Mental Health Agenda Promoted in Pennsylvania Schools:
Compiled by Kim Geyer/Mars Research & Retrieval Services
November 4, 2004

In Washington DC, as well as, Harrisburg, the current issues of state student identification numbers, national identification numbers, and mental health screening of all citizens is on a fast track of passage throughout our country with little notice of an unsuspecting public. Apparently there are many things the education social interventionists intend to change in this country without telling the average citizen…add our form of government to this list. More specifically, the aspect of our government being restructured in a gradual manner in which things were not immediately occurring but occurring in a patient gradualism to the point of being totally restructured as how we knew them to first be. (I.e. our representative government and our schools are two examples I cite as undergoing this process of change). There is overwhelming evidence to prove education social interventionists are working with increased persistence to see the fruition of this total restructuring currently in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is aligned more so than most other states in the country with the ESEA-NCLB Act. I believe that NCLB has become the latest excuse for social change agents to go after the money, go after the states, go after the local schools, and after the most vulnerable group we have, our children. By introducing, marketing, and enticing states with new and supposed educational reforms in collaboration of federal and state grant money. States are falling into this restructuring trap with little or no notice paralleling one and other with the same copycat reforms. Throughout the early 1990’s most literature addressing the Goals 2000 a. k. a. Outcomes Based Education (restructuring system) delineates our government being described as a democracy when in fact we live under a republic. “…to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” To those that question why should it matter? Our country’s founders despised democracy and held steadfast to the ideals of a republic form of government for this country through law and representation. Those early aspirations of a “republic” can be further identified in Article 4 of the U.S. Constitution.

For the past twelve years, I have been concerned about the ramification of such legislation, and much of my research now and in the past has been an effort to determine the effects of Goals 2000/OBE, which I know many in Pennsylvania believe to be dead as according to the former Governor Tom Ridge before the implementation of the new Chapter 4 education regulations and academic standards in 1999. Unfortunately, concern surrounding outcome based education is well founded and is not dead by any stretch of the imagination through what is now known as Goals 2000. In no way, shape, or form, has this philosophy or process ever been sunsetted since that time. My twelve year study of these supposed education reforms have allowed me to carefully scrutinize and examine the recent pieces of legislation being introduced within our state. I can determine with full confidence that the radical philosophy and process of Goals 2000/outcome based education is in full catalytic gear here in our state….if we allow it to be. As gatekeepers to education policy, we should not easily relinquish quality education in our schools; undermine the quality and values of our families, without further investigating all the facts and research to many of these “proposed reforms” from special interests. These social change agents and programs will greatly influence and contain long-term life implications for generations to come.

Health care and schools is something most people do not naturally associate in their minds as being intertwined into one issue….when in fact, most people would think there is a disconnect. In recent years since the mid 1990’s, schools have been seized to serve for various other purposes unrelated to their primary academic mission of teaching facts and knowledge. Unsuspecting Americans, who believed that the Clinton health care plan was diminished and dead continues to live on in other concepts and mechanisms despite its rejection and defeat in 1994. Social engineers, Marc Tucker along with Ira Magaziner and Hillary Clinton, were three of the major authors of the national health care legislation that was introduced in President Clinton’s first term. When the entire legislation was presented as a whole, it was overwhelmingly defeated.

Since that time, these same change agents determined not to be defeated in implementing what they believed to be best for everyone else, decided to take a more tactful and more gradual approach by implementing their plan of restructuring piece by piece with hardly any notice or opposition. Since that time, they introduced it more discreetly in a way that brought about socialized medicine through the back door of school houses across the country by instituting health care insurance for children through schools. These special interest groups had gone state by state with the primary mission of promoting prevention for every societal affliction and ailment by implementing programs whereby Medicaid services can be offered to children in schools. States, as well as, schools are increasing Medicaid funding to themselves by identifying increased numbers of students screened for a variety of criteria related to physical, emotional, and mental health issues. The more students identified at risk or identified as having some type of educational or economical deprivation, the more money flowing into the system, plain and simple. What better way for the government to get into the health care business than to promote its captive and unsuspecting audience of students in our country’s schools? Preventive and intervention programs such as mental health screening of students in schools becomes a device promoting fraudulence, when they are passed off as something other than what they truly are.

