According to a recent story by Associated Press reporters Collin Brinkley and Larry Fenn, a review of data from more than three dozen US universities has revealed a dramatically escalating student demand for help with anxiety, depression and other mental health problems. From that news story:
On some campuses, the number of students seeking treatment has nearly doubled over the last five years while overall enrollment has remained relatively flat. The increase has been tied to reduced stigma around mental health, along with rising rates of depression and other disorders. Universities have expanded their mental health clinics, but the growth is often slow, and demand keeps surging…
…At the University of Colorado Boulder, mental health professionals are trying to manage a skyrocketing need for student support services. During the 2016-2017 school year, CU’s Counseling and Psychiatric Services center provided more than 48,000 student mental health services, including group therapy sessions, psychiatry and walk-in sessions, according to reporting from the Daily Camera. That’s is 42% more mental health help than CU provided in the 2013-2014 academic year…
One of the explanations offered for this “skyrocketing need” is fairly straightforward: it’s become more acceptable, among students, to seek help for depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and other mental health issues. The stigma attached to mental health challenges has been reduced.
But that’s not the full story. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a 30% increase in suicides in the United States from 2000 to 2016, with rates increasing in all age groups. But young people in high school and college are of particular concern for CDC, and presumably for the rest of us:
However, adolescents are of particular concern, with increases in social media use, anxiety, depression, and self-inflicted injuries. The CDC reported suicide rates in youths aged 15 to 24 years, but a more detailed analysis of the trends in this age group is needed, as well as examination of the most recent available data to determine if the increase in suicide rates is continuing…
According to CDC, the suicide rate among young people, age 15-24 was about 5.2 per 100,000 persons, back in 1960. The most recent estimates for that age group? 14.5 suicides per 100,000 — roughly a 300% increase over the past 50 years. This number reflects only fatal suicides, not “attempted suicides.”
The CDC hints that “social media use” might be a key villain in this story. But could the slow swinging of the education pendulum — a swing towards machine-directed education, and away from traditional teacher-guided education — also be a factor? I ask that question, because teachers care about their students. And machines do not.
This is not merely an American education issue.
One of the more active Colorado organizations monitoring and attempting to influence the evolution of the state’s education system is the Colorado Education Association (CEA), a union representing some of the 53,000 teachers in Colorado. Their association president, Amie Baca-Oehlert, wrote an editorial earlier this month expressing her disappointment with Colorado voters, following the defeat of Proposition CC. That measure, if approved, would have allowed the state government to ignore the tax revenue limitations imposed on state government by the Colorado Constitution’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights, better known as TABOR. The assumption made by CC supporters was that the added tax revenues would be spent, at least partially, on K-12 education and would “begin to repair the damage caused by revenue reductions since the Taxpayer Bill of Rights passed in 1992.”
What was less clear is whether the added money would pay for teacher salaries, or for new and bigger machines. Nevertheless, the voters rejected CC by a significant margin.
Ms. Baca-Oehlert wrote:
“Prop. CC would have been just one step forward, but not a solution to delivering the schools our students deserve. After decades of disinvestment, TABOR continues to strangle our public services. Coloradans want to see bold, structural changes in tax and budget policy that benefit everyone, not just the wealthy few…”
“Our schools have lost more than $8 billion since the Great Recession. Students today sit in class sizes way too large, without adequate mental health supports, and their teachers work two or three jobs to make ends meet. Prop. CC passage would not have changed the reality that Colorado still funds each and every one of our students $2,700 less than the national average. We can’t expect every student to thrive when the power of our immense state wealth doesn’t show up in our classrooms…”
From my perspective of the swinging education pendulum, it’s not always clear — when a system seems to be broken and failing — whether the best solution is to pour more money into the same system. Some of the voters who rejected Proposition CC may have felt the same way. But the CEA has taken the stance that TABOR is to blame for our floundering student test scores and inadequate mental health outcomes.
Students sitting in class sizes way too large? According to the Colorado Department of Education (CDE), the average student-teacher ratio in our state is 17.27 students per full-time teacher. That’s about half the student-teacher ratio I remember from my own school experiences back in the 1960s, when a typical classroom accommodated about 35 students.
Our schools have lost more than $8 billion since the Great Recession? According to CDE documents, the state spent about $7.1 billion on K-12 education in 2018-19… while the 2006-07 education budget — prior to the Great Recession — was about $3.8 billion, according to the Joint Budget Committee. Apparently, the annual budget for K-12 education in Colorado has increased by about $3.3 billion since the Great Recession? That’s growth of more than 80% during a relatively stagnant period of economic growth in Colorado.
During that same period — between 2006 and 2018 — student enrollment grew by about 15%, from 794,000 to 912,000. It would appear that, in 2018, Colorado was spending 85% more money to educate 15% more K-12 students than in 2006.
How about teachers? Colorado had 48,500 teachers in 2006. We now have about 53,000 — an increase of about 9%.
But as Ms. Baca-Oehlert states, many Colorado teachers “work two or three jobs to make ends meet.”
Hmmmm. The CDE budget has apparently increased by more than 80% since before the Great Recession. Student enrollment has increased by 15%. Number of teachers has increased by 9%.
Where is all that money going? Like, an additional $3.3 billion per year?
And if we don’t know where all the money is going, do we really want to put more money into the system… if it’s not going to teachers?