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Why Are Texas Politicians Eager for School Mental Health Services?
By Carole Hornsby Haynes, Ph.D. June 4, 2019
Adapted from May 31 letter sent by American Citizens Matter to Governor Abbot, requesting veto of Senate Bill 11, House Bill 18, and House Bill 19
It is a known fact that pharmaceutical companies spend far more than any other industry to influence politicians. Thus, the public should be concerned that so much emphasis by our Texas political leaders has been placed on setting up mental health services on school campuses and the partnering of Texas schools with private psychiatric hospitals to which students will be referred for inpatient care and medication.
Although Texas Governor Greg Abbott had promised voters property tax relief and school finance reform, he declared mental health to be an “emergency item” for the 2019 legislative session. In response, nearly 150 mental health bills were filed with House and Senate Republicans leading the charge. The Grand Daddy of them all is Senate Bill 10 authored by Senator Jane Nelson and signed onto by 31 Senators.
Fifty-nine percent of Texas third graders cannot read but the Texas Commission on Public School Finance concludes the reason lies in a child’s lack of preparedness for kindergarten. The 2018 report of the Commission claims, “testimony reflected that students who were kindergarten ready were more than three times more likely to meet the state standard for third-grade reading vs. those students who weren’t.”
In his State of the Union speech, President Trump urged lawmakers to pass a school choice bill. Fortunately, it’s highly unlikely that any such legislation will be passed. The $1 billion competitive grant for vouchers that Trump favors and the federal tax credit scholarship, considered a federal power grab by conservatives, lack Congressional support.
U.S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos toured European countries earlier in 2018 and expressed great admiration for their centralized education system and workforce development, particularly those in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the U.K. She believes adoption of their policies will “help catch us up” to students in other countries.
The 2019 Texas legislature is rushing headlong into expanding technology in K-12, forcing children into more “personalized learning,” a euphemism for replacing teachers with digital screens. Ignoring volumes of proof that digital learning has lowered academic achievement and created mental and psychological problems, states spend $5 billion each year of taxpayers’ money on technology.
Whatever happened to childhood and the freedom to run, play, create, climb trees, drink out of garden hoses, play cowboys and Indians without being politically incorrect, take things apart to see how they work, and fantasize without being shamed by adults?
In the more sane days gone by, children took a year-end achievement test for which there was no class preparation. Instead, the school year was spent mastering academic content, not constantly preparing for standardized tests. The achievement test score neither affected academic grades nor was used to determine whether the student passed for the year.