Opinion: Did Our District Just Get Duped?

What you need to know about the iWellness program

As you were prepping to begin spring break last month, you likely received an email from TPS schools that looked like this:

Many parents are understandably concerned, and have reached out. What we thought would be a simple article explaining the topic has quickly ballooned into something much larger. Anthony Alaniz (formerly of the Tecumseh Herald) has covered this in detail in his article: Lenawee ISD Just Spent $1.25 Million To Ask Your Kids These 7 Questions. This article is aptly named, as it presents a question of value: Does $1.25m (cost) = 7 questions (value). While Anthony reports on the cost, I’d like to discuss the value.

BLUF (bottom line up front): iWellness is nothing more than pop-psychology packaged into a costly program and sold to administrators under the guise of improving mental health. Their data is either fuzzy, or missing. The creators have little or no credentials in the field of psychology. The “Wellness” industry in this country is getting out of hand, and we seem to be the latest victim.

THE ORIGIN - STRATEGIC PLAN

The initiative to find an SEL program like iWellness began when TPS released its 5-year, strategic plan. This plan designated the adoption and implementation of a K-12 social/emotional learning curriculum as part of it’s third year (2024-2025 school year) goals.

Social-emotional learning (SEL) interventions in schools aim to foster students’ emotional intelligence, interpersonal skills, and self-regulation, with the goal of improving academic performance, behavior, and overall well-being. While there is room to criticize SEL, I will save this for a future post. Even if we were to accept that SEL is a net positive for our students, iWellness does little to nothing to promote SEL.

THE BASIS: MASLOW’S HIERARCHY

Many programs like iWellness claim to be rooted in psychological principals, and most love to quote Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The premise of Maslow’s Hierarchy is that our basic needs must be met before our more complex needs are met. We encounter this concept every day when we wake up, as it’s difficult to meet any need without solving the most basic need: food. For education, the belief is that students must feel safe (a basic need) before they can learn (a more complex need). This premise is widely accepted in the scientific community.

iWellness does nothing to help a child meet their needs, it merely seeks to identify those needs. The effectiveness of identifying needs relies on the resources available in the community to meet those needs. While programs like these may be successful in more affluent communities, for less wealthy districts it can be the equivalent of asking a car accident victim if they’re ok… and then driving off. For this particular program, I argue that it doesn’t even ask “are you ok?” correctly.

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD - RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

The basis of my argument against this program is the deficit of reliability and validity within the seven questions. In psychology, we refer to tools like surveys as instruments. Instruments, like the survey, are expected to have adequate validity and reliability. Validity ensures that an experiment accurately measures what it intends to measure, addressing the correctness of the conclusions drawn from the results. Reliability, on the other hand, refers to the consistency of the experiment, meaning that it can be repeated under the same conditions with similar outcomes.

Let’s examine the first question. Middle schoolers are in a developmental stage where emotions, social perceptions, and self-awareness can fluctuate rapidly due to hormonal changes, peer influences, and evolving identity. Their interpretation of “connectedness” might vary widely depending on mood, recent experiences, or even the context in which the question is asked (e.g., in a classroom versus a counselor’s office). The validity of this question is marginal at best when applied to adolescents.

If you’ve ever taken a survey about anxiety or depression with your mental health practitioner, you might notice that the survey often asks the same question in different ways. This is to ensure reliability. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), the most trusted survey used by practitioners to determine stress, asks ten similar questions on one topic (stress). The iWellness survey asks one question on seven dissimilar topics - the complete opposite. This results in low reliability.

THE SAGAN STANDARD - SUPPORTING ROBUST CLAIMS

Astronomer Carl Sagan once insisted: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. This phrase later became known as the “Sagan Standard”, and it applies here. In their executive summary, the iWellness team makes the following claim based on data gathered:

With two years of implementation under Swartz Creek’s belt, the data gathered through the iWellness Center platform demonstrates clear evidence of improvement across all topics assessed within the weekly iWellness Center check-ins. These data points serve as a resounding affirmation of the hard work of staff and the efficacy of the partnership between Swartz Creek Community Schools and iWellness Center.