Did anyone ever stop to ask why over half of our student population in this country is identified as “at risk” for one thing or another? Why are most of these same students taking pharmaceutical drugs? How can we distinctly identify as to whether students are exhibiting manifestations of bad behavior or truly indicating a valid problem, when assessing students? Medicaid has become the funding mechanism through drugs given to students, as well as, mental and physical health screening of students. There are hundreds of kids being misidentified by unprofessional lay people administering screening devices based on subjective and loose criteria. There are issues of students being identified and being potentially stigmatized in various areas of their lives. Should we be concerned with our most vulnerable students as contained in all school’s four sub groupings of students as according to NCLB? The track record of pharmaceuticals is not solid or credible when we have a generation of women across this country who has taken hormone replacement therapy for the past twenty years. These same women are now being told by the FDA and their personal physicians, new studies are indicating hormone replacement therapy is not necessarily as healthy as once led to believe and is a major cause of stroke in women of all ages. Most analysts and doctors had not expected the FDA to pull Vioxx (pain reliever) from the market last month after a study indicated it doubled patient’s risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Last month, national studies indicated teenagers taking antidepressants were more prone to suicidal thoughts and the FDA issued a black box warning to be applied to all medications, such as Paxil and Zoloft. While there are many uncertainties, one aspect is clear, by hastily putting our young students on long term medication at first time indications….we truly have no idea of the long-term ramifications on the health of these young people and future generations. We need to honestly ask ourselves if Ritalin was the right and only right thing to do for our students experiencing first-time or early indications twenty years from now? Will we hear it had positive effects or will we instead hear horrible tales? We clearly have no solid evidence to support either aspect as of this point in time as there is no documented historical perspective to support either position.

Dr. Shirley McCune, senior director of the Mid-Continent Regional Educational Laboratory is greatly advocating the restructuring process I have eluded to previously occurring with our government, as well as, schools. But, do not take my word for it, do your own investigation into her keynote address at the Kansas City, Mo., 1989 Governor’s Conference on Education when she spoke about the total restructuring of our society and schools:

I quote “When you walk in the building, there’s a row of offices. In one are drug counselors, one is for social security, …schools are no longer in the schooling business, but rather in the human resource development…we have the opportunity to develop the kind of society we want.”

Similar to a one stop grocery store where consumers are accommodated with a variety of services in one setting: food, childcare, dry-cleaning services, pharmacy, florist, bakery, film processing, restaurant, banking, bookstore, gift & card shop….all as an effort to encourage the consumer to only go to one community center with no need to travel elsewhere for additional needs. This is the vision articulated discreetly by many, for our schools, a total life support system providing and accommodating for every need one could possibly have. These same entities believe schools should provide medical and mental health school based health clinics, day care centers for students having children, food vouchers for anyone needing a meal, drug deterrent centers for those students addicted to the medications over prescribed for them, health clubs to prevent obesity, and an endless web of comprehensive social services all contained under one roof and marketed to a captive audience….our students and schools. Is this the vision Pennsylvania wants for their schools? Even in our lower socio-economic and urban areas? At what price?

Change agents are interested in assuming power, influence, and money, not necessarily in that order. Change agents are dedicated to social change and doing whatever it takes to make the necessary alterations to realize their goals. Change agents or social change interventionists as sometimes referred to, possess a self-worth attitude that dictates to themselves that they basically know what the world needs and they basically know more than what others need themselves…so they should rule the world and manage the society in which you live, for you, since they believe and have determined amongst themselves that society obviously cannot nor has the ability to take care of itself or oneself for that matter. Some change agents are involved in think tanks of America that are not for profit foundations with billions of dollars in assets dedicated to social change. These think tanks as a whole have had an overwhelming influence over education in this country for decades and have led to a majority of the changes that have occurred in our country’s classrooms through teaching methods and programs for schools.
They are driving the new preventive, progressive, rescue, and intervention programs found in our schools. McRel Educational Labs and all the Educational Labs across this country possess many behavioral scientists, sociologists, and people who like to experiment with people to collect data, observe cause and effect, and make the decisions for all others. These same people are not necessarily teachers or educators primarily interested in teaching our future generations of young people in our schools in order to help them reach their maximum learning potential as a student. These same groupings of people have the political money and clout to influence states to pilot, accept, try, expand, and sustain their creative ideas and proposals with little accountability. We walk around scratching our heads and wondering why our education system is in such disarray.

