Some Seattle parents argue that administrators violated their children’s privacy by sharing the data without their permission.
Seattle-area schools are asking students as young as ten years old probing questions about gender identity, substance use, and sexual preference, and sharing the data with third parties, according to internal documents obtained by National Review.
The questions are asked as part of the Check Yourself survey, which is administered by several districts in the Seattle area under the School-Based Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Service, or SBIRT, model. The survey results are then shared with a group of third-party organizations for research purposes, including Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute and the local county government. Other regions of the country distribute similar surveys under various names.
The survey, which is issued to students as young as fifth grade, uses open-ended prompts — such as “I am most likely to have a crush on” — to ascertain the respondent’s sexual orientation. One section asks students what their goals are for the upcoming school year and includes the option “be in a romantic relationship” as one possibility.
Another question asks students to express their gender identity, with the option to fill in a blank after the prompt, “About Me: I identify as.” Many respondents, including students as young as fifth and sixth graders, wrote “questioning my gender identity” and “non-binary.”
Many students expressed discomfort with answering these questions, writing in responses such as “No, I’m also twelve,” “I never want to do this ever again,” and “Why do you want to know my sexual orientation?”
According to National Review’s analysis of emails, data sharing agreements, and other related documents, at least eight Washington school districts have participated in the program since its inception, including: Auburn School District, Bellevue School District, Highline School District, Lake Washington School District, Seattle Public Schools, Skykomish School District, Snoqualmie Valley School District, Tukwila School District, and Vashon Island School District.
The school districts that responded to requests for comment insisted that they do not share the names of student respondents with any third parties. Third parties that obtained the data from the school districts similarly maintained that they prioritized student privacy in their handling of the data. The school districts and the third parties they work with do, however, have access to a level of personal information that many area parents believe jeopardizes student privacy.
The Department of Education told National Review that the Student Privacy Policy Office launched an investigation into Seattle-area schools over the survey and data-sharing concerns.
Parents in the Dark
Seattle Public School parents received a letter from the school district prior to students taking the survey, explaining that they could opt their student out of participating — but the letter, which was obtained by National Review, fails to mention the age-inappropriate nature of many of the survey questions as well as the fact that the results will be shared with third-party organizations.
School counselors review student survey responses and, if they believe a student’s responses are cause for concern, they follow up with the student personally. More than 67,000 students in the greater Seattle area have taken the survey since it was first administered almost a decade ago.
Concerning responses are apparently common, as counselors have followed up with approximately half of all students who have taken the survey, referring them to additional support resources, such as therapists or support groups, according to the Seattle Public Schools website. A concerned Seattle-area parent, who requested to remain anonymous, told NR that their child reported in their survey that they often experienced stomach aches that forced them to miss school. That response was flagged by counselors as potentially indicative of anxiety, but that finding was never shared with this student’s parents. Moreover, the parent said that the student did not miss school often, and only learned of the response after viewing the student’s survey results.
A broad range of organizations have obtained student survey response data under a variety of data-sharing and funding agreements, some of which were obtained by NR. Other organizations that have purchased or received student data include Portland State University, the University of Washington, Tickit Health, Abt Associates — now Abt Global — and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. The survey, which was created by researchers at Seattle Children’s and the University of Washington, was eventually licensed to Tickit Health, a private for-profit Canadian software company. The copyright was officially transferred to Tickit in 2020.
“Tickit Health provides the Check Yourself platform as a service to schools and healthcare organizations, which remain custodians of the student data,” said Daniel Penn, founder and COO of Tickit Health. “Tickit Health hosts and processes this information only on their behalf and does not use it for its own purposes, nor does it sell or share student data for advertising or marketing. Access to identifiable data by Tickit Health staff is strictly limited to what is necessary for system maintenance, security, or support. Tickit Health follows HIPAA-aligned privacy and security practices where applicable and undergoes an annual SOC 2 audit.”
According to Penn’s LinkedIn page, “The crisis in youth mental health is real.”
