Special Ed tacher here. And a teacher recently forced out of his teaching assignment and into another role because he wouldn't shut up about a student's mental health problems in his classroom. There is a great deal of wishful thinking going on in our schools around mental health and approaches like PBIS. I knew by the end of September that this student in my second grade class was not going to make it in our integrated setting. Too much yelling, swearing and hitting, among other things. But our principal kept giving the benefit of the doubt. The reason? Undeserved deference to the family. Don't overlook the fact that who the parents are makes a HUGE difference in how school leadership will approach the child's mental health problems

To wit: the children of squeaky, intimidating parents AND the children of wealthy parents will get whatever the parents want for their kids, regardless of anything else (i.e. the professional opinion of the teachers who actually work day in and day out with the students). The children of laid back or poor parents will get something entirely different. The system is not uniform and works in many different ways. I've learned never to believe an administrator when they tell me something can't happen because of a law, or a system in place, or anything of the sort.

In other words, I've yet to see direct evidence of any sort of nefarious, worrisome indoctrination. Rather, the system is so damn predictably unpredictable that you can't, as a whole, rely on anything it tells you about the school itself. It's weird. It's political to the max. And if a kid gets an education out of it all...well, that's great. It just doesn't seem to be the point anymore, if it ever was.