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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to the complicated topic of assessing the social and emotional toll of the pandemic on school children, and how the public schools should test for that and address it. As students have settled back into classrooms five days a week, educators at some schools are observing more confrontations, for example, among other signs of increased stress and agitation linked to the pandemic according to the American academy of pediatrics. Linked, as students have been isolated outside schools, as that being one of the causes.

Students are reporting feelings of depression and frustration and awkwardness among peers, as a sign of strained, social, emotional, and mental health. Now there's a test being administered in the New York city schools designed to measure where students are at. Joining me now to discuss the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment, or DESSA, and to share her reporting on mental health in schools and the test is WNYC education reporter Jessica Gould. Hi Jess, thanks for coming on for this.

Jessica Gould: Hey Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Jessa, what does this test specifically screen for and how?

Jessica Gould: Sure. It is a questionnaire with dozens of questions and it's supposed to take only 10 minutes. It asks questions like, does the child carry herself or his self with confidence, handle belongings with care, say good things about herself or himself, get along with different kinds of people, can they accomplish routine tasks and so on. The DOE, the Education Department for the city, says that they will use the responses to determine whether there should be more skills work for a whole classroom or targeted support for students. It's supposed to be administered by the person in the school who knows the student best so in most cases that's going to be the teacher.

Brian Lehrer: Is the test itself controversial?

Jessica Gould: I'm seeing some responses that just percolated over the weekend from parents and teachers and administrators asking about the value of this. When I was interviewing folks about it last week, some administrators who've used it before, and there are some, say that it's actually quite useful to target support to kids. On the other hand, it takes 13 hours of training for the people who are rolling it out for the school, social workers or counselors at the center of the mental health services in a school. What I'm hearing is that schools are just really overwhelmed by the needs of students right now. Doing this questionnaire, or taking this training to give the questionnaire, can be taking time away from really important clinical work from counsellors and social workers.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we're going to invite parents and teachers, students yourselves if you're out there. If you're out there you should be in school. What have you heard about this new mental health screening? Any educators, have you received the depths of material you need, and undergone any training to administer it? Call in and share your experiences. School social workers or psychologists, have you noticed increased mental health strain on the students you work with? Are any of you feeling supported by the city's new mental health related policies in the schools? Parents, obviously you too, give us a call. Again, a reminder that our old calling number is back. It had to take a break for the pandemic, but whatever technical reasons that I don't understand medical away are cleared up now.

We have our old calling number back. The old high status 212 number [chuckles] 212-433 WNYC. 212-433-9692, or tweet @Brian Lehrer. With our education reporter Jessica Gould. Let's take a call from the parent right off the bat here. Maureen in Flatbush, Maureen you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Maureen: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I'm a parent in Flatbush. I have two kids at PS 139 in Brooklyn. Our concern is that this rollout is fast. As far as I know we haven't heard anything about it, which makes us pretty nervous after a really disastrous electronic assessment last week. These assessments are expensive and there's no plan about how a student is going to be protected, how schools are going to act on evaluating the data. At our school, our school psychologist and our school counselor and our social worker are completely overwhelmed already with student needs. These are kids who lost a lot during the pandemic. We're a majority BiPAP school. We don't need $18 million test to prove how much these kids already lost, and there's no clinical support.

If these tests identify a lot of kids in crisis or kids who need help but are not right now in crisis, there's no social worker. There's no school counselor. There's no school psychologists who have the bandwidth. These professionals serve 800 kids each. That's insane, that's [chuckles] it just doesn't make sense.

Brian Lehrer: It is insane circumstances. Are you saying, Maureen, that we know? We the parents, we the school social workers and teachers and other staff can see with our own eyes the social and emotional state of the kids and if you're going to spend all this money, spend it on the extra support rather than the extra assessment.

Maureen: Yes. For $18 million deal we could hire hundreds of guidance counsellors and school psychologists and social workers. I have friends who've had kids in crisis in the last two weeks and these professionals do not have the bandwidth to serve the kids. Adding an assessment is just a waste of money.

Brian Lehrer: Maureen, thank you. Thank you for your voice. Call us again. Jessica, are you hearing this a lot as an education reporter from parents?