“My work is about changing that. Through Tickit Health, I help schools and families spot needs early, connect students to the right care, and learn from every outcome so the next student gets even better support. The goal is simple: no one falls through the cracks — and because cost should never be a barrier, our tools are free for schools,” Penn wrote.
Seattle-area schools have accepted millions in grant funding to implement the survey. An April 2025 School Board Action Report from Seattle Public Schools details a $1.5 million grant to use the SBIRT model. The funding came from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a federal agency that bankrolls schools’ implementation of the Check Yourself survey. A SAMHSA spokesperson confirmed that Seattle Schools is an active grantee in the agency’s Advancing Wellness and Resiliency in Education program.
Third-party organizations — such as King County, which encompasses Seattle — are not given access to the names of individual survey respondents, according to data sharing agreements obtained by National Review, but are given specific demographic information about each respondent. That information, known as personal identification information (PII), can include a respondent’s race, gender, and specific details regarding their after-school activities.
Student Privacy at Risk
A group of 23 Seattle parents expressed concern in a letter to King County, obtained by NR, that third-party organizations could ascertain the identity of individual survey respondents based on their PII and the intimate details students provide when answering survey questions. Those parents demanded that the school district be required to obtain their written permission before their child’s data is shared with any third party. In a given district, for example, there may only be a few students who check certain boxes, such as a sixth grader who identifies as non-binary, is white, has tried marijuana, and is romantically interested in female-identifying partners.
The survey also includes open-text boxes where students can divulge more specific information, which could reveal their identities, including details about their family lives or trouble at home.
The King County Ombuds Office investigated the parental complaints and determined that “no evidence indicates wrongful disclosure of private student information by King County.”
Stephanie Hager, a mother who raised her children in the Seattle area, first became concerned about the inappropriate nature of the survey questions after a friend brought the survey to her attention. Hager described herself previously as “not an ‘opt-out parent’” when it came to school surveys, but after another parent questioned the nature of Check Yourself, Hager went on a deep dive. The survey asks students personal questions, some of which relate to health. There must be a database of this information, Hager thought.
Then, when she dug into the survey through public records requests, she realized there was an even more serious issue: Not only were school districts asking students for intimate details about their sexuality, they were then sharing the data with third parties.
“Schools were paid a lot of money to release these records to third parties, including Seattle Children’s Hospital,” Hager said, referring to the SBIRT funding the district received. “These records are super valuable, because this is very difficult information to get from students, or from adolescents, kids, minors.”
In addition to the grant money given to the schools through the federally funded program, King County also allocates tens of millions to student mental health resources.
The Best Starts for Kids program, funded by King County, distributes $65 million per year to school districts within the county to help improve student mental health outcomes, which includes the implementation of the Check Yourself survey in participating schools. The funding requires the school districts to share the survey data with the county. This arrangement is reflected in the Auburn School District’s data-sharing agreement with King County. According to the agreement, acceptance of the county’s funds means the schools “agree to share and report data to the County to support such evaluation and learning.”
A Track Record of Advocacy
While they insist the survey data will only be used for research purposes and, in certain cases, to intervene on behalf of a troubled student, some of the organizations that are given access to student survey data have a demonstrated track record of advocacy on hot-button topics such as gender.
Seattle Children’s Hospital, which helped develop the survey and collects survey response data from local school districts, recently partnered with Seattle Public Schools to launch a program that provides “gender-affirming” products like chest binders, Nair hair removal, and tucking underwear to middle and high school students on demand. The products are stocked in specific lockers around the schools, which students can access at will, National Review previously reported.
Similarly, the Hilton Foundation — one of the third parties listed in data sharing agreements — promotes gender ideology and created a grant project in 2020 called the Equity Fund. The foundation has donated tens of millions in grants to other groups through this project, “to combat racism and other forms of bias and injustice across multiple dimensions, including gender, disability and LGBTQI+.”
While most third parties receive anonymized data, some, like King County, reserve the right to unmask the identity of individual survey respondents to connect them to mental health resources.
