Commentary: Scaling Up Social-Emotional and Academic Supports for All Students, Including Students with Disabilities

Abstract

Elias, Zins, Graczyk, and Weissberg (2003) have written a concise summary of the daunting challenges and possible solutions to improve outcomes for students with mental health needs. As a special educator, I would like to focus my comments on the potential benefits of school-wide approaches for students with the greatest psychosocial needs. The critical importance of these efforts cannot be denied; recent estimates identify approximately 20% of children and adolescents under the age of 18 with mental health disorders (see Surgeon General's Report, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [HHS], 1999). When one out of five children suffer from conditions that directly affect their chances for success in life, everyone with an interest in child development and learning needs to consider better approaches to prevention and intervention. In the sections that follow, I will first attempt to contextualize students with mental health disorders within the larger school population and then link federal efforts to improve their outcomes with the themes presented in the Elias et al. (2003) article. Students With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders The Individuals with Education Act (IDEA, Public Law 105-17. 1997) requires that a free appropriate public education is available to all students with disabilities, as defined under the Act. When the initial version of IDEA (The Education of All Handicapped Children Act, EL. 94-142) was passed in 1975, more than a million students with disabilities were excluded from public education and 3.5 million did not receive appropriate services (President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education, 2002). Many of those students were children with mental health disorders. Implementation of the law over the last 28 years has resulted in their greater inclusion in public schools, but has not consistently led to their educational success, in comparison not only to children in general but also to other children with disabilities. For example, a special report on High School Graduation Among Students with Disabilities in the 23rd Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the IDEA (U.S. Department of Education, 2001, pp. I-1 to I-6) disclosed that: Among children with disabilities, students with emotional disturbance and those with mental retardation had the lowest graduation rates: 41.9% and 41.7%, respectively. The average graduation rate across all students with disabilities was 57.4%. Students with emotional disturbance had the highest drop-out ram: 50.6%. This was at least 23% higher than the within-group drop-out rates in the 11 other categories of disability for which these statistics are measured. Some care should be taken, however, in the interpretation of these statistics. The total number of students within the emotional disturbance category has never exceeded 1% of the general population, or about 10% of all children identified with disabilities under IDEA (which is about 10% of the general population). Additionally, many children who are included in mental health estimates of students with serious emotional disturbance (the HHS terminology) are included under other (than emotional disturbance) categories by schools. For example, children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder are often counted under the other health impaired category and children with autism spectrum disorders under the autism category. Nevertheless, one important artifact of the law, which can be missed in an overconcentration on counts within categories, is the fact that virtually all children with or at risk for mental health needs are present, under one form of placement or another, in the schools. When I speak with my colleagues in mental health fields, I often remind them of Sutton's Law. Willie Sutton was a supposedly lovable but incorrigible bank robber who was once asked by a judge, Willie, why do you rob banks? …