As schools face a student mental health crisis, some experts fear that a growing resistance to collecting data about child well-being could jeopardize key efforts to protect kids.
Florida officials notified the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in March that the state would no longer administer an anonymous, voluntary, biennial survey centered on issues of child well-being. Two other states鈥攚hich CDC officials would not name鈥攈ave had recent preliminary discussions about withdrawing from the state-level data collection, known as the, said Kathleen Ethier, director of the CDC鈥檚 division of adolescent and school health.
鈥淔or us, the more data points we have in terms of health and well-being, including mental health, the better positioned we are to try to understand and try to respond to the mental health crisis that we are seeing in this country among young people,鈥� Ethier said. 鈥淒ata isn鈥檛 the only answer, but without the data, we are in the dark.鈥�
The concerns come as schools around the country face scrutiny over a variety of locally administered student surveys on subjects like school climate and social-emotional learning. Parents have objected to questions, even anonymous ones, about students鈥� sexual orientation, and some conservative political groups argue that schools鈥� efforts around child well-being may teach children values that differ from their parents.
A survey gauges student well-being, behaviors
The Youth Risk Behavior Survey asks high school students about issues like bullying, suicidal thoughts, drug use, sexual behavior, exposure to violence, and risk-taking activities, like texting while driving.
The CDC issues a version of the survey to a random sample of students around the country to track national progress on those issues. With Florida鈥檚 departure, 45 states now use federal grants to administer separate, state-level versions of the survey, which allow them to add or remove questions and track more local data. For example, some states omit questions about students鈥� sexual behaviors, Ethier said.
Those statistics allow states to see how policy changes or local events correlate with changing student responses, to compare themselves to other states, and to build a case for programs and grants, Ethier said.
In a March 16 letter to the CDC, Florida officials did not say why the state planned to withdraw from the survey, which it has issued since 1991.
In an email response to questions from Education Week, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education said the state planned to conduct its own surveys without the federal grant.
鈥淩ather than continue with a generic nationwide survey, our intent is to improve our data collection efforts to make the survey specifically tailored to Florida鈥檚 unique needs,鈥� wrote Cassie Palelis, the agency鈥檚 press secretary.
She did not respond to follow-up questions about who would design the new survey, whether the state had concerns about any specific questions on the CDC questionnaire, or how officials would assure resulting data could be compared with previous years to measure trends.
Tracking the effects of new legislation
By changing surveys, Florida鈥檚 school mental health personnel are concerned that the state will lose its ability to accurately measure the effects on students鈥� behaviors of issues like the pandemic and a new Florida law about how schools discuss sex and sexuality, said Angela Mann, president of the Florida Association of School Psychologists.
Florida鈥檚 Parental Rights in Education bill, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis in March, prohibits teachers from providing classroom instruction on 鈥渟exual orientation or gender identity鈥� to kindergarten through 3rd-grade students. Its supporters say it will help preserve parents鈥� rights to shape their children鈥檚 views on sexuality and gender. Opponents say it harmfully stigmatizes LGBTQ students, teachers, and families.
鈥淢y fear is that if the state decides to do its own survey, we lose the richness of all of that data,鈥� Mann said. 鈥淲ithdrawing from the survey comes at a really awful time. There鈥檚 reason to believe that some of our more-vulnerable youth who face marginalization will potentially be harmed even more and go undetected and underserved.鈥�
It鈥檚 unusual for a state to withdraw from the CDC survey after participating for decades. Three states鈥擶ashington, Oregon, and Minnesota鈥攄o not participate. Those states issue long-running surveys of their own after dropping out of the CDC survey years ago or never having participated in the first place.
Most recently, Wyoming officials ended participation in the state-level Youth Risk Behavior Survey after the state鈥檚 legislature passed a bill directing them to do so in 2016, citing concerns about the questions including in the questionaire.
In the years since, Wyoming lawmakers have killed legislative amendments that would have restored the state鈥檚 participation, citing questions about issues like students鈥� sexual history in debates over the issue.
鈥淚鈥檓 not going to read those questions because I think it鈥檚 very distasteful, and yet that鈥檚 what we鈥檙e exposing our high schoolers and middle schoolers to,鈥� Rep. Scott Clem, a Republican, said in a 2020 debate, according to the
Issues 鈥榓re not going away鈥�
Wyoming Democrats who backed participation said the issues the survey measures 鈥渁re not going away,鈥� and that the data could help direct funding for prevention efforts.
Ethier, of the CDC, stressed that the surveys are anonymous and that data is analyzed at a broad, population level. No action is taken with individual students based on their responses, and responses cannot be traced back to individual students.
The survey questions are also reviewed by participating states and vetted by data scientists to ensure students can understand them and answer them consistently to ensure the most accurate data possible, she said.
There is a 鈥渓arge body of research鈥� that shows asking students about risky behaviors does not pose danger or encourage them to take risks themselves, Ethier said.
鈥淭he most important thing for all of us is that this generation of young people emerges into adulthood in as healthy a way possible,鈥� she said. 鈥淯nless we know what鈥檚 happening 鈥� we can鈥檛 make sure we are taking the right steps to help them do that.鈥�
