Author: sherlockj
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Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Virginia Public Schools – The Epidemic of Risky Behaviors and Experiences in Adolescents
by James C. Sherlock The 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) Data Summary & Trends Report: 2011–2021 , was released by the CDC on Monday, provides the most recent surveillance data, as well as 10-year trends, on health behaviors and experiences related to adolescent health and well-being among high school students in the United States. The survey was completed…
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Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Virginia Public Schools – Dangerous Children’s Services Act Changes Proposed
by James C. Sherlock One of the key elements of state and local efforts to support children with behavioral health, educational disabilities, and other challenges is the Children’s Services Act (CSA) (the Act). In education, its primary role has been paying for placement of children and youth with educational disabilities into private special education schools (PSES).…
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Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Virginia Public Schools – Telehealth
by James C. Sherlock Among the comments about my last article on this subject, a reader brought up my next topic — use of telemedicine for mental health support in schools. I am a believer in telemedicine to the degree the professions are; and to the degree that such practices are circumscribed by law in…
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Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Virginia Public Schools – Big Complications and Major Changes
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by James C. Sherlock Rebecca Aman, a member of the Newport News School Board, is frustrated. She told me in an interview that: Without sufficient discipline and access to clinical mental health services, behavioral intervention does not work to make schools safer and healthier. She believes that Newport News schools need to improve both discipline…
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Mental Health and Virginia Public Schools – Part 1 – Progressives, School Closures and Child Mental Health
By James C. Sherlock We have arrived today at a situation in which huge percentages of Virginia children and adolescents exhibit mental health problems. Both sides of the political divide acknowledge the problem. It’s existence is not up for debate. Both blame the soaring pediatric mental health issues, a problem before COVID, on COVID school…
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Push to Return Federal Workers to Offices – Monsoon or Squall in Northern Virginia
By James C. Sherlock The federal government has for nearly three years been paying very expensive leases for D.C area office buildings that are virtually empty. COVID emergency. Or was. Now it is a battle between the comfort of federal employees with working from wherever they can get a good network connection vs. actually showing…
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School Discipline – Part 5 – How and When Democrats Broke Virginia Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock We read earlier today that the eminent developmental theorist Urie Bronfenbrenner has written: The more we study human development, the more it becomes clear the family is the most powerful, most humane and, by far, the most economical way of making human beings human. That truth, however, does not account for…
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School Discipline in Virginia – Part 4 – The False Legend of PBIS Effectiveness
by James C. Sherlock To discover the origins of the legend that Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is effective, we have to dig into the interlocking government and ed school interest groups that fund and publish “studies” that validate their views. The goal of the ed schools is always to capture the attention, funding…
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School Discipline in Virginia – Part 3 — A Sharp Policy Turn to the Left after 2009
by James C. Sherlock Here is the information from a slide briefing to the Loudon County school board on February 6, 2013. “Experimentally.” The slide itself was actually produced in 2008 by pbis.org. It seems like a bad joke now, but that was how it was presented. Not a word about race there, but there surely…
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School Discipline in Virginia – Part 2 – Positive Options Trumped by a Race Card
by James C. Sherlock I have found both surprise and confusion among some readers when I use the term “valid studies” in discussing the avalanche of doctoral theses and studies produced annually by schools of education. The federal Institute for Educational Sciences established What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) in 2002 to sort the wheat from the…
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School Discipline in Virginia – Part 1 – PBIS
by James C. Sherlock Updated Feb 1 at 8:13:25 with a correction to IES assessment of PBIS. Newport News Schools first implemented Virginia Tiered Systems of Supports (VTSS) and its discipline component, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), in the 2017-18 school year. That year Newport News Schools was in Cohort 3 of VDOE’s VTSS…
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Virginia Community Schools Redefined – Part 2 – Stop Trying to Provide Mental Health Services in School
by James C. Sherlock In Part 1 of this series I described the current Virginia Community School Framework (the Framework) and found it not only lacking, but counter-productive. Its basic flaw is that it assumes all services to school children will be provided in the schools by school employees, including mental health services. When you…
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Virginia Community Schools Redefined – Hubs for Government and Not-for-Profit Services in Inner Cities – Part 1 – the Current Framework
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in Attendance, Charity, Philanthropy, Nonprofits, Children and Families, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Culture wars, Discipline and Disorder, Education (K-12), Efficiency in Government, General Assembly, Health Care, Infrastructure, LGBQT, Mental illness and substance abuse, Political Influence, Poverty & income gap, Public safety & health, Social Services and Entitlements, Threat Assessmentby James C. Sherlock I believe a major approach to address both education and health care in Virginia’s inner cities is available if we will define it right and use it right. Community schools. One issue. Virginia’s official version of community schools, the Virginia Community School Framework, (the Framework) is fatally flawed. The approach successful elsewhere…
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Senate Privileges and Elections Committee Votes for Virginia to Remain an Oligarchy
by James C. Sherlock Oligarchy: a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution. The Privileges and Elections Committee of the Virginia Senate has voted down two bills by Senator Chap Petersen that would have restored some semblance of a democratic republic status to Virginia. Senate Bill 803 would have for…
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Another Price Virginia Pays for Certificate of Public Need – Mediocrity in Cancer Treatment
by James C. Sherlock In an article titled “60 hospitals and health systems with great oncology programs headed into 2023,” Becker’s Hospital Review gives us a glimpse of one of the greatest costs of Virginia’s decades-long Certificate of Public Need (COPN) program. The hospitals and health systems featured on this list have earned recognition nationally…