WASHINGTON, D.C. – Somewhere along the way to the Common Core, schools ceased to be about the proverbial 3R’s and morphed into high-stakes testing factories with a mental health wing full of administrators who take an unusual interest in the social and emotional growth of our youth.
Welcome to the cottage industry of the Common Core: the IEP, individualized education plan, originally intended to mainstream and provide services for those K-12 students with learning disabilities (LD), those organic physiological brain impairments and/or damage that hinder the learning process. Things like dyslexia, dysgraphia and mental retardation. Under the Common Core, an alarming uptick in school assessed juvenile mental illness is trending and make no mistake, IEPs rake in big bucks for our financially strapped public schools.
The US Department of Education’s 2006 budget included 11.1 billion federal tax dollars that went to public school IDEA programs. In California, the 2012-13 budget accounted SELPA (Special Education Local Area Plan) dollars by county, pulling in a whopping $174,094,500 and $87,047,250 of taxpayer money in two installments.
That ain’t no chump change.
So, how’d we get here? “The History of Special Education in the United States” (Special Education News) notes that early legislation had very little to do with cognitive emotional issues. In fact, it was only through parent advocacy groups that President Kennedy’s 1961 President’s Panel on Mental Retardation that federal and state aid was recommended. Four years later, President Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act which provided this funding. Then, in 1975 FAPE (Free Appropriate Public Education) became part of the educational vernacular because of two federal laws that were passed: Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) and IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Act).
Fast forward to 2003-05. Education leap frogged from IQ to EQ under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). EQ being the “Emotional Intelligence” 1995 book written by psychologist Daniel Goleman and CASEL (Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning) co-founder. Handicapable was redefined to include the social, emotional, mental development and the psycho-social well-being of every child.
Enter Linda Darling-Hammond, “a pillar of the Common Core movement” notes the Stop Common Core blog “Education Without Representation.” Darling-Hammond’s collaborative classroom espoused the values of social-capability, emotional-ability, empathetic learning, self management, and societal consciousness all accomplished in a latter day outcome based-education setting: the problem-solving group think tank. It’s all about SEL, “the new smart.” All about feelings. And Darling-Hammond was part of SEL in 2003. Today, as the premiere proponent for “empathetic” learning, she sits on the CASEL board of directors.
Thus, this is emo-formula for today’s whole child classroom and a whole lot of IEP determinations.
Learning disabilities and mental illness is a very serious matter. One hopes that through a specialized IEP a student will soar to new heights. That said, who are these psychological brokers in the education community that define normal? And what is “normal” when SEL blankets the Common Core and many state education codes also have been recalibrated into checklists of appropriately SEL-sanctioned behaviors?
The CDC, the Center for Disease Control (and Prevention) in Atlanta, Georgia, cited in the DSM-IV (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition), the “bible” for the American Psychiatric Association, 3-7% of school aged children in the USA have one particular emotional disturbance, ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder). The updated DSM-V adds a caveat that “studies in the US have estimated higher rates in community samples” although no concrete figures are provided. Interestingly, the CDC now carbon backdates ADHD to 1902 in a timeline that credits little known Franklin Ebaugh (1923) with the theory that ADHD might be the result of a brain injury. Enlightening because this reference comes from a book that was originally published by Pearson Assessment and Information.
ADHD’S predecessor ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) wasn’t really a blip on the radar until squirming, foot tapping, hair twirling and predominantly boy-based behaviors soared with the advent of increasingly static teach-to-the-test classrooms. Ritalin’s triumphant Pez dispenser-like dispersal has been well documented, netting us a generation of prescription druggies, an uproar questioning the quickness to diagnose and medicate plus a variety of tragic consequences because of meds. Although we are quick to blame big pharma we must also look at its partner: the public education and its parent, the US Department of Education, who, in fact, reported that the number of school children on IEPs under the IDEA jumped from under 20,000 in 1993 to almost 120,000 in 2002. Autism alone shot up more than 500 percent between 1996-2006 and during those years, approximately 68 percent of all federal expenditures for children were used for education and instruction-related services.
Even NCES (National Center for Education Statistics) recorded 5,810,658, 12.8% of the US K-12 population were enrolled in an IEP for the school year 1999-2000. By 2010, NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) showed astounding figures in the nation’s report card: 88% of 4th graders assessed, all were placed on IEPs; 90% of 8th graders, and 81% of 12th graders. We can only imagine the actual numbers of children this represents. We do, however, know that 13.2 to 5.6 percent, boys to girls, are diagnosed with ADHD. Quite the ratio. Parents should be in an uproar.
California, a state whose school district board members lobbied Sacramento for disorder dollars saw a 1000 percent increase of enrolled students diagnosed with autism K-12 between 1992-2004 according to the California Department of Education. Statistics from 1997-2006 show that state public school incidences of diagnosed autism more than quadrupled. Heck, in 2005, these rates shot up 400 percent in my little suburban town of 20,000 people. In one year.
