Whole Child Education

ASCD and more than 25 other major education organizations (including several whole child partners), representing a wide array of subject areas, are promoting consensus recommendations for how federal education policy can better support subject disciplines beyond reading, math, and science. The recommendations are a response to proposals that could threaten schools' and districts' ability to provide students with a comprehensive education that prepares them to graduate from high school ready for success in college, careers, and citizenship, and that narrows the definition of such readiness to only the Common Core State Standards.

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The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has released its annual analysis of the significant developments and trends in U.S. education. As always, The Condition of Education report addresses all aspects and all levels of education, but this year's version includes a special focus on the changes in the nation's high schools over the past 20 years.

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A new nationwide survey on the state of arts education in U.S. public schools finds that arts offerings haven't declined as much as expected, but that students in high-poverty schools, particularly at the secondary level, do not receive the same rich exposure to arts opportunities as their wealthier peers.

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In the 20th century, the United States was the world leader in education—the first country to achieve universal secondary education and the first to expand higher education beyond the elite class. Now other countries are catching up and leaping ahead—in high school graduation rates, in the quality and equity of their K–12 education systems, and in the proportion of students graduating from college. It is not that American education has gotten worse so much as that education in other parts of the world has gotten so much better, so fast.

Designed to promote conversation about how to educate students for a rapidly changing and increasingly borderless and innovation-based world, A World-Class Education: Learning from International Models of Excellence and Innovation is not about casting blame; it is about understanding what the best school systems in the world are doing right for the purpose of identifying what U.S. schools—at the national, state, and local level—might do better.

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Illinois lawmakers have officially recognized the value of a whole child approach to education that ensures each child is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. As a result of Illinois ASCD's persistent efforts, the state legislature passed whole child resolutions (HR 0781 and SR 0545) that designate March as Illinois Whole Child Month and call on parents, educators, and communities to work together to support the whole child. The House resolution also encourages every school in the state to celebrate Illinois Whole Child Month by adopting at least one of the five whole child tenets to promote and encourage throughout the month.

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You don't have to implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) alone! District, school, and classroom personnel can collaborate and create communities of support toward successful implementation. Join ASCD author Judy Carr as she discusses how to create the communities and shares specific protocols and processes that attendees can use immediately.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012, 3:00 p.m. eastern time
Register now!

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You know it's crucial to prepare students for long-term success rather than short-term achievement. Yet federal education policies like the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) promote narrow, stopgap reforms instead of comprehensive support for our nation's youth.

Tell Washington leaders to focus on what really matters—our children's long-term futures—by creating a President's Council on the Whole Child.

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The We the People initiative is the Obama administration's effort to provide citizens with a new way to petition the administration to take action on a range of important issues facing the United States. If a petition garners 25,000 signatures within 30 days, White House staff reviews it, sends it to the appropriate policy experts, and issues an official response.

Today ASCD is taking advantage of this initiative and petitioning the administration to make whole child education a national priority. We petition the Obama administration to establish a President's Council on the Whole Child to help students be healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged, and we urge you to add your voice in support of this holistic and child-centered push for education at the executive office level.

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The true measure of students' proficiency and readiness for college, career, and citizenship has to be based on more than just their scores on any state standardized reading and math assessments. It has to be based on valid, reliable, multiple sources of information. In 2002, the passing of the No Child Left Behind Act (the revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act) required more tests and it raised the stakes of those tests by meting out sanctions if students failed to reach each state's minimum levels of improvement. The emphasis of the law really was on documenting proficiency, and unfortunately that did not necessarily translate into improving assessment overall. When ESEA is reauthorized in the coming years, testing is likely to remain a key part of the law.

In our Assessment 101 show, we looked at the meaning and purpose of assessment, the different types, and how they are used to monitor student progress, provide timely feedback (or not), adjust teaching-learning activities, and contribute to student achievement overall. In this episode, we discuss the future of assessment and how the current accountability model must evolve from one that is punitive, prescriptive, and often overly bureaucratic to one that is truly learning-driven, informative, promotes supportive learning communities and cultures of continual improvement, and rewards achievement. You'll hear from

• Susan Brookhart, an ASCD Faculty member, author, and senior research associate in the School of Education at Duquesne University. Brookhart has spent the last 20 years studying and writing about classroom assessment and specializes in combining research-based strategies and practical applications, working with classroom teachers and administrators to customize strategies for their schools.
• Deborah Gist, the Rhode Island Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education and member of the governing board of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, a consortium of states working together to develop a common set of K–12 assessments in English and math anchored in college- and career-readiness. Gist began her career as an elementary school teacher in Texas and has also served as a senior policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Education.
• David Griffith, the director of public policy at ASCD who leads the development and implementation of ASCD's legislative agenda as well as ASCD's efforts to influence educational decision making at the local, state, and federal levels. He has 20 years of political experience as a congressional aide and on several political campaigns. Prior to joining ASCD, Griffith was the director of governmental and public affairs for the National Association of State Boards of Education, where he oversaw the organization's advocacy and political activities as well as media relations.

What is your vision for the future of assessment?

Post submitted by Larry Lewin and Betty Shoemaker, authors of Great Performances: Creating Classroom-Based Assessment Tasks, 2nd ed., where they tackle the sparkles and blemishes of performance assessments. With expertise in performance-based assessment, differentiated instruction, literacy, integrated thematic curriculum, and teaching comprehension with student-based questioning, they are influencing decision makers about both the importance and quality of great classroom-based assessments instead of high stakes standardized tests. Connect with Lewin by e-mail at larry@larrylewin.com and Shoemaker at dr.betty.shoemaker@comcast.net.

"Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked."

—John Dewey, Democracy And Education (1916)

We have some great news! The second edition of our book, Great Performances: Creating Classroom-Based Assessment Tasks, has just been published. We would like to say that it is single-handedly bringing adequate yearly progress (AYP) to its knees. Well ... we can hope that it at least has influenced, and will continue to influence, decision makers about the importance of and quality of great classroom-based assessments as compared to high-stakes standardized tests.

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