The National Pulse – “Stunning” Report: Parkland Superintendent Misled Public About Shooter’s Past

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In this article, Dr. Effrem discusses accusations against Broward County authorities for not recognizing shooter Nicolas Cruz’s harmful tendencies,

Despite statements to the contrary by Broward County, Fla., Superintendent Robert Runcie and Sheriff Scott Israel, it has now been reported by WLRN that the Parkland school shooter, Nikolas Cruz, had in fact been involved in the controversial PROMISE school discipline program. PROMISE, launched in 2013, stands for Preventing Recidivism through Opportunities, Mentoring, Interventions, Supports and Education.

Runcie had stated in April, “Nikolas Cruz, the shooter that was involved in this horrific accident at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, had no connection to the PROMISE program.” Yet, according to an admission by Broward district officials this past Sunday, Cruz did in fact receive a “referral to PROMISE after he vandalized a bathroom at the middle school on Nov. 25, 2013.”

This revelation also comes after some of the survivors have announced their intention to sue the school district and sheriff’s office for negligence related to their handling of the massacre, the lack of safety in Broward schools due to the PROMISE program, and the failure to act on the many violent and threatening incidents involving Cruz.

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The National Pulse – Florida Seeks to Expand Ineffective Mental Health Screening in Schools

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In her recent article for the National Pulse, Dr. Effrem discusses the failings of mental health data collection surrounding recent school violence.

The Florida Association of District School Superintendents (FADSS) held a conference to discuss how to expand school-based mental health that was attended by the state’s 67 superintendents as well as several legislators and agency heads.

Broward County Superintendent and FADSS president Robert Runcie led the meeting. Runcie was superintendent during the February 2018 shooting that occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Runcie and Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel are under intense scrutiny for ignoring or downplaying violent acts and threats by many students, including shooter Nikolas Cruz.

School officials ignored multiple felonious threats that Cruz made to various students, despite reports of them to those officials. Teachers and other school staff all over the country have noted how unsafe schools have become since the trend of not reporting school violence based on race and disability status — an approach pioneered in Broward County — spread nationwide under the Obama administration. Also, as previously reported, Cruz was well known to the mental health system, having been in an alternative school due to behavior problems; had been medicated for ADHD; and was being treated for depression, possibly with medication, at the time of his crimes.

As in the Texas situation, mental health data mining is a big deal. Superintendents from small, rural counties were told that in order to keep the money spigot open, the outcomes data for their mental health programs is “essential.” What the superintendents and legislators do not understand is how subjective and inaccurate mental health data and surveys that pull students into these programs — particularly screening and social emotional learning (SEL) surveys, as well as universal behavioral modification and outcome data — can be. We have previously discussed the Columbia Teen Screen survey that was only correct about 16 percent of time in accurately finding teens that actually had mental health issues requiring follow-up (called the Positive Predictive Value or PPV). Another review showed that only two of nine commonly used depression screening scales had a PPV at fifty percent, or no better than a coin flip.

You may read the full article here.

Education Liberty Watch Supporting Day of Silence Walkout

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An important event is designed to protest and counter the rapid erosion of parental rights in schools around GLBT issues and is happening on Friday, April 27^th.  The Day of Silence Walkout is promoted by nearly four dozen national and state organizations, including the American Family Association, the Illinois Family Institute, Liberty Counsel, The Child Protection League, and Education Liberty Watch. The walkout is intended to counter the disruption of class time by students and or teachers that will remain silent during an entire day to promote the political agenda of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and “its controversial, unproven, and destructive theories on the nature and morality of homosexuality.”

Parents are being urged to call their children out of school if their high school, and an increasing number of middle schools, allow students and or teachers to remain silent during instructional time on this day. The goals are to “actively oppose this hijacking of the classroom for political purposes;” to “reclaim a proper understanding of the role, and limits of public education;” and to “de-politicize the learning environment.” Parents are given a host of resources on the site to deal with the logistics of participation and the reasoning behind it.

Parents, Teachers, and Administrators: What to Do on Day of Silence

Reasons for the Day of Silence Walkout

Instructions for Parents

Sample Call Out Letter

This is a great opportunity to assert parental rights and to protect children’s innocence. Please join the movement!

The American Spectator: The Latest Creepy Orwellian Education Tactic

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Jane Robbins, a senior fellow at the American Principles Project, and Dr. Karen Effrem analyzed the latest example of psychological experimentation and manipulation of our students at the American Spectator. Here is an excerpt:

The failure to obtain consent from the research subjects — a tactic that SEL proponents didn’t deem even worth mentioning — illustrates the dangerous road that lies ahead for students from pre-K through college. The SEL pushers seem to simply assume that corporations and their allied government schools have the right to conduct psychological experiments on unsuspecting students.

The point of the Pearson experiment, as well as other SEL schemes, isn’t just to help students do their best — it’s to change their behavior and indeed their personalities in fundamental ways. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which wields tremendous influence over education practices globally, plans to use data from its new SEL profile for “personality development.” For instance, OECD identifies “extroversion” as one of the “Big Five” personality traits that schools should assess and develop. So now the government has determined that introverted children are defective, and that SEL tactics should be employed to turn them into something they’re not?

As British professor Williamson noted, “’It’s concerning that forms of low-level psychological experimentation to trigger certain behaviors appear to be happening in the ed-tech sector, and students might not know those experiments are taking place.’”

The Pearson report doesn’t see the problem. The report touts “the possibility of leveraging commercial educational software for new research into the emerging science around students’ attitudes, beliefs, and ways of thinking about themselves.” Indeed. And when corporations and the government learn how to influence “attitudes, beliefs, and ways of thinking,” is there any limit to what they can do? Can they counteract the effect of family and faith on political or social issues? Can they mold students to be passive, uncritical receptors of information — information carefully monitored by the same corporations and government?

This is another reason that the federal student privacy law, FERPA, must be overhauled – so that American students are not forced to participate in these kinds of unethical experiments that have life-changing consequences.

Read the full article here. (Photo credit – The American Spectator)