A document that spells out “talking points” regarding the data sharing agreements between the county and the schools makes this arrangement explicit: “Personally Identifiable Information (“PII”) may be necessary to match data over time across programs for effective research and delivery of services to students. Examples of PII may be demographic information that in combination could identify any one student.”
The King County data sharing agreement also specifies that, in addition to student demographic information, the county is also entitled to receive student ID numbers, which the school district can link to the names of individual students. In the data sharing agreement, the county argues it needs access to student ID numbers so that it can track an individual respondent’s progress over the course of multiple surveys. School counselors, who have access to a key that matches a student’s ID number to that student’s name, can then follow up with the student regarding any concerning responses. Parents are not notified of these follow-ups.
A spokesperson for the Snoqualmie School District, one of the Seattle-area districts that shares data with King County, insisted in an email to NR that the data is anonymized and that it never shares “any identifying data” about respondents with the county. The data-sharing agreement between the district and King County does, however, allow the district to share PII data with the county for specific research purposes, though the spokesperson said that has never been the district’s “operational practice.”
An Auburn School District spokesperson said that in its district, the school initially uses a proxy ID, and noted that the ID is not linked to the students’ names — the IDs are stored in the district database.
“Since the vast majority of aggregated screener results do not contain PII, they would typically fall outside the protection of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). However, the District maintains that any request for the complete dataset would be subject to strict review under the Washington State Public Records Act (PRA) exemptions, specifically those related to protecting personal privacy and health information,” the spokesperson told NR.
Abt Global, Bellevue School District, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Highline School District, Lake Washington School District, Seattle Public Schools, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Skykomish School District, Tukwila School District, Vashon Island School District, and the University of Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
Not everyone working for Seattle Public Schools is on board with the survey program: A middle school counselor within the district explained in a 2019 email thread why her school was refusing to administer the survey to students.
“It is a super personal survey we are NOT giving to students,” the email, from a Seattle Public School counselor, reads. “Lots of reasons why- too personal, what would we do with the information, not confidential, etc. etc.” As of the 2025–26 school year, however, all twelve Seattle Public Schools middle schools and nine high schools administer Check Yourself.
Parents, like Hager, were completely unaware of how their children’s privacy was being jeopardized. The students themselves are also kept in the dark: A draft of a survey proctor script from the Lake Washington school district, obtained by NR, explicitly states that “answers will not be shared outside of the support team.”
“It’s very important to us that we protect your answers,” the script reads. “Everything will be on a ‘need to know’ basis. And most people don’t need to know. If someone does need to know, we will ask you about it first before we speak with them.”
Yet Seattle-area schools, per their data-sharing agreements, give survey results to the county while leaving parents in the dark.
“Portland State University and Reclaiming Futures are the developers of the school-based SBIRT model implemented in King County, Wash. PSU has never conducted research associated with the project and has not received identifiable student information,” a representative from Portland State University said. Reclaiming Futures is another screener that uses the SBIRT model.
While Portland State did create the SBIRT model, according to the university representative, it did not create Check Yourself, which is the survey used in Washington state schools.
A King County spokesperson said the county unequivocally supports the use and implementation of the SBIRT program in county schools.
“Protecting the privacy of student data is a key priority of the program. King County has a Data Sharing Agreement (DSA) with every school district and receives de-identified data,” the spokesperson said. “Any data shared by school districts with King County is county-wide, not by district, omits names, student numbers, and any information that could reasonably identify individual students.”
The county insists that student identities are not shared outside of the school district.
“Student responses to the screener are only accessible to authorized school counseling staff and SB-SBIRT support personnel within districts who directly assist students. These responses are used solely to provide follow-up support where needed. This work is not research. The past partnership with Seattle Children’s evaluated the effectiveness of King County’s SB-SBIRT,” a county spokesperson said. “The Seattle Children’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), composed of professionals responsible for making independent determinations about what is human subject research, reviewed this program prior to implementation and agreed.”
Most parents, however, are still concerned about how their students’ information is being used.
“If parents want to sign their kids up for a program that releases their health information and their personally identifiable information, that is their decision, but every parent deserves to make this decision under informed written consent,” Hager said.