Jessica Gould: Yes. I have been hearing this and from the school leaders themselves. What I'm hearing is that there are a lot of kids in crisis. I'm also hearing that some kids are doing really well. I do want to say that, that some have really thrived in coming back to school, but I'm hearing that there are fights breaking out in schools more than administrators have seen before. That kids are having trouble sitting still and getting in trouble for disruptive behavior that's then making them more frustrated. It's true that there's the ratio of kids to counselors or social workers is still hundreds to one. That's even with an investment from the city in more counselors.

There's a tremendous amount of need and I think a lot of parents and educators are concerned that this is not money best spent in meeting those needs.

Brian Lehrer: Do the leaders of the DOE or the mayor say that this test, this assessment, is necessary to really get a handle on the social and emotional state of most of the children and that it's not good enough for the teachers and the school social workers and other staff to assess with their own eyes?

Jessica Gould: Well, I think one of the problems is that there aren't enough social workers and counselors to assess with their own eyes. That's why the teachers are being deputized to let them know. I have talked to administrators who say that this can be useful in identifying kids' needs. Then again, we're six weeks into the school year and a lot of kids have already shown that they're struggling so is it necessary to be doing this at this point when a lot of teachers and administrators say, "I can tell you just by looking around who needs help?" That's the question.

Brian Lehrer: Carl in Brooklyn has a question about the test. Carl you are on WNYC. Hi there.

Carl: Hello.

Brian Lehrer: Hi Carl. You're on here.

Carl: Yes. Thank you for giving me time. I'm just concerned that kids might be labeled to have some problem. Scholastically I understand, but if there's any mental defect regarding this pandemic and they are socially not up to it, the anxiety level, kids do look for excuses to be different. It might be a bit too early to have tests done by not giving the kids enough time to be in school for a year or two and see how many kids just get better and are following the classes and they're doing good. I think there is a danger of doing this test too early, and it will only hurt certain kids for the rest of their lives.

Brian Lehrer: You're worried about them getting labeled and stigmatized as kids with mental health problems, is that your central concern?

Carl: It's my central concern. I think we're not giving enough time for it to bounce back on its own, and this might be a little bit too early. I understand some kids are affected. I'm not denying that. I understand that, but I think a kid usually looks for some excuse in life to lay back and not have to do his work and kids are very good in that. Picking and choosing exactly what's comfortable for them.

Brian Lehrer: Right, and what they can get away with. Carl, thank you very much. To his central concern, Jessica, I'm curious if you've been hearing that too, that if they're doing this of every child in the New York City public school system's social and emotional state after the pandemic, that there would be a labeling and a stigma of kids? We know these tend to get applied more easily to biPAP kids than they do to white kids that there would be a labeling of children as having mental health problems that Carl argues they don't have to do yet. Give them a little time to adjust back to being back in.

Jessica Gold: I haven't heard that as much. I can understand it, there's a three-year contract for this and it's not clear what the data will be used for and how long it will be kept beyond just trying to engage with kids and help them right now. It's a good question. I think that the DOE, in general, has been trying to expand and normalize health treatment. Whether they have the resources to actually do that is another question that I think we're hearing a lot of criticism about, and that makes sense. They've been rolling out social, emotional learning curriculum for a couple of years now and focusing on that and restorative justice.

All the teachers last year, and I believe this year had to take trauma coursework online to prepare. My hope is that it would be meeting kids' needs as opposed to stigmatizing them. It's an interesting question.

Brian Lehrer: How will the results end up being used? I gather teachers are supposed to be trained in what to do with these results, but can you tell us more about that?

Jessica Gould: Sure. In some cases, what I'm told is that teachers will be looking for trends along their classroom and then work on community building based on those results, but I think it's a little abstract. I'd like to get a little more information about exactly what that would look like. Then they're also going to use it to link kids with more support from the counselors and social workers, individual kids.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another call. Here's Bethany in Brooklyn, a parent I think. Bethany you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Bethany: Hi Brian. I respect you a lot. I've listened to you for many years, but on this topic I feel the parents' voices have really not been heard on your show in WNYC. I'm listening to the previous caller talk about-- Basically what he's saying, "Kids are resilient, give them time." I can tell you as a parent of two children, they are not resilient and they don't need more time. They are severely damaged and way behind after 19 months of school not being normal and the answer is not to not do the assessment. If you think you gained weight, you don't not get on the scale to find out. You get on and deal with it.

