The MetroWest Adolescent Health Survey Plays Hard to Get (and Fails Human Nature 101)
The MetroWest Adolescent Health Survey Plays Hard to Get (and Fails Human Nature 101)
What's that? MetroWest Health doesn't want parents to see the contents of their survey? Well then - now we just simply MUST share it with everyone!
If you live in one of the 25 MetroWest communities (list below!) and you have a child in middle school or high school, you may have already heard of the MetroWest Adolescent Health Survey (MWAHS). In fact, you SHOULD have heard of it, because your child’s school more than likely administered this biennial survey prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, and they were legally obligated to inform you in advance of your right to opt your child out.
Through the Massachusetts Informed Parents Facebook group, we heard from MANY parents who wanted to know more about this survey. This survey was of special interest, not only because of the sensitive topics it covers, but because schools were VERY cagey about letting parents see the actual questions.
In fact, if a parent wanted to see the survey questions prior to deciding whether or not to opt their child out of the survey, they were required to PHYSICALLY VISIT their school during a specific time frame and view a hard copy of it. They were informed that they were not permitted to take photos or duplicate the survey. If they requested the survey to be emailed to them, their request was refused. One parent even submitted a Public Records Request to their district and was told that since the district didn’t technically own the survey, it was not within their rights to distribute it. In another district, a parent whose work schedule prohibited her from visiting the school to view the physical survey was offered an opportunity to have a district employee read the entire survey to her over the phone. This was a very inconvenient solution for everyone involved, and it certainly was not a good use of highly paid staff time to spend hours on the phone reading pages upon pages of multiple-choice questions when the parent would have been satisfied with a simple email. We heard similar stories from quite a few parents all over the MetroWest area. All they wanted to do was see the survey the school wanted to give their kid, but they kept running into a strange wall of secrecy.
Naturally, this strange wall of secrecy made parents very curious. And suspicious. And frankly, annoyed. Why was this survey so darn hard to get? If MetroWest Health wants kids to see these questions, why would they make it so difficult for their parents to do the same?
All of this made us at MIP very curious as well. Why would districts have the weird idea that they can withhold this information from parents when parents have the right to make an informed decision and the survey is clearly subject to Public Record Request? So, an attorney from Massachusetts Family Institute filed his own Public Record Request to one of the participating districts, and finally, we got some answers.
The entire 2023 MWAHS for Middle School (Grades 7-8) and High School (Grades 9-12) are posted in the document section at the end of this post. We have removed the name of the district that finally turned these over, but everything else in these documents is exactly as MFI’s attorney received them.
Now, before viewing the surveys, we had a hunch about what types of questions we might find. School surveys are getting a (well-deserved) bad rap these days for sticking their multiple-choice noses where they don’t belong, and we thought the MWAHS would probably have similar issues. We suspected it would ask kids if they identify as a different gender than they were born. We suspected it would ask questions about sexual orientation. We suspected there would be other personal, inappropriate questions too. And we were correct.
Here are the first two pages of student questions from the 7th and 8th grade survey. (All red boxes, on these pages and throughout the rest of this post, have been added by us.)
A lot of parents probably wouldn’t want their 7th grader being asked about their “sexual identity.” It’s invasive, inappropriate, and a little creepy. But some of the questions in the high school survey are much, much worse.
The high school survey asks all of the same awkward sexual-and-gender-identification questions as the middle school survey, but it also includes the above section on sexual behaviors (Note: the sexual behaviors section appears to be optional for the middle school grades, so some other districts might also include this section for younger kids). And while this presents us the opportunity to find one somewhat complimentary thing to say about the way this particular district administered the survey (at least they didn’t ask 11–12-year-olds these questions!), it’s still way, WAY more graphic and personal than many parents would be comfortable with being posed even to an older student.
(Also, according to THIS VIDEO from 2022, the number of districts also surveying their 6th graders has increased every year. The district that gave us their surveys appears to be in the minority. And remember, if a district includes 6th graders in their survey, it’s possible they included the sexual behaviors section for those kids as well. That would mean they surveyed 11–12-year-olds about their sexual activity, condom use, etc.)
