Follow-up to yesterday's post

The Associated Press reports that across America, college counseling centers are strained by rising numbers of mentally ill students and surging demand for mental health services - a challenging trend as campus officials try to identify potential threats like the unstable Virginia Tech gunman.

And even when serious emotional problems are detected, university officials often feel constrained in how they respond due to an array of laws and policies protecting students' rights and privacy.

Reasons for the surge include the Americans with Disabilities Act, which gives mentally ill students the right to be at college, and increasingly sophisticated medications which enable them to function better than in the past.

A survey last year by the American College Health Association found that 8.5 percent of students had seriously considered suicide, and 15 percent were diagnosed for depression, up from 10 percent in 2000. The Anxiety Disorders Association of America found that 13 percent of students at major universities and 25 percent at liberal arts colleges are using campus mental health services.

On the downside, she and her colleagues see stress levels among students far higher than a generation ago due to increased workloads and financial strains, often coupled with lack of healthy lifestyles.

Complicating the overall picture is a web of laws and policies that limit the options for worried staff members. Troubled students generally can't be forced to obtain treatment, and privacy laws may limit sharing information about them, even to the extent that some parents have sued schools - including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Oregon Institute of Technology - for not advising them of their children's serious disorders.

Nonetheless, officials on many campuses have set up committees to pool information about students with emotional or behavioral problems so patterns can be detected in what might otherwise be seen as isolated incidents. The trick, officials say, is to find the proper balance between respecting a student's rights and protecting the university.

I wonder if President Bush's committees will recommend monies to help universities deal with the problem as opposed to blaming state organizations and universities...

VA Tech shootings

President Bush has asked the Departments of Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services to conduct a "review of broader questions raised by this tragedy" says a Reuters report.

What exactly that means is quite murky. More money to schools and university to treat these issues? More legislation? More paperwork for psychologists and counselors on campuses?

There is already some chatter on some news services and blogs that the shooter was diagnosed with Autism when his family immigrated from South Korea to the United States. Maybe the question should be: will the government fund social skills training for bilingual children with disabilities?

Handouts are available at the New York Association of School Psychologists website: www.nyasp.org

Puerto Rico's students not reading or performing math at grade level

A press release from the Dept. of Education indicates that students in Puerto Rico are not at grade level.

This is an interesting press release as it is not simply patting the Dept.'s back, but giving itself a good self- analysis and self-criticism.

http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2007/03/03292007a.html

When should school districts pay for private special education?

The New York Times ran an interesting article about a case to appear in front of the Supreme Court.

Tom Freston, the former chief executive of Viacom, the company that runs MTV and Comedy Central is worth $85 million. In 1997, his son, then 8, was found to be lagging in reading. The NYCDOE offered his son a coveted spot in the Lower Laboratory School for Gifted Education, a competitive school on the Upper East Side that also has classes for students with moderate disabilities. He would have been placed in a classroom with 15 students, and given speech and language therapy.

Freston chose to place his child in the Stephen Gaynor School on the Upper West Side, where students, in Gaynor’s language, display “learning differences.” While the city is required by federal law to pay for private programs for disabled children when it cannot provide appropriate programs, city officials said the Lab program was suitable for Mr. Freston’s son and wanted him to try it. After two years of reimbursing the Frestons for a large part of the private school tuition, the city stopped.

Now Freston wants his due.

Although the Supreme Court will hear this particular case, it has implications which are far-ranging. The real question is: Do school districts have to pay for private school for disabled children if the families refuse to try out public programs?

The answer should not be an over-powering "yes" or "no"; the Supreme Court would do well to decide this case in a narrow judgement. That is to say, they should decide whether the city owes Freston the money or not, but should go on to state that each case must be decided independently.

Let me indicate some points. There is no evidence that the program that the city offered was bad or inappropriate to the Freston's son's learning needs. Therefore, I truly think that the Frestons should have attempted a trial run of approximately 3 months before making the decision to switch over (that could have been a good time to use many of the tracking programs that are out there such as Aimsweb or DIBELS).

However, I see that many programs that Local Educational Agencies (LEA's) offer are often staffed by poorly trained teachers, with little or no support to deal with special educational issues. I have gone in to see many programs that deal with children with autism which are so inappropriate. In these instances, it is necessary that parents DO NOT take the chance to enroll their children in those programs.