The whole idea from the previous caller from Brooklyn that the social workers are overwhelmed and can't handle it, I don't buy that premise, I just don't buy it. I think that in this pandemic, we have learned in many industries how to pivot and find a way to take care of our "customers" In this case, the customers are the students. Where's the discussion about what the students need and how to figure out what we need to do as a bureaucracy in the school to support that? I really don't want to hear about how they're already overwhelmed. I want to hear about how they're going to solve the problem, not just for my kids, but for all the kids at the schools.

I can tell you, I work in a school and these children are babies. They are so far behind. I asked this kindergartner, "What's your name?" They just look at me. They don't even know how to say what's their name through that mask. The answer to me is not to skip the assessment. Now, maybe this assessment isn't the right one, if it's that expensive and it's a three-year contract, but we have to start delivering for these students that the unions have left behind for 19 months.

Brian Lehrer: What would you like to see done, most specifically and most importantly?

Bethany: I think that the 1.9 trillion that's already been passed, some of that needs to be funneled to more staff in schools that are going to specifically support the COVID learning [inaudible 00:14:54] and we need to stop pretending like it's not a real thing. I would be supportive of them saying, "We're going to put in another guidance counselor in each school. We're going to put in another reading specialist or a math coach to help these kids catch up." It can't just be ignored anymore. These kids are going to suffer the rest of their lives if it continues to be ignored.

Brian Lehrer: Bethany, thank you very much. To her point, Jessica, the mayor, I believe, promised to hire 600 school social workers and psychologists back in April in addition to those that already work in the system. Have they been added at this point?

Jessica Gould: Yes. 93% of the new hires are on board. According to my math, that leaves a little over 40 that still need to be hired from that group of 600. That, again, looking at the enrollment from last year, that's one social worker or counselor for 190 students. We know, and the other caller mentioned this before, that some schools have several counselors and social workers and sometimes they have mental health clinics or nonprofits working with them and some have far fewer and so the ratio really does range. I think that it's also really hard for teachers who have 25, 30, or more kids per class, 35, to assess each kid and then give them the support that they need.

This question, it's not fair to boil it down to whether we're doing the assessment or staffing but I think there are still a lot of staffing needs that need to be met.

Brian Lehrer: The last caller, Bethany, also brought up what I guess she thinks is a sweeping the extent of what you call learning loss under the rug, not to be in denial about that, if I understood her correct. There is a debate over that term. I think people in the media at least started talking about learning loss from the pandemic. Then other people started saying, "Don't use learning loss. That's going to stigmatize the kids." What do you hear about that?

Jessica Gould: I've definitely heard that debate. A lot of educators are uncomfortable with the word learning loss and they think it doesn't matter because we've all been through a pandemic. Globally, kids are where they are and have lost 18, 19 months. On the other hand, I think because of the inequities in our education system, the range of how much kids have been able to learn over the past year and a half, it's a huge range. It's important to pay attention to that. The other tension I'm hearing, you mentioned whether we call it learning loss or we call it disrupted learning or whatever language you want to put on it, is how these behavioral issues interplay with the academic learning.

It's not just that kids have missed coursework or that they had absenteeism rise during the pandemic, but they also are having trouble interacting with each other socially or sitting still or whatever it is. That's standing in the way of accelerated learning too. There's pressure on teachers and on schools to meet both, to help kids get to where they should be behaviorally and developmentally and also teach them what they've missed. I talked to one middle school teacher in the Bronx recently and he said, "I'm not sure we're doing these kids any favors, just expecting them to be where they would be had this disruption not occurred."

I'm not sure that every teacher is expecting every kid to be where they would be academically and behaviorally, but we also didn't hold them back. Not that that would've necessarily been the right thing, but it's a very challenging set of expectations that are playing off of each other at once.