A lot of parents would opt out of this survey based on what we’ve shown so far alone. But there are more concerns with this survey other than just uber-personal sex questions and gender ideology.
For example, see below. Why are all of the “Community Issues” asked about (in both age groups) also left-wing political talking points? Why don’t they ask if students feel worried or stressed when they see a progressive agenda pushed in their school? Why don’t they ask students if they have been personally affected by inflation or some other societal ill that might make one side of the political aisle look… not so great, but could genuinely impact the stress level of kids?
And there are plenty of other personal, invasive, questionable questions in these surveys. When you’re done reading this post, click on the full documents and see for yourself.
But these surveys raised another concern for us outside of asking kids for TMI and being selective in their focus and agenda. These surveys also ask kids to report crimes.
The high school survey, given to kids as young as 13, asks if they are sexually active. It asks them when they became sexually active and gives “11 years old or younger” as one of the options. It asks them if they have ever been forced into sex. The middle school survey asks kids: “Did someone you were dating or going out with ever hit, slap, or physically hurt you on purpose?” (#24) and “During your life, how often has an adult in your home hit, beat, kicked or physically hurt you in any way?” (#25).
Dear God. What if the child says yes?
What if a 9th grader reports that they became sexually active at age 11, have been forced into sex multiple times, and have had multiple pregnancies? What if a child reports that they are frequently physically abused at home, or that one parent is constantly beating the other parent? What happens - nothing? Nobody cares? It’s just… data?
Students are told at the beginning of the survey: “Questions about your background will be used only to describe the types of students completing this survey. The information will not be used to find out your name.”
But, why is this allowed? Public school employees are mandated reporters. Why does this survey get to ignore reports of literal crimes against children? And while it’s true that not every child would be personally identifiable based on the demographic information they provide, many would be. The surveys ask for age, grade, gender identity, sex assigned at birth, ethnic heritage, primary language spoken at home, how long they have lived in the US, sexual orientation, behaviors such as being involved in physical fights at school (which could make them known to school administration), how many AP classes they take (high school only), and even their height and weight. That is a LOT of personal information. Does MetroWest really believe there is no chance of identifying a child based on this information, especially by local school employees?
And the answer is, a child could absolutely theoretically be identified. If there is only one transgender-identified, 250 lb, 6’ tall, Pacific Islander 7th grader at a specific school, school personnel would be able to identify that student with very little effort, even without the name on their survey. What if that student reports abuse on their survey? Shouldn’t somebody try to help them? Shouldn’t they be required by law to do so?
Of course, this raises questions about student privacy, a topic that is rightly at the core of many parental objections to surveys in general. But ultimately, every parent understands that when a student reports a certain type of experience to a school official, the adult receiving the report has a legal mandate to act. So why does MetroWest Health promise minor children that their answers are private when in some situations, they absolutely should NOT be?
Now, this is the part of the program where someone from MetroWest Health would probably pipe up and defend their survey. They would probably say that promising anonymity is important to get students to answer sensitive questions honestly, without fear of recourse. They would probably say that the purpose of the survey is solely data collection and that if the data showed that children were being abused, they would use that to inform their programming and notify local social service agencies to do an “abuse is bad” campaign. Or “See something, say something.” Or something like that.
But why would those answers be good enough? How can any adult in good conscience ask a child questions that amount to “Hey, have you gotten raped a bunch?” or, “Do your parents beat you all the time?” and then ignore them if they answer affirmatively? Someone in the child protection field or law enforcement should seriously investigate how it could possibly be legal for adults to decide in advance that they would NOT try to get help for a child who disclosed possible abuse or sex trafficking.
But MetroWest Health isn’t the only one to blame for this survey, its questionable promises of anonymity, and the strange wall of secrecy surrounding it. The survey itself is written and facilitated by a 501c3 based in Waltham, the Education Development Center (EDC). And while the EDC is legally a “nonprofit,” they get paid a pretty penny to conduct the MWAHS.
More specifically, they got paid 673,251,000 pretty pennies (that’s $673,251) for the 2023 survey alone.
Below is a page from the MetroWest Health Foundation 2022 Annual Report, which you can read for yourself in full HERE.
