Whole Child Education

For the past five years, Fouke (Ark.) Elementary School has witnessed academic improvement in all K–5 grade levels. Attendance has also improved over the same time period. These accomplishments did not happen by accident, instead they are the results of the hard work by staff, students, and families. Not I as principal, not one teacher, nor one program alone is responsible for these successes. These achievements are a result of creating a collaborative and positive learning environment for all our stakeholders.

To achieve our essential goals, our school adopted elements from the Arkansas Leadership Academy and developed five areas to add more breadth, depth, ownership, and sustainability.

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Can you quantify the effectiveness of a good teacher? How much of that can be determined from student test scores? And how can teachers of untested subjects like the arts, physical education, and social studies be fairly evaluated? These are some of the questions raised in the newest edition of Policy Priorities, ASCD's quarterly policy newsletter, which examines U.S. efforts to transform its teacher evaluation systems.

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This Hunt Institute video discusses the rationale behind the development of the Common Core State Standards.

"These standards now being implemented by more than 44 states across the nation were built upon strengths and lessons learned in states. They were informed by other top performing countries and grounded in research and evidence," says the Hunt Institute. Learn more with ASCD Express.

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ASCD recently sent feedback to the U.S. Department of Education on reinvigorating civic learning and engagement across the country. This feedback is a response to the department's call for suggestions on four provisions in its road map for advancing civic learning (PDF).

Research and test scores show that our students lack knowledge of the U.S. government system and their civic responsibilities, but many schools struggle to prioritize civic learning amid competing academic concerns. ASCD believes that civic learning is an essential component of a whole child approach to education that gives students a voice in a safe and supportive environment and ensures that they understand their opportunities in and obligations to their schools, their communities, and the nation.

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Cathy Vatterott began her ASCD Conference on Teaching and Learning session, "Not Your Mother's Gradebook: Transitioning to Standards-Based Learning," by asking participants to think about the reasons that conventional tests may not be the best method to assess student learning.

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In the past three years, 36 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have changed their teacher evaluation policies, mainly to qualify for federal Race to the Top funds or No Child Left Behind waivers. States are drafting, implementing, and using new systems that incorporate measures of student achievement, levels of performance, classroom observations, and performance-based tenure decisions. All these elements must come together to produce results relevant to the improvement of teaching and the development of teachers themselves.

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With many U.S. states overhauling their teacher evaluation systems and introducing student test scores as a factor, how can schools ensure fair evaluation of teachers of non-tested subjects, like art and physical education? One of the first states to begin implementing evaluation reform was Tennessee, and back in February, Education Week's Teaching Now blog noted the efforts of arts teachers in Memphis to devise alternative evaluation criteria based on portfolios, work that went on to be lauded by Arne Duncan. Absent alternative criteria, such teachers would be evaluated in part on a schoolwide value-added score unrelated to their subject specifically.

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Teachers should be evaluated on the atmosphere they create in their classrooms and the degree of trust they have established with their students. Several findings from the Schools of Integrity and other research literature support examining both classroom culture and teacher-student relationships.

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Educators constantly look for new tools and programs to stimulate and motivate learners, enhance student performance, or change the role of the teacher. Recent trends include flipped teaching, red-shirting (postponing kindergarten entrance so that a child is one year older than his peers), merit pay, year-round school, and a longer school day.

Which strategies or innovations are likely to have the greatest effect on student learning? According to Tony Frontier, assistant professor of doctoral leadership studies at Cardinal Stritch University, most education innovations and policies can be placed in one of five categories, some of which provide more powerful leverage than others. Frontier presented these ideas during his ASCD 2012 Conference on Teaching and Learning session, "Five Levers to Improve Student Learning."

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Teachers know it, parents know it, and even students know it, but there seems to be no consensus across states, districts, and schools about how to measure it and ensure that it is measured fairly. I'm talking about teacher evaluations. Having an effective teacher at the head of the class is the most important in-school factor influencing student learning, and teacher evaluation systems are supposed to assess just how good teachers are in the classroom, with the goal of helping them improve as needed. But many teachers report that they are not evaluated often enough and, in some cases, are not even evaluated in the subjects they teach.

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