America's Children Are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem? : Shared by Tom McDermott

 

America's Children Are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem?

Jia Lynn Yang

The New York Times

November 24, 2025

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Summary

The dramatic rise in childhood mental health diagnoses—including ADHD affecting nearly one in four 17-year-old boys and autism increasing from one in 2,500 children in the early 1980s to one in 31 today—is closely linked to fundamental changes in American schools that began in the 1980s with metrics-obsessed education reform. 

Starting with the 2002 No Child Left Behind law, schools faced funding pressures tied to test scores, creating incentives for diagnoses that could secure additional support or exempt struggling students from accountability measures, while simultaneously narrowing expectations and eliminating play-based learning even in kindergarten. 

Researchers found that states with new accountability standards saw clear rises in ADHD diagnoses, with rates among children ages 8-13 in low-income homes jumping from 10 percent to 15 percent after No Child Left Behind, while a 2020 Yale study revealed nearly 80 percent of high schoolers reported feeling stressed and almost 70 percent felt bored at school.

Quotes

"What's happening is, instead of saying, 'We need to fix the schools,' the message is, 'We need to fix the kids.' The track has become narrower and narrower, so a greater range of people don't fit that track anymore. And the result is, we want to call it a disorder." - Peter Gray, research professor at Boston College

"We're not aligning the developmental needs of kids with the policies and practices that go on daily with schools." - Denise Pope, senior lecturer at Stanford University

"Overall, students see school as a place where they experience negative emotions." - Marc Brackett, Yale researcher