Our country, as well as, schools is still in the process of being completely dumbed down to a further notch. Life’s fast paced schedule leaves little time for anyone to truly notice what’s occurring. Meanwhile, we, the states, are being completely set up and we’re allowing for it to happen. Change agents are supremely interested in being “supreme” to all others, make no mistake about it nor underestimate the issues they are advocating.

These people have their own self interests at their own heart; they’re not interested in doing what is truly right for kids, schools, or improving education, despite what they say.

It’s all about creating change, power, money, and influence at your expense, certainly not their own!

The mantra “Follow the Money!” definitely holds true when in cases of seeking who’s driving various legislation and reforms….leading back to foundations with the clout and finances to support, market, and lobby their own supposed education reforms. Many of these private national foundations underwrite their own programs which completely bypass state legislatures and taxpayers by implementation through burecratic layers into the local public schools. Many of these programs and initiatives are promoted to begin piloting as “voluntary” or “with parental consent” or to identify indicators of disabilities, or defects, which leads many legislators to the belief that this is a legitimate program that can be justified by further alleviating or preventing teens from early pregnancy, rescue from suicide, and all other social afflictions within our society which require rehabilitative efforts. States initially go after the money through some of these grants as a way to seek more funding for education, when in essence, over the grace period, states and local taxpayers find themselves sustaining piloted programs once implemented. Local school boards trying to exercise fiscal responsibility wishing to no longer sustain ineffective social programs find some of their public conducive of receiving free or low cost services in turmoil at the thought of its abolishment. Once something is implemented, whether it’s mandated or not, whether it’s funded or not, history shows it is difficult to abolish or reduce. Once the public becomes accustomed to receiving something, they feel entitled, and reluctant to surrender something that once existed.

Many of the federal programs are a result of President Bush approving a bill to reauthorize and expand mental health under the ESEA act, whereupon there are two provisions important to school-based mental health initiatives. The first provision authorizes grants and support for school based counseling and mental health programs. These funds would need to be applied to hiring adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists,
Guidance counselors and social workers to deliver these services effectively. The other provision takes into account of linking local educational agencies to outside providers and a broad base of mental health systems. Grants are marketed in ways to promote collaboration between schools and other public and private entities or to provide diagnostic services.

In conclusion, the importance of getting these programs and initiatives into states is two-fold for these commissions and universities promoting them. These same entities give validation to themselves, as stated on the Teen Screen Website by Columbia University that by states choosing to pass legislation instituting their programs gives recognition and legitimacy to their efforts from the state legislatures. Especially when there should be evidence of their reforms being effective that adds legitimacy and recognition to the program and not because someone necessarily endorses it. I found that to be interesting, as the mindset seems to be, let’s see how many states can copycat? We need to ask ourselves if some arbitrary number of states necessarily validate the effectiveness of a reform. Secondly, these entities believe this entrance opens up another door to hopeful and future funding based on demonstrative and piloted programs and their success rates.

Policymakers need to consider when contemplating such legislation, if schools are the appropriate vehicle and site to be utilized in delivery of such services? What do you want the mission of our schools to be? To provide education? Or be the end all solution to every social issue society chooses to inflict? Most of these school based health clinics have been implemented since 1969 throughout our country; yet, our students and our society still have issues and problems, despite screening and medicating students across this country. Where is the evidence to support that these preventive measures have made a significant difference in increasing student achievement in our schools to warrant such an investment of money, time, and effort? It is my hope that policymakers will examine and discuss the tough questions they need to consider when contemplating the mental health legislation proposed in this commonwealth in this session and the upcoming 2005 year.

Kim Geyer
November 4, 2004

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