In 2020, MetroWest Health Foundation paid EDC $15,674 to “expand the number of schools participating in the MetroWest Adolescent Health Survey” (we’re not really sure what that money covers since they didn’t do the survey that year - advertising, maybe?). See below.
That page is from the MetroWest Health Foundation’s 2020 Annual Report, which you can read HERE.
And in 2019, MetroWest Health Foundation paid EDC $649,866 to conduct the 2020 survey (which happened in 2021 instead due to “the challenges associated with surveying youth during remote learning.” [Methodology, p.1, linked HERE). Below see a page from the Foundation’s 2019 Annual Report, which you can read HERE.
So long story short, it appears that the MetroWest Health Foundation is paying EDC big bucks for this survey, and then EDC puts the data together for them and makes it available in multiple formats. You can see a list of some of their most recent reports HERE, and one example below:
It’s important to note that none of the formats available on their website appear to contain the actual questions on the survey, even surveys from past years. Also, we couldn’t find any reporting back of the data concerning the age of onset of sexual activity, abuse in the home, whether students had experienced sexual coercion, or some of the other more sensitive questions. So, if these issues aren’t reported on, why are they asking kids about these things? Why are they collecting this troubling data? Who is seeing this data, and what are they doing with it?
Schools that participate receive a report back on their district stats. We found one example from Wellesley High School that you can view HERE. But this level of report doesn’t touch on any of the most sensitive issues, either. It also does not include any of the demographic information such as sexual orientation, ethnicity, or whether or not students identify as transgender. So even if an engaged parent or community member read one of these reports, they would not get the full picture of how invasive this survey really is, or the Pandora’s Box of potential ethical and legal liabilities it opens.
But still, we had another question. Why are schools refusing to share the blank survey with parents? Whose bright idea was it to build a strange wall of secrecy around something that parents so clearly have a legal right to access?
We found our answer in the 2023 MetroWest Adolescent Health Survey PARENT/GUARDIAN PERMISSION INSTRUCTIONS document that MFI’s attorney also received as part of their Public Records Request.
According to this document, the EDC controls every aspect of how the schools notify parents of the survey, including providing a letter template AND requiring that their designated staff member approves each district’s parent letter before it is sent out. They also control how parents may (and may not) access the survey itself, including the onerous restriction against granting a reasonable parental request for a digital copy of the document.
So, all of the secrecy - ALL of it - points back to EDC, an outside company being paid boatloads of cash to protect their proprietary document and keep parents and communities in the dark about the full depth and breadth of the data being collected.
Let’s look again at this section from page 2 of the instruction document.
The EDC’s explanation for imposing barriers of access on parents who want to view the survey questions doesn’t make any sense (and if you’ve spent any time around public education, especially post-COVID, you probably know that “barriers to access” are deemed a bad thing and that adopting an “equity lens” requires removing such barriers - a fact that makes EDC’s position deliciously ironic, especially in light of their stated commitment to “equity”). Couldn’t a parent view the survey at school and then go home and discuss the survey with their children? Couldn’t they still attempt to influence how their children respond?
Of course, they could.
Now let’s be clear - EDC’s position on this has no legal legs to stand on. They do not have any legal right to deny parents and community members access to this document, even in light of the fact that parents can opt-out. They do not have the legal right to tell parents that they cannot take photographs of a blank survey being used in the public school. They don’t have a legal right to push dubious directives down on building-level school personnel, who weren’t involved in the decision to do this survey and now are being forced to follow rules that many of them KNOW aren’t fair. EDC doesn’t have a right to do any of this, but they are doing it anyway.
And while EDC continues to hammer the importance of the parent’s right to opt-out, which a charitable reader might be tempted to point out, they don’t get a pat on the back for this. They are doing this because they are mandated to do so by the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, a federal law.
So, what are EDC’s goals really? Are their motives in doing this survey altruistic? Or are they going to great lengths to keep their questions under the radar, knowing that parental-ignorance-is-bliss, and more parents would opt their kids out if they knew the truth? Are they concerned that if too many parents opt out of their survey the data will cease to be useful, and maybe their services won’t be needed anymore? We can’t say for sure.
