Skip to content
  • News
  • Events
  • Law Library
  • Giving
  • Alumni
  • Quicklinks

    • Academic Calendar
    • bCourses Overview
    • bCourses Link
    • Business Services
    • Schedule of Classes
    • View Evaluations
    • Identity Resources
    • RoloLaw
    • COVID-19 Protocols
    • Event, Catering and Food Policy
    • Emergency Info
    • Resource Hub for Faculty & Staff

    Support

    • Reporting Potential COVID-19 Cases
    • COVID-19 Remote Teaching Resources
    • Computing Support
    • Event Services
    • Faculty Services (Library)
    • Human Resources & Academic Personnel
    • Instructional Technology
    • Phones
    • Room Reservations
    • Resources to Respond to Sexual Harassment
  • Quicklinks

    • Academic Calendar
    • b-Line
    • Berkeley Law Facebook
    • Financial Aid
    • Faculty Profiles
    • Schedule of Classes
    • Teaching Evaluations
    • Final Exam Review Session Schedule
    • Exams
    • Final Exam Schedule
    • CalCentral
    • COVID-19 Protocols
    • Event, Catering and Food Policy
    • Emergency Info
    • Resource Hub for Students

    Student Services

    • Reporting Potential COVID-19 Cases
    • Student Services Office
    • Academic Skills Program
    • Student Organizations
    • Student Journals
    • Commencement
    • Frequently Asked Questions & Rule Clarifications
    • Bookstore
    • Wellness at Berkeley Law
    • Mindfulness at Berkeley Law
    • Registrar
    • University Health Services
    • Resources to Respond to Sexual Harassment
  • Search for People at Berkeley Law