Brian Lehrer: Well, how much trauma, if it's even something you can start to get a handle on as an education reporter, how much of this confrontation that's being reported, the greater tendency than before the pandemic for kids to get into fights, a greater tendency for there to be depression and anxiety and all of this stuff, how much more of it are parents and educators reporting to you?

Jessica Gould: I'm hearing across the board in all the boroughs that there are more fights, more suspensions, but this is anecdotally from schools. The DOE says that serious incidents are down compared to 2019, the fall of 2019. They have not defined for me what they mean by serious incidents, but today, as we're speaking actually, at the mayor's press conference they're rolling out some new safety precautions because of some weapons that have been found at schools and some incidents. That's going to include some unannounced screening of students. Not mental health, but like metal detector screening. Then I haven't heard the details about the additional mental health support, but they indicated at the beginning of the press conference before I came on air that they were going to discuss that as well.

I'm hearing that it's real. That it's aggression, that it's things that percolated online last year, beefs between kids that developed that are now being acted out in real time. Then there's all the stress and trauma of the pandemic and even the violence that increased in communities last year that added to trauma. It's a lot going on for kids.

Brian Lehrer: This is WYNC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, NWNJO 90.3 Toms River, not to mention wnyc.org. We are New York and New Jersey public radio. Few more minutes with our education reporter Jessica Gould on the rollout these new tests for apparently every student right up through 12th grade in the New York City public schools, to assess the state of their social and emotional beings and then figure out what to do about them. Let's get at least one more call from a parent in here, Janine in Chelsea you are on WNYC. Hi Janine.

Janine: Hi, thanks so much for taking my call. I'm the parent of two school aged children. I just wanted to address what a previous caller said about labeling and not wanting kids to be labeled and that is his concern about these tests. I would argue that there is no chance every single one of the kids who have been through the pandemic needs some kind of a label. That itself is a label. I think the days of worrying about what do we call things, those days are gone. What we're at now is this crisis level. I see it in elementary school kids, I see it middle school kids, I see high school kids, where there needs to be some very fast intervention.

We don't have another year to wait because I think if we wait another year, we're going to lose some of these kids. Who cares about labels at this point? Besides that, I think that outside of the fact that I think we have a better understanding now as a society about what labels do and don't mean, I think that there are many diagnoses that apply probably across the board to this generation of school kids who've been through the pandemic.

Brian Lehrer: Anything you are seeing as a parent among the children and families you come into contact with?

Janine: I am seeing, rather than learning loss, I'm seeing the complete lack of social know-how, it's gone. It's like the kids have reverted back to where they were in March of 2020. If you weren't already tracking along with your peers at that point, then you're really struggling now. The interactions on the playground and how to have friendships and how to share, it's like that learning is gone now. It really does have to be started from the beginning.

Brian Lehrer: Janine, thank you very much. Well, it's an interesting conversation that broke out among the callers, Jessica, about whether labelling is a bad thing because it could stigmatize children in ways that will follow them for years and years and years, and will disadvantage them as a result, or from several of our callers, "Don't worry about labels.

We all embrace our labels now. It's just more important to find out what the real deal is." Is this just a little blip of conversation that happened to show up on this show? Is this a bigger thing in the city school ecosystem as far as you could tell?

Jessica Gould: That's really interesting. I hadn't thought about it because personally I come from a family of multiple therapists, where mental health treatment is really normalized. I can understand it, especially if it's behavioral issues, that kids get picked as being problem kids early on. As a parent, I've worried about that, particularly in the transition back to school. We are expecting kids to have had an experience that they haven't had of being in school, many of them for a year and a half. I think it's really interesting. It's something that I'll be thinking about and looking about at more. I will say that I have heard about this DESSA screener, that there's no really accounting for the implicit bias of a teacher when they are filling it out. If they already have a preconceived notion about a kid, that may play into things.

Brian Lehrer: There we leave it for today with WNYC education reporter Jessica Gould. Her latest article is on the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment, or DESSA, that's being administered to all the kids in the New York City public schools to assess their social and emotional states after being at home so much during the pandemic. You can read the article version on Gothamist or of course keep listening to WNYC and hear Jessica Gould's reporting on the radio. Thanks a lot Jess.

Jessica Gould: Thank you.

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