July 2007

The Whole Child Meets No