Tell Me The "Head" Profession "Ain't" Dangerous!

[downeast@tir.com (downeast)]

INSIGHT On The News (a publication of THE WASHINGTON TIMES)
November 1, 1999 issue, p.23

Mental Health. The Plan To Screen Every Kid In School.

Nation: Mental Health in Schools

Inquiring Minds Want to Know
by Aimee Howd

Public-school officials are looking into the heads of their students for
more than letters and numbers as they use behavioral modification to gain
control in the classroom.

     Should teachers or other school adminstrators keep records about their
opinions of a child's mental health from the time he or she enters
kindergarten? What about analyzing playground habits? Or confronting the
child with questions about discipline at home, how time is spent outside of
school and what in life is "bugging" him or her?
     Called "screening", such measures are being recommended for use in
schools nationwide as the federal government gives tachers and mental-health
professionals the responsibility for assessing and supporting the mental,
emotional and behavioral health of the 50 million students who attend the
1110,000 US public schools. With the Glinton-Gore administration stpping up
support, organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, the Department of Education an private donors such as the Robert
Woods Johnson Foundation gradually are surfacing plans to use the nation's
schools as mental-health clinics.
     But critics say bandaging a knee or providing a wholesome lunch, as
schools have done for decades, is one thing and psychological explorations
are another. They question the role of schools, governments and
public-health authorities in an issue as sensitive and subjective as shaping
behavior of children by psychological manipulation - or even drugs.
     Education officials counter that they cannot help students achieve
academic goals without having a well-ordered classroom, and failure to treat
"at-risk" kids results in an inferior learning environment for all. By
identifying youngsters with problematic attitudes or behaviors before third
grade and providing a "continuum of care", they assert, they will be able to
prevent school dropouts, unemployment and criminal activities.
     Patti Guarad, executive director of the Office of Special Education
Programs, or OSEP, at the Department of Education, tells INSIGHT that OSEP's
current focus is on "making changes for the entire school ... based on
effective research models ... to achieve two positive outcome factors:
positive behavior and reading." OSEP is working closely with Education
Secretary Richarad Riley and Attorney General Janet Reno and is asking
Congress to set aside $50 million in next year's budget to fund schoolwide
behavior intervention and support research projects that will serve as
models for implementing identification and behavioral-modification
techniques in schools around the nation.
     "In the area of behavior the Positive Behavior Intervention and Support
Center, or PBIS, at the University of Oregon is our biggest investment right
now", says OSEP researcher Renee Bardley. PBIS focuses on children in
kindergarten through third grade. She says the model they are recommending
comes out of the mental-health field and that roughly 80 percent of children
will respond to primary or universal interventions. About 15 percent of the
school population requires more-focused prevention or education techniques,
she says, such as group counseling, a point system or a special-education
teacher. And about 5 percent need "pretty intensive one-on-one planned
behavior intervention".
     The Website for this University of Oregon project defines PBIS as "the
application of behavior analysis to achieve socially important behavior
change." Developed initially as an alternative to punishments (so-called
"aversive interventions") for severe cases of emotionally/behaviorally
disturbed kids who engaged in extreme forms of self-injury and aggression,
the model is being extended for use with children in entire schools. The
goal of PBIS is to apply "research-validated practices" to create school
environments that "improve lifestyle results", including personal, health,
social, family, work and recreation, by shaping each child's behavior.
                    ------------------------------
And THAT is just the FIRST page of this two page article!! Tell me it is not
enough to scare the pants off of any sensible parent!!!!