Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Who Else Publishes School-Level Student Self-Reported Mental Health Data?

It was pointed out to me last weekend that RIDE's student survey last year included a set of mental health questions, including questions about depression and suicide. There is also a quite detailed taxonomy of bullying, and various risk factors (smoking, drugs, etc.). These are published with school-level data on InfoWorks! (emphasis in the original).

Let's just say for now there are some fascinating and disturbing tidbits there, particularly in the mental health questions. These questions were not in the 2011-2012 survey, and I can't find any of the earlier SALT surveys online -- there are a lot of dead links -- so I'm not sure what the complete history is at this point.

My question for my broader readership is, have you ever heard of anything else like this, in your state in particular? My sense is that some states have "climate" questions, but as it turns out, just because many students in a school feel "safe," and like their teachers care about them, it does not mean there is not also a distressingly large minority of kids who are failing to thrive and will write that down if someone asks them.

If you could leave a quick comment on how this is handled in your state -- particularly in terms of school-level data, I'd appreciate it.

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