Enter “Quotient” by Pearson, the latest and greatest ADHD-prove-beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt tool. It’s not only a checklist, it’s BioBehavioral diagnostics. Pearson, the premiere publisher and online educational provider of all things Common Core is now in the mental health business. Their August 27, 2013 press release reads: “The Quotient ADHD Test offers physicians, mental health professionals and educators objective assessment of ADHD.” Mental health professionals all working with our schools.
Interestingly, when it was just ADD, student accommodations were made as they related to learning disabilities. Rebranded as ADHD, the disorder came with much broader classifications: inattentiveness, lack of focus, physical or mental hyperactivity, and impulsivity; it covered introverts and extraverts. The most remarkable spectrum behavior added was hyper-focus, the complete opposite of having an “attention deficit.” This is paying too much attention.
So it doesn’t matter if a kid is shy or a loud mouth, distracted, bossy, highly opinionated, argumentative, tuned out, daydreamer, blurter, forgetful, disorganized, multi-tasking slob who likes to lead, talks too much, is impulsive and passionately focused on meaningful projects … it’s all ADHD. Question? Question authority? Can’t wait your turn? Must do it your way? Not everyone’s BFF? Bore easily? ADHD. Racing mind? Fidgety? Talk too much? Withdrawn? Lousy in math? Crap out on standardized tests? Can’t write essays? ADHD. Take charge type? Creative type? Free thinker? Individual? ADHD.
Soon we may well be a nation united by disorders in a time when authority figures can slap a label on any child who may act or think ever-so-differently, a child who has a different kind of mind, a child who does not conform right down to his or her very core.
Did you know our schools are also scouring for “perceived problems” through education codes. These days, an accusation based on an outright lie can land a kid in a “think it through” therapy group lunchtime program and, as an example, the amended 2013 California education code sections 32228-29, 48200-48927, 49350-49355, 48900-48927, 48950, and 48980-48985 address “threat assessments” that are chock full of those probing psycho-social-emotional-behavioral questionnaires being administered under the guise of “safe schools.”
Ever hear of the 18 percent law? That’s the federal special education mandate that requires local schools maintain an IEP minimum-population. Are our schools intentionally mandated to be sick? Or “child find”? That’s the “federal requirement that school districts identify, locate and assess all children in need of special education services, regardless of school setting, or disability.” It’s also known as “search and serve.” This is an active search for any child who was ever placed on an IEP and was exited for any reason. School sanctioned admins can go into your child’s permanent records. And dig for info. Without parent permission.
But don’t worry. There is a fabulous narrative in the public mental health community to make your feel better about your kid being diagnosed with ADHD. Lots of famous folks had it! Thomas Alva Edison, Albert Einstein, Beethoven, Henry David Thoreau, Tolstoy, Socrates, Lord Byron, Mark Twain, DaVinci, Christopher Columbus, Benjamin Franklin, Galileo, William Randolph Hearst, Hitchcock, Napoleon and Nostradamus! And these are only the dead people who had it, the people who had no idea they had ADHD when they were alive because there was no Quotient by Pearson.
Doesn’t matter that for all the full-color animated diagrams of the ADHD mind and online videos of “Clockwork Orange” style administered biofeedback testing, that we still live in a world where there are no brain scans or blood and urine tests to systemically prove this dysfunction. Where is the “gene” for it? People can argue all day and night but, bottom line, no one has anyone proven ADHD physiologically exists. The science only shows us that the ADHD mapped mind happens to look exactly like the highly creative and/or genius brain. Unfortunately, the simple brilliance of a child is increasingly tagged as “twice gifted,” meaning the gift of a 130-plus IQ automatically comes with a bonus, disorder A, B or C.
Sadly, the Common Core’s Pac-Man like data-mining madness gobbles up every piece of info on our students pre-K through 12 with a goal of up to grade 20, exacerbating the ever growing emo-footprint following these kids in their records for the rest of their lives, stuck with the label of ADHD, sucked into a macabre psycho-social vortex complete with school sanctioned case managers. How these youths will fair with reinterpreted FERPA laws and that shadows them and their data them right into the workplace remains to be seen.
The greatest tragedy of all this is that most of us were publicly educated. How many of us were inspired by that one teacher along the way? We may still recall elementary school as a place to explore, learn, and play. A lot of us suffered through the awkward middle school years. Some of us even remember high school as the place we learned to think. Not how to think. Not what to think. Just, to think.
So who were you? Popular? The shy kid? The one who was different and didn’t fit in? The fat kid? The bully? The geek? The nerd? The brain? You wouldn’t stand a chance in a 21st Century classroom. Fortunately, there is a silver lining. Brave child psychologists, recognized educators, impassioned teachers and parent advocates, non-conformists across America, are standing up to warn families of the dangers of the Common Core philosophy of education and its social and emotional agenda. No, a whole generation of kids cannot have ADHD. At what point does it all just feel like one big Orwellian nudge, push and shove into the Common Core?
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