Berkeley Law
    • Academics Home
    • Areas of Study
      • Social Justice and Public Interest
        • Curriculum
          • J.D. Path
          • LL.M. Path
        • Social Justice+Public Interest Community at Berkeley Law
          • Public Interest and Pro Bono Graduation
      • Business and Start-ups
        • Business Law Curriculum
        • Business Law Faculty
      • Law and Technology
        • Student Activities
        • Law and Tech Curriculum
        • Law and Tech Faculty
      • Environmental Law
      • Criminal Justice
      • International and Comparative Law
        • Centers, Clinics, and Programs
        • Faculty
        • Student Activities
      • Constitutional and Regulatory
      • Law and Economics
        • Faculty
        • Prospective Students
        • Visiting Scholars
        • Law and Economics Fellowship
    • J.D. Program
      • First-Year Curriculum
      • Concurrent Degree Programs
      • Combined Degree Programs
      • Berkeley-Harvard Degree Programs
    • LL.M. Programs
      • LL.M. Executive Track
        • LL.M. Executive Track Academic Calendar
        • Engage with Berkeley Law Online Courses
      • LL.M. Traditional Track
        • Current Academic Calendars
      • LL.M. Thesis Track
        • LL.M. Thesis Track Student Profiles
        • Current Academic Calendars
      • Courses
      • Certificates of Specialization
      • Application & Admission
        • Eligibility & Admission Standards
        • Application Instructions
        • Admissions Policies
        • Check Application Status
      • Tuition & Financial Aid
        • Cost of Attendance
        • Scholarships
        • Financial Aid
          • Financial Aid Checklist for LL.M./J.S.D. Students
        • FAQ Financial Aid
      • Professional Development
      • Admitted Students
        • Visas
        • Housing for LL.M. Students
        • Cancellation & Refund Policies
      • Join an Event & Connect with LL.M. Staff
        • Recruiting and Informational Events
        • Visit Us!
        • Contact Us
      • Meet Our Students
      • Meet Our Partners
      • Questions? Start Here
    • Doctoral Programs
      • J.S.D. Program
        • Application & Admissions
          • Eligibility & Admission Standards
          • Application Instructions
          • Check Your Application Status
        • J.S.D. Tuition & Financial Aid
          • Cost of Attendance for JSD
          • Robbins J.S.D. Fellowship
        • J.S.D. Student Profiles
          • Zehra Betul Ayranci
          • Ella Corren
          • Silvia Fregoni
          • George Lambeth Vicent
          • Sylvia Si-Wei Lu
          • Natsuda Rattamanee
          • Youngmin Seo
          • Abdullah Alkayat Alazemi ’21
          • Mehtab Khan ’21
          • Maximilien Zahnd ’21
          • Shao-Man Lee ’20
          • Alvaro Pereira ’20
        • Contact Us
      • Ph.D. Program – Jurisprudence and Social Policy (JSP)
        • Events Calendar »
    • Executive Education
    • Schedule of Classes
      • Two Year Curriculum Plan
    • Current Academic Calendars
      • 2021-2022 Academic Calendar
      • 2022-2023 Academic Calendar
      • Past Academic Calendars
        • 2020-2021 Academic Calendar
        • 2019-2020 Academic Calendar
        • 2018-2019 Academic Calendar
        • 2017-2018 Academic Calendar
        • 2016-2017 Academic Calendar
        • 2015-2016 Academic Calendar
        • 2014-2015 Academic Calendar
        • 2013-2014 Academic Calendar
        • 2012-2013 Academic Calendar
        • 2011-2012 Academic Calendar
        • 2010-2011 Academic Calendar
        • 2009-2010 Academic Calendar
        • 2008-2009 Academic Calendar
    • Registrar
      • Order of the Coif and Dean’s List
      • Academic Rules
        • Supplemental Academic Rules for Traditional and Thesis Track LL.M. Students
        • Academic Honor Code
        • Academic Rules Petition
        • Academic Rule 3.06 – applies to the Class of 2010 and before
        • Credit Hours
      • Registration
      • Transcripts
      • Verification of Attendance
      • Registrar’s Forms
      • Ordering a Diploma »
      • J.D. Academic Guidance
        • 3L Requirements FAQ
        • 3L Degree Worksheet
      • Registrar’s Student FAQ
      • Bar Information
        • State Bar Swearing-In Ceremony Information
    • Admissions Home
    • J.D. Admissions
      • Applying for the J.D. Degree
        • Ready to Apply
        • After You’ve Applied
        • FAQs
      • Entering Class Profile
      • Connect with Admissions
        • Meet Our Team
        • View the Prospectus
        • Webinars
        • Recruiting and Information Events
        • Contact LL.M. Admissions
        • Contact J.S.P. Admissions
      • Meet Our Students
      • Diversity at Berkeley Law
        • Diversity News
      • The Berkeley Experience
        • U.C. Berkeley Campus
        • Berkeley and the Bay Area
      • Concurrent & Combined Degree Programs
      • Faculty Admissions Policy
      • Financial Aid
        • Prospective and Entering Students
          • Entering Student Registration & Financial Aid Information
          • Financial Aid for International J.D. Students
          • Financial Aid for Undocumented J.D. Students
          • Legal Resident Information
        • Types of Aid
          • Scholarships
          • Loans
          • Work-Study
        • How to Apply
          • Financial Aid Checklist & Timeline For Incoming Transfer Students
          • Financial Aid Checklist & Timeline For Entering Students
          • Financial Aid Checklist & Timeline For Continuing Students
        • Fees & Cost of Attendance
          • Cost of Attendance Adjustments
        • PDST-Increase Offset Awards (PIOAs)
        • Forms
        • Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP)
          • LRAP Eligibility Guidelines
          • LRAP Eligibility Calculator
          • How to Apply for LRAP
          • LRAP Application Forms
          • Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF)
          • News & Updates
          • COVID-19 & Student Loans
          • LRAP FAQs
          • LRAP Glossary of Terms
        • Info Sessions & Presentations
        • Financial Literacy
        • Financial Aid – J.D. Concurrent Degree Programs
        • FAQ & Glossary
        • Requesting a Financial Aid Award for a Student
        • About Our Team
      • Outreach Partnerships
      • Admitted Students – First-Year »
      • Admitted Students – Transfer & Visitor Status »
      • For Current Berkeley Law Students
      • Admissions Policies
      • ABA Required Disclosures »
      • Our Role in Dismantling Systemic Racism
    • LL.M. Admissions
    • J.S.D. Admissions
    • Ph.D. (JSP) Admissions
    • Visiting Scholar and Visiting Student Researcher Admissions
    • Faculty & Research Home
    • Faculty Experts by Topic
    • Faculty Profiles
    • Deans Emeritus Lecturers
    • Recent Faculty Scholarship
    • Awards and Honors
    • Faculty in the News
    • Featured Research
    • Centers, Institutes & Initiatives
    • Experiential Home
    • Clinical Program
      • Apply to the Clinics
      • Death Penalty Clinic
        • About the Clinic
          • Faculty and Staff
          • Alumni
        • Clinic News
        • Projects and Cases
          • Death Penalty Clinic Amicus Curiae Briefs
          • Whitewashing the Jury Box: How California Perpetuates the Discriminatory Exclusion of Black and Latinx Jurors
        • Information for Students
        • Resources and Publications
          • Capital Defense Internships and Jobs
        • Donate to the Clinic
      • East Bay Community Law Center
      • Environmental Law Clinic
        • About the Clinic
        • Information for Students
        • Newsletters
        • Clinic News
        • Student Voices
        • Faculty and Staff
        • Alumni
        • Donate to the Clinic
      • International Human Rights Law Clinic
        • About the Clinic
          • Alumni
          • Faculty and Staff
        • Clinic News
        • Projects and Cases
          • Accountability and Transitional Justice
          • Promoting Human Rights in the United States
          • A Rights-Based Approach to Combating Poverty: Economic, Social & Cultural Rights
          • Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights
        • Independent Investigation of the Murder of Berta Cáceres
        • Living with Impunity: Unsolved Murders in Oakland and the Human Rights Impact on Victims’ Family Members
        • A New Border Vision
        • Who Will Be Left to Defend Human Rights? Persecution of Online Expression in the Gulf and Neighboring Countries
        • Resources and Publications by Focal Area
        • Information for Students
          • Student Self-Reflection
        • IHRLC 20th Anniversary
        • Donate to the Clinic
      • New Business Community Law Clinic
        • About the Clinic
        • Information for Students
        • Our Work
        • Services to California’s Central Valley
        • New Businesses
        • Events
        • Apply for Services
        • Donate to the Clinic
        • 2014 Fall Startup Workshop Series
      • Policy Advocacy Clinic
        • About Us
        • People
        • Clinic News
        • Juvenile Fee Abolition in California
          • COVID-19 Action on Juvenile Fees
        • Resources and Publications
        • Information for Students
        • Donate to the Clinic
      • Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic
        • About
          • Faculty and Staff
          • Clinic Alumni
          • Partners
        • Clinic News
        • Our Work
        • Information for Students
      • Clinical Program Annual Report
        • Annual Report Archive
      • The Brian M. Sax Prize for Excellence in Clinical Advocacy
        • Brian M. Sax
        • Recipients
    • Pro Bono Program
      • The Pro Bono Pledge
        • Definition of Pro Bono
      • Log Your Pro Bono Hours
        • Definition of Pro Bono
      • Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects (SLPS)
        • How To Apply
        • Current Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects
          • Animal Law and Advocacy
          • Arts and Innovation Representation
          • Berkeley Abolitionist Lawyering Project
          • Berkeley Immigration Group
          • Berkeley Law Anti-Trafficking Project
          • Berkeley Law and Organizing Collective
          • California Asylum Representation Clinic
          • Clean Energy Leaders In Law
          • Consumer Protection Public Policy Order
          • Contra Costa Reentry Project
          • DA Accountability & Participatory Defense Project
          • Digital Rights Project
          • Disability Rights Project
          • East Bay Dreamers Project
          • Environmental Conservation Outreach
          • Food Justice Project
          • Foster Education Project
          • Free The Land Project
          • Gun Violence Prevention Project
          • Homelessness Service Project
          • International Human Rights Workshop
          • International Refugee Assistance Project
          • La Alianza Workers’ and Tenants’ Rights Clinic
          • Legal Automation Workshop
          • Legal Obstacles Veterans Encounter
          • Name and Gender Change Workshop
          • Native American Legal Assistance Project
          • Palestine Advocacy Legal Assistance Project
          • Police Review Project
          • Political and Election Empowerment Project
          • Post-Conviction Advocacy Project
          • Prisoner Advocacy Network
          • Reentry Advocacy Project
          • Reproductive Justice Project
          • Startup Law Initiative
          • Survivor Advocacy Project
          • Tenants’ Rights Workshop
          • Wage Justice Clinic
          • Workers’ Rights Clinic
          • Workers’ Rights Disability Law Clinic
