Seattle Schools Community Forum: Check Yourself Screener for Middle School Youth; Cracks Starting to Show

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Check Yourself Screener for Middle School Youth; Cracks Starting to Show

Check Yourself Screener for Middle School Youth; Cracks Starting to Show

I have been reporting on the issue of the middle school mental health screener, Check Yourself, being used in some SPS middle schools as well as middle school throughout King County.  It comes to districts via King County's levy, Best Starts for Kids, and involves screening students for issues and then referring them, via a practice called SBIRT (Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment) to treatment.  The screener, which longer than almost any other of its type, is also not been validated.  My earlier stories are here and here.

There are new developments.


One is a story out of Oregon where Portland State University researchers doing a similar kind of screening to King County's, were outed by a whistleblower in the form of a grad student in the teaching program.  Portland State University houses Reclaiming Futures and they are King County's SBIRT program contractor.  Here's the story from OPB, dated March 10, 2018:

In allegations first reported in Willamette Week this week, grad student Ezra Whitman accused professors in Portland State University’s Graduate School of Education of requiring students to break the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, by collecting students’ race, gender and other data.

PSU professors acknowledge the assignment pushed boundaries and delved into sensitive areas around race and student achievement, but contend there was nothing improper in the assignment.

The focus on “equity” called for students to document performance CONTINUE READING: Seattle Schools Community Forum: Check Yourself Screener for Middle School Youth; Cracks Starting to Show