No, the SCOTUS has ruled that students in school do have 5th Amendment protections, and that most Constitutional protections apply to minors in school. What I'm saying is that the Fifth Amendment privilege does not apply where it isn't possible to use their statement against them in court. What the superintendent is claiming here is that there is a law which says when students answer these kinds of surveys in school, whatever they say can't be used against them. This in turn means that they couldn't legally incriminate themselves, and hence they don't have the right to refuse to answer the questions. If no such law existed and in fact their answers could be used against them, THEN the teacher would be correct to advise them of this. So the entire issue turns on whether the superintendent is correct about the law here. If he's correct, then all this teacher did was advise them on a right which didn't apply, and cause them to fear something which they had no reason to fear.
That said, even assuming the law is as the District says it is, the school should have stated this on the survey itself, to avoid confusion of the students and their teacher. It might be unfair to sanction the teacher if he honestly believed that the students were in jeopardy of incriminating themselves, even if he was incorrect.