          • Youth Advocacy Project
        • How to Start a New SLP
        • Inactive Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects
          • AI Legal Workshop
          • Berkeley Immigration Law Clinic
          • Berkeley Students in Support of Arts and Innovation
          • Civil Rights Outreach Project (CROP)
          • Community Restorative Justice Project
          • Juvenile Hall Outreach
          • Karuk-Berkeley Collaborative Legal
          • Local Economies and Entrepreneurship Project
        • SLPS Champions
      • Berkeley Law Alternative Service Trips (BLAST)
        • Current Berkeley Law Alternative Service Trips (BLAST)
          • Atlanta
          • Central Valley
          • Hawaii
          • Mississippi
        • Inactive Berkeley Law Alternative Service Trips
          • Kentucky
          • Los Angeles
          • South Texas
          • Tijuana
      • Call for Necessary Engagement in Community & Timely Response (CNECT)
        • Berkeley Law Afghanistan Project
        • Current & Past CNECT Partners
          • Hub for Equity in Administrative Representation
          • Racial Justice Legal Research Bank Project
        • CNECT News
      • Independent Projects
      • Opportunities for LL.M. Students
      • Supervising Attorneys
      • Pro Bono Spotlights
        • Malak Afaneh ’24
        • KeAndra Hollis ’24
        • Maripau Paz ’24
        • Lucero Cordova ’23
        • Bharti Tyagi ’21
        • Benji Martinez ’23
        • Will Morrow ’23
        • Stephanie Clemente ’23
        • Francesco Arreaga ’21
        • Armbien Sabillo ’21
        • Kelsey Peden ’21
        • Jennifer Sherman ‘22
        • Professor Khiara M. Bridges
        • Professor Kristen Holmquist
      • Awards
      • Law Firm Pro Bono Programs
      • New York Bar Pro Bono Requirement
      • For Public Interest & Pro Bono Providers
    • Professional Skills Program
      • Legal Research, Analysis, and Writing Program
      • Elective Skills Courses
      • Advocacy Competitions Program
        • Tryout Procedures
        • Student Eligibility & How to Contact Us
        • Internal Competitions
          • McBaine Honors Moot Court
          • Halloum Negotiations Competition (Spring)
          • Halloum Business Competition (Fall)
          • Bales Trial Competition
          • Pahlke Internal Trial Competition (PINT)
          • The Pircher, Nichols & Meeks Joint Venture Challenge
        • External Competitions
          • Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Team
          • Moot Court Team
          • Trial Team
        • Writing Competitions
        • 2021 ABA Negotiation Competition
        • Travel Reimbursements
        • Our Supporters
    • Field Placement Program
      • Testimonials
      • Judicial Externships
      • Civil Field Placements
      • Criminal Field Placements
      • Away Field Placements
        • Berkeley Law in The Hague
        • INHR Program
        • UCDC Law Program
      • For Supervisors and Host Organizations
        • BACE: Bay Area Consortium on Externships
      • How to Apply
      • Frequently Asked Questions
    • Startup@BerkeleyLaw
      • Law Students
      • Entrepreneurs
        • Resources
        • How to Start a Startup @ Cal
        • FORM+FUND
          • FORM+FUND Fall 2020 Video Library
          • FORM+FUND Fall 2021 Video Library
          • FORM+FUND Spring 2021 Video Library
        • BerkeleyBase
        • Startup Law Initiative
      • Investors
    • Domestic Violence Law Practicum
      • About the Director
      • How to Apply
      • Companion Seminar
      • Former Students
      • Impact of DVP
      • Domestic Violence Field Placement Internships
      • News
      • Photos
      • Student Writing
    • Veterans Law Practicum
    • Careers Home
    • For J.D. Students
      • Appointments and Drop-in Hours
      • Private Sector Careers
        • Explore Private Sector Careers
        • Find Private Sector Jobs
          • 2021 OCI: EIW & FIP
          • OCI Alternatives
          • SIP – Spring 2022
      • Public Interest Careers
        • Explore Public Interest
        • Find Public Interest Jobs
          • PI/PS Interviewing Resources
          • Using Interview Programs to Land Your 1L Summer Job
          • Post-Graduate Public Interest Fellowships
          • CDO PIPS Videos
        • Finance Your Public Interest Career
          • Summer Funding for PI/PS Internships & Judicial Externships
          • Berkeley Law Bridge and Public Interest Fellowships
      • Public Sector Careers
        • Federal Government Careers
        • State & Local Government Careers (incl. CA)
        • Careers in Policy/Politics
      • Judicial Clerkships
        • Application Instructions and Materials
        • OSCAR Resources
        • Clerkship and Interview Evaluations
        • Other Clerkship Resources
        • Videos of Clerkship Programs
        • State Court Resources
      • Judicial Externships
      • Academic Careers
        • FAQ
        • Further Reading
        • Alumni Contacts
        • Links
        • Webcasts
      • Alternative Careers
    • For LL.M. Students
    • For Employers
      • Berkeley Law Recruiting Policies
      • Employer Resources for Virtual Internship Programs
      • Non Discrimination and Non Harassment Policies
      • Grading Policy
      • Interview Programs
      • Posting Job Listings
      • Reaching Berkeley Law J.D. Students
    • PSJD »
    • For Alumni
      • Enrichment Opportunities for Recent Grads
      • CDO Online Resources
      • Alumni Resource Collection
      • Help the CDO
      • For Recent Graduate Job-Seekers
    • About CDO
      • CDO Staff News
    • Career Resource Library
    • Employment Outcomes
      • Employment Statistics
      • Judicial Clerkship Placement Statistics
      • 2018 Clerkship Yearbook
  • Racial Justice
Home Articles News Op-Eds – ARCHIVAL School health clinics face obstacles — and how Arne Duncan could help