But here’s what we can say about the MWAHS.
The survey is extremely invasive, and the EDC makes it really hard for parents to see the survey.
Parents have a right to opt out of the survey, but they are being denied equal access to the information needed to make an informed decision by being forced to either view the documents in person or not at all. This requirement amounts to defacto discrimination for parents who work full time, lack transportation, lack childcare for younger children, have health or disability issues that restrict their ability to travel, etc. Also, it’s stupid.
The EDC is requiring schools to withhold information from parents that they don’t have a legal right to withhold.
The survey sexualizes kids by asking them about their sexual behaviors. It further normalizes gender confusion and diverse sexualities by asking kids to put themselves in constructed, ideological categories.
Based on its current schedule, this survey won’t be administered again until 2025. When it comes around again, if EDC is still forcing schools to follow their illegal mandate about not distributing the survey, parents should go into schools and take their own pictures of the document and share those pictures with whoever they want. You have a legal right to do this, and your school has no grounds to stop you. Also, the survey adds new questions every year, so even if you’ve read this one thoroughly, you can’t assume that it will be the same in two years.
And here’s what questions we think need to be asked.
Why is EDC/MetroWest asking for sensitive information about students, when that information doesn’t appear to be reported on? How, when, and why is that data used? (Folks from EDC or MetroWest Health, if you want to shed some light on this, email us at massinformedparents@gmail.com or comment on this post.)
Aside from the myriad personal questions on the survey itself, which could make students identifiable, are students identifiable any other way? This survey is now given electronically. Do students take it on their district-owned devices? Do they access the survey through Google Classroom, or some other website tied to a student’s ID number? Do the surveys retain any device-identifying information following completion? (Folks from EDC or MetroWest Health, if you want to shed some light on this topic as well, email us at massinformedparents@gmail.com or comment on this post.)
How is it legal for a survey to ask questions that could reveal information that, in another setting, would spark a mandatory report to DCF or law enforcement - yet no apparent effort is made to protect the child revealing the information via survey?
Why would local districts agree to be part of this survey? It’s obviously a huge time suck for employees and students alike. It wastes valuable instructional time and makes a lot of work for already busy administrators, teachers, and support staff. Is the data they receive really THAT important? Couldn’t a building-level audit of discipline and behavioral interventions or an informal survey among staff also yield valuable information about the types of issues students in their school are facing (especially the ones that school staff are ACTUALLY equipped to deal with) without loss of staff time, instructional time, and turning over sensitive student data to an outside organization?
How does this survey benefit the students who are actually taking it? We can see why MetroWest Health would want the survey done. It provides data that they can use to inform programming choices (and data they can package in ways that justify their programming desires). We can see why EDC would want the survey done. They get paid a ton of money (maybe they have altruistic reasons too, but we’ll just stick to what we can prove). But what does it do for students? It wastes instructional time. It introduces them to sensitive and controversial topics. It potentially violates their privacy. It does not inform them on which behaviors are beneficial and which are harmful, it only documents the presence of behaviors. And if a student does have a personal need or crisis, it does NOTHING to help them.
This is why, when this survey (or any survey) comes around, parents should OPT their child OUT.
Organizations like EDC or MetroWest Health, for all of their obsession with data, apparently haven’t learned the basics of Human Nature 101.
If you want people to trust you, be transparent. And if you try to hide something, now we’re going to want to see it even more. Especially when it comes to our kids.
As a special visitor to Dunder Mifflin once said…
No more keeping secrets from parents, EDC.
No more secrets.
For downloadable versions of the surveys and instructions MFI received, and are referenced in this post, see below.
For more information on the problem with surveys in schools, visit Courage is a Habit.
For more information on your rights in MA to opt out of surveys and sex ed, click HERE.
The left literally doesn’t give a f about parental rights! Absolutely no sense of morality and no sense of right or wrong.
There has evidently been a statewide initiative since 2007 to gather this information from students through the schools: https://www.mass.gov/lists/massachusetts-youth-health-survey-myhs I love how they call it what it is: a "surveillance" project.