They claim the data gathered is “clear evidence” of improvement across all topics, and indeed we can glean from the chart they present that there was improvement from previous responses. What is not clear, however, is causality. This data tells us students felt better overall about their mental health between the ‘22-‘23 and ‘23-‘24 years, but it does not tell us the cause.

Let’s use a significant event that occurred during this same period: the C19 pandemic. I didn’t take the iWellness survey, but I know I felt better in 2024 than I did in 2022 due to relaxed COVID precautions. Could pandemic recovery have affected this data? A one-year study with two data points (22/23 and 23/24) would not be taken seriously by any researcher, let alone any psychologist. The potential for noise (random or irrelevant variables in data) like the C19 example is far too high.

CREDENTIALS - WHO’S THE AUTHOR?

Whitney Foley, the founder and CEO of iWellness, claims to be a “Certified Wellness Coach” who has worked in the mental health industry for eight years. In his book “Mind The Science”, Dr. Jonathan Stea (a licensed clinical psychologist) warns readers about pseudo-scientific titles like “wellness coach”. The problem, as he explains, is that there is no standard by which to hold them. I can’t wake up one morning and decide that I’m a psychologist, but I can decide I’m a wellness coach.

While Foley claims to be a wellness coach, her LinkedIn page lists her highest level of education as an undergraduate degree in communications and advertising. While she’s certainly started multiple businesses from her home in the past few years, these are not the credentials we should be looking for. So does anyone on Foley’s team have the appropriate credentials? Luckily, my counterpart found this article on FlintSide.com that contained a potential clue.

The team also has a Master’s level child and adolescent psychologist who offers her services to the students who need them. “We all divide and conquer and make sure that all of our school partners are being served to the best ability — being served in a way they deserve,” said Foley.

Source: FLINTSIDE.com

In most states, there is no such title as a masters-level psychologist. Michigan allows graduates of psychology to use the term “psychologist” under very specific conditions, and can only offer services under the direct supervision of a licensed psychologist at the doctoral level. I know this because I’ve applied for licensure under the same rules. If this program had a strong scientific backing, wouldn’t the authors want to promote their relevant credentials? Who is the supervising psychologist? Is there one?

EMOTIONAL SURVEILANCE

The integration of iWellness into school curricula also sparks concerns about privacy and emotional surveillance. The program asks students to disclose personal feelings or undergo assessments of their emotional states, potentially normalizing a culture of monitor

ing. This can blur boundaries between education and psychological intervention, raising ethical questions about consent and the role of educators as untrained pseudo-therapists. Such practices may also stigmatize students who struggle to meet these “wellness” benchmarks, framing them as emotionally deficient.

COMMERCIALIZATION AND DATAFICATION

I argue that the proliferation of proprietary SEL programs like iWellness, sold by for-profit companies, leads to a one-size-fits-all approach that prioritizes marketability over educational value. This standardization can undermine teachers’ autonomy and fail to account for the unique needs of individual classrooms. It is nothing more than the “datafication” of emotions, where wellness is reduced to a technocratic exercise rather than a holistic educational practice.

COUNTER ARGUMENTS

The district may point to the fact that there is an “opt-out” option, however this option was not offered in the initial email, nor was it explained. It may also be pointed out that TPS is not footing the bill for this program, to which I would reply that the funding is still coming from our county, and this program is problematic even if it were free. We are risking our credibility and reputation by even associating with this program. I would further add that merely “piloting” the program is intended to lead to an eventual purchase.

CONCLUSION

I am concerned that our district is being duped. The “science” behind this program seems thus far to be nothing more than pop-psychology slop. Administrators with six-figure salaries pushing half-assed programs with a “mental health” label slapped on the side to unsuspecting school boards desperate to be seen as taking action is a bad look for TPS. Meanwhile, the University of Michigan business graduates who found a way to siphon education funding from Lansing are toasting their success on the countryside. This program has the potential to do real damage to more than just our funding levels. I urge the community to start asking questions and demanding answers.

For more details on the program, check out this article: https://anthonyalaniz.com/2025/04/27/lenawee-isd-spent-1-25-million-to-ask-your-kids-these-7-questions/