School health clinics face obstacles — and how Arne Duncan could help

  • Share article on Facebook
  • Share article on Twitter
  • Share article on LinkedIn
  • Email article

By Richard Rothstein, The Washington Post

A contentious debate in education policy concerns whether the low achievement of disadvantaged children is attributable primarily to social and economic conditions that bring them to school relatively unready to learn, or to public schools whose ineffective teachers fail to instruct. Certainly, differences in home literacy, health, out-of-school time, and teacher effectiveness all may play a role. But how you balance your view of their relative importance influences the policy choices you make.

Clearly, keeping children in good health must be part of that balance – children cannot learn otherwise. In disadvantaged neighborhoods, school-based health centers may be the only practical way to keep children in good health. But adequate promotion of such centers has been distressingly absent from the Obama administration’s education policy. This would be easy to fix.

It is conventional in our political culture for politicians and pundits, when faced with difficult choices, to claim to favor both, or to have a middle position that avoids extremes, or to be the voice of reason when others are shrill. So we should not be surprised that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has now staked a claim to be above the fray. In a Feb. 7 speech at Harvard, he charged his critics with “maintaining ideological purity and making false choices.” For them, “the perfect, too often, becomes the enemy of the good.”

He, in contrast, claimed to believe that “boosting student achievement is not an either-or solution. Educators and the broader community should be attacking both in-school and out-of-school causes of low achievement.” And he insisted, he said, that while “I welcome debate, I don’t find that debate which is detached from real world challenges, or driven primarily by ideology, advances the interests of children.”

Secretary Duncan’s critics accuse him and his allies of ignoring the role that poverty and associated challenges play in depressing student achievement. We note, for example, that his proposal for re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act demands that all schools be held equally accountable for getting every child “college and career ready” by 2020 — whether children come to school from families where they are read to at home; from neighborhoods that are violence free; from economic environments with full parental employment and stable housing; and in good health that supports regular school attendance and attention.

And if any school fails to achieve the goal, the administration proposal suggests several turnaround strategies, none of which emphasize early childhood literacy programs, or high quality after-school programs, or school health clinics, but instead mostly emphasize firing principals and teachers.

In his Feb. 7 speech, Mr. Duncan partly conceded his critics’ complaints, insisting “that great schools and great teachers are the most effective anti-poverty tool of all.” But this belief is consistent, he said, with his being “a huge fan of out-of-school anti-poverty programs.” He went on to note his prior efforts, as chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools, to implement full-service school health clinics, including free vision and dental programs.

“It never made sense to me,” he said, “that poor children should be expected to learn just as readily as other students when they couldn’t see the blackboard, or when their mouths ached from untreated cavities and gum disease. So we dramatically expanded our free vision and dental programs in the schools.”

Indeed, as Chicago school leader, Arne Duncan was so committed to this strategy that he was a charter sponsor of the Broader Bolder Approach to Education campaign that asserts that the “fundamental challenge facing America’s education policy makers” is weakening the “powerful association between social and economic disadvantage and low student achievement.”

The mission statement of this campaign, embraced by Secretary Duncan in 2008, went on to say that narrowing the achievement gap required all four of these important initiatives: continue to pursue school improvement efforts; increase investment in developmentally appropriate and high-quality early childhood, pre-school, and kindergarten education; locate full-service health clinics in schools; and increase investments in longer school days, after-school and summer programs, and school-to-work programs that do not exclusively focus on academic remediation.

But Mr. Duncan has abandoned this commitment as Secretary.

Consider perhaps the most urgent example: promotion of full service health clinics in schools. Such clinics are essential props for student achievement, not only because children who are absent because of illness can’t benefit from good teaching, or because children with untreated dental cavities are distracted by oral discomfort, or because untreated asthma (an epidemic in polluted urban neighborhoods) keeps children awake at night and drowsy in school, or because children can’t read well if they have uncorrected vision difficulties, but because there are few primary care physicians located in low-income neighborhoods. And where primary care is available, parents working low-wage hourly jobs cannot get time off to take children for routine and preventive visits. Often, such visits can happen only if they occur on school campuses and within the school day.

In his Feb. 7 speech, Secretary Duncan demonstrated his commitment to school clinics by boasting that under President’s Obama’s health care legislation: “[T]he administration has provided more than 275 school-based health clinics with about $100 million to provide more health care services at schools nationwide. Those grants will enable school-based health clinics to serve an additional 440,000 patients — a jump of over 50 percent.”

This claim is not quite accurate. There have been no Affordable Care Act appropriations for health care services at school clinics. Rather, the funds to which Mr. Duncan referred can be spent only on capital construction and equipment and may not be used for health care services themselves.

The secretary apparently got his 50 percent figure from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that administers these funds; but HHS arrived at this figure simply by adding up claims made by clinic sponsors of what they hoped to do. Fifty percent is highly implausible. Not many clinics have big pools of uncommitted service funds that remain untapped only because facilities are inadequate. Some schools have built new health centers with the funds, but for others, while it is a wonderful thing to be able to replace dental chairs or expand examining rooms, these important improvements are unlikely to generate a 50 percent increase in children served.

There is, in the health care law, an authorization for funding clinic services, but not a cent has been appropriated, and it is virtually certain that none ever will be — perhaps for the same reasons that the already appropriated funds are restricted to capital. Congressional Republicans block funds for health care services in schools, in part from fear that such funds will be used to distribute birth control information or condoms.

This, of course, is not Secretary Duncan’s fault. I am certain he would have wished that Obamacare provided not only for school clinic construction and equipment, but also for services, and at an even higher level than authorized. Rather, skepticism about his commitment to “both-and,” not “either-or,” strategies (i.e., improvements in teacher quality AND school-based health centers) is based on the unbalanced way in which he has pressed states to change their policies to qualify for Race to the Top funds and to receive waivers from No Child Left Behind’s requirement that all students be proficient by 2014.

States qualified for Race to the Top funds if they accumulated points on a complex scale devised by the Department of Education. The scale was not a “both-and” scale of the sort that Mr. Duncan claims to favor. States were given points for adopting the administration’s favored in-school reforms — such as linking teacher records to student test scores so that teacher evaluation can be based, at least in part, on such scores, or expanding the number of charter schools. But states were given no points for increasing the number of school-based health centers, or making it easier for such centers to operate.

