The Department of Education Already Has the Power to Stop the School Psychology Pipeline.
The Department of Education's recent demands that California and Washington explain their secrecy policies as they relate to behavioral health data collection highlights a fundamental misunderstanding of the federal government's authority to impact changes needed in the public education system.
Current laws on the books already provide the necessary tools to address these concerns, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which protects education records, and the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), which require informed parental consent for evaluations and limit intrusive surveys and sensitive information gathering.
These laws point to a larger truth: federal protections can close the pipeline that turns children into data points, diagnoses, and referrals to potentially profit-driven behavioral health providers operating behind a shield of institutional immunity.
Schools were never meant to function as psychological sorting centers, but rather to educate children and provide them with a foundation for future success.
The federal government does not need new permission to correct a broken educational system, as the necessary legal authority is already in place.
The problem lies not with the absence of legal authority, but with the refusal to use it or understand its basic provisions.
The National Defense Education Act of 1958 (NDEA) serves as a reminder of the importance of strengthening education in fields that build capacity, competence, and security.
Instead of expanding a behavioral-health bureaucracy that weakens family authority and replaces education with diagnosis, federal education money should support reading, writing, math, science, and practical instructional tools.
A child medicated into compliance is not being prepared for independence, resilience, or national service, and a country that tolerates secrecy, coercion, and overdiagnosis in its schools does not build strength, but rather dependence.
The answer to these problems is not more silence from Washington or begging for secret behavioral health curriculum developed by the psychiatric industry and drug companies, but rather enforcement of existing laws and redirection of federal education dollars towards real educational tools grounded in science.
The Department of Education should deliver parents an avenue to obtain a receipted process to address violations of these laws, and break up the monopoly of the behavioral health industry and drug companies within the educational system.
The laws are already on the books, and it is time for them to be used to protect the rights and well-being of children.
