They can encroach upon our privacy in the confident expectation that they will be allowed to do as they please. (Note, too, that the company promoting these techniques stands to profit handsomely from their implementation, which – of course – will use its standardized testing tools and techniques.)
You can learn here which states are currently implementing this program. There are moves afoot to introduce it in other states as well.
As Susan Goldberg points out:
In other words, your child isn’t just learning facts, he’s learning how to interpret and communicate those facts in a socially acceptable way that is sensitive to the feelings of others. Facts may not care about your feelings, but school administrators held under the Fed’s thumb do. I wonder how George Orwell makes these folks feel? Perhaps like “two legs are good, but four legs are better”?
Sounds like a social justice warrior‘s wet dream to me . . . turn every child into a cookie-cutter SJW before the kid has a chance to learn to think for him- or herself.
Peter
"they haven’t even been told it’s happening."
Oh please. They get the Captain Renault award…I am shocked!
If you send children to the government for education what else would you expect. Enough of the "oh, my local school is not like that…"
So called "conservatives", and those who espouse smaller less intrusive government, and those who want the government to pull puck and reduce its mission creep always seem to find an exception when it comes to the education of their children. That practice has zero intellectual integrity.
If you feed your children to that monster, do not feign surprise when the monster acts like one, and you wind up with more monsters.
Reminds me of the Havenite "Department of Mental Health".
This is not good and it makes me glad I'm already homeschooling.
This has been happening for decades. During the McMartin hoax, it
was discovered the woman who coaxed the kids to say they were
molested had no credentials whatsoever in psychology or psychiatry.
In fact, the only thing she was licensed to do in the state of
California was to drive a car.
Here is the scary part, she remained head of Children's Institute
International in Torrance and dozens of smaller satellite groups
like the South Bay Center For Counseling. Kee McFarlane, as the
leader of this small army of self-styled therapists, had only a
weekend seminar to her credit. The rest had zero-zip-nada! I
doubt a single member of that group had so much as a subscription
to Psychology Today.
Teachers in schools were given a list of over 200 behavioral problems,
any ten of which combined would indicate a normal child. Each and
every one of these "Symptoms" was automatically considered sexual
physical or emotional abuse. The kids were often delivered to
Harbor General Hospital for full blown genital exams without so
much as a call to their parents. Girl pisses her panties and
the inflammation was diagnosed by some intern as evidence of sexual molestation.
This crap is still going on all over America! The little girl
was my half sister.
Anon 1205, your broad brush needs trimming back. From what I see, conservatives everywhere are saying "get your kids out of public school", and "even if you have to live on one paycheck, home school". I don't know a single one saying what you're alleging.
Another point: where do teachers get the time to do this? Aren't we always hearing how overworked teachers are?
I live in a rural conservative area and our public school is just as bad as any other. I've looked at good portion of their elementary and high school curriculum and it's just as batcrap crazy as you'd expect from any leftist stronghold on the coasts or metro area. It's dumbed down and full of leftist indoctrination. The teachers are utterly incompetent in some cases and leftist wackos in most. One whackjob teacher showed such abysmal judgement he ended up getting himself and the school featured on Fox news and drudge over wildly inappropriate classroom antics.
They're always hitting up the taxpayers for more money even after being told no repeatedly. Thankfully we have a large Mennonite community that helps the beleaguered taxpayer fend off tax increases pushed by the public school mafia. As it is now I think the last time I figured it up the school tax was over 70% of my property tax bill. Money they spend on 15000 dollar murals, new football field lights and the like. So I have to pay thousands of dollars for wealthy families to send their kids to their gold plated government school and then use what is left to educate my own kids at home and pay for my own books and supplies, occasional tutoring or online courses.
Why not run it like our rural fire departments? If you want fire protection you pay yearly dues. Don't want fire protection then you don't have to pay. In my county there are an ever larger number of families who send their kids to Mennonite or Amish schools or homeschool yet are forced via taxes on their real estate and personal property to subsidize the education of other people's children at the cost of their own children's education. There needs to be an opt out for those who don't use public schools and the burden needs to be shifted to those who actually want to have their children taught by the state. They always push for more and more tax increases but never do they ask for parents who use the public schools to pay up.
Mr. Graybeard,
anon 1205 here. If every "conservative" and every Christian pulled their children from public school today, the system would collapse tomorrow.
Butts-in-seat (Average Daily Attendance) plays a very large part of funding for government schools. Impacting that is a full bracket of tin fish right right into the boiler room of that edifice.
The fact that it has not happened is proof positive that even though in your experience you hear some calling for abandoning government schools, in large part is has not happened.
And, I speak as one with 5 grandchildren (one an adult) who are and were home-schooled by their parents, who were hs'ed by us decades ago. I have participated and watched this for an entire generation. The reality is that the even though the number of hs/private school children has increased over the last 40 years, nothing has put a dent in government schools, nor will, until "conservatives" vote en masse with their feet.
And they will not.
Another reason to abolish publik skools.
Cesspools of developing mediocrity socially and intellectually. Another failed institution except among most female teachers who are clueless.
I love the post above about conservatards. They bitch and moan about public spending but go along with the civic religion of public education. Don't forget that 'conservatives' in Allen TX have a $60 million high school stadium with cracks and multimillion dollar performing arts center.