In some cases, to qualify for desperately needed Race to the Top funds, governors had to go to their legislatures for politically difficult changes in state laws; in New York, for example, the teacher tenure law prohibited student test scores from being used for teacher evaluation, and over the bitter objection of the state’s teachers, the law was amended.

If the secretary truly favored a “both-and” approach, could the Department of Education have demanded similar state law changes affecting school clinics as a condition of receiving Race to the Top funds? It would have been a simple matter.

One of the biggest impediments to the establishment of such clinics is the bureaucratic maze such clinics often must navigate in order to get reimbursement. In most states (but not in all), school-based health centers must get prior authorization from managed care organizations (into which Medicaid recipients are required to be enrolled) for each visit made by a child to a school clinic. In most states (but not in all), managed care organizations are not even required to negotiate contracts with school-based health centers, and if they do negotiate such contracts, reimbursement rates are far below the Medicaid fees that managed care organizations themselves receive for these services. In most states (but not in all), school-based health centers are not defined as providers eligible to bill Medicaid directly.

For the majority of states that make it difficult for school clinics to function, changing these requirements would be politically difficult — managed care organizations and local medical societies protecting their monopolies could offer resistance — but no more difficult than changing teacher tenure laws. Conditioning Race to the Top eligibility on changes in state laws to define school-based health centers as eligible providers, to prohibit prior authorization requirements for clinics’ routine and preventive care, or to mandate full value contracts between managed care organizations and school-based health centers, might have been sufficient incentive for states to make these changes.

Secretary Duncan is now issuing waivers to states from their No Child Left Behind requirements. Again, he is conditioning such waivers on in-school reforms only. States can qualify for waivers by promising to tie teacher records to student test scores, by purchasing textbooks with higher standards, by firing teachers and principals at schools with low test scores, but not by promising to facilitate school-based health centers, or for adopting other reforms to improve children’s readiness to learn when they enter school.

He should add such requirements now. It is not too late for him to rescue his reputation as a “both-and” kind of guy. Former Texas Agricultural Commissioner Jim Hightower famously said, “There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.” I’d like to see Arne Duncan prove him wrong.

02/26/2012

News

  • Coronavirus (COVID-19) Information
    • Berkeley Law COVID-19 Protocols
    • Event, Catering and Food Policy
  • Transcript Magazine
    • Transcript Archive
      • Transcript Spring 2021 Online Edition
      • Transcript Fall 2020 Online Edition
      • Transcript Spring 2020 Online Edition
      • Transcript Fall 2019 Online Edition
      • Transcript Spring 2019 Online Edition
      • Transcript Fall 2018 Online Edition
      • Transcript Spring 2018 Online Edition
      • Transcript 2017 Online Edition
      • Transcript 2016 Online Edition
  • Podcasts
  • On Display
  • Media Highlights
  • News Archive
    • 2022 Archive
    • 2021 Archive
    • 2020 Archive
    • 2019 Archive
    • 2018 Archive
    • 2017 Archive
    • 2016 Archive
    • 2015 Archive
    • 2014 Archive
    • 2013 Archive
    • 2012 Archive
    • 2011 Archive
    • 2010 Archive
    • 2009 Archive
    • 2008 Archive
    • 2007 Archive
    • 2006 Archive
    • 2005 Archive
    • News Briefs
    • Alumni Newsletter
  • Trailblazing Women
  • Social Media
  • Communications Office
    • Identity Resources
      • Ordering Printed Supplies
    • Media Release Form
  • Law School Images »
Berkeley Law
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
  • Instagram
  • Flickr
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • About
  • Getting Here
  • Contact Us
  • Job Openings
  • ABA Required Disclosures
  • Feedback
  • For Employers
  • Accessibility
  • Nondiscrimination
  • Privacy Policy
  • UC Berkeley

© 2022 UC Regents, UC Berkeley School of Law, All Rights Reserved.

Notice – Berkeley Law COVID-19 Protocols