Letters to the Editor
Teen Screen doesn’t work
In response to “Suicide up out in the country” (DI, June 11): If the Teen Screen program that was implemented in the 2006-07 school year works, then why has the suicide rate gone up? The purpose of Teen Screen is to get more troubled kids on psychiatric drugs; the program unnecessarily refers teenagers to psychiatrists who prescribe them medications for handling depression. However, psychiatric drugs lead to worse problems than suicides: Check the facts related to the Columbine School mass murders and the many other instances since. The perpetrators were using medications at the time or had at least been on drugs prior to the shootings.
I have seen no data to date showing that Teen Screen decreases the rate of suicides among adolescent children. I have, unfortunately, seen data supporting the fact that psychiatric drugs increase incidences of suicide and causing harm to others. If you want to protect your children, get that program out of your school(s).
Judy Reed
Iowa City
Race to Top bottoms out
A recent editorial gave the Race to the Top policy an A-plus and says there was “little to no legislative effort” from the federal government (“Obama’s A+ in education,” DI, June 11). The first assertion reflects the plague of grade inflation; the latter is simply false.
If we consider Obama’s crowning achievement to be his Race to the Top, let’s look at the policy itself and the results: the Race dangles billions of federal tax dollars over the residents of a state and demands they toe the line. This is an overreach of executive power, considering the U.S. Constitution does not authorize the government to fund public education.
Besides, the Race was characterized last year by the Economic Policy Institute as “more a matter of bias and chance than a result of those states’ superior compliance with reform policies.” And EducationNEXT found that the two first-round winners were ranked at or near the bottom of their own studies.
Finally, the editorial stated that Obama incorporated parental choice in his plan as a matter of policy. Sadly, aside from charter schools, choice initiatives were completely overlooked in the scoring rubric. I give Obama a C-minus. The “C” stands for Constitution and the “minus” is for ignoring it.
Marc Oestreich
Education legislative specialist
Heartland Institute
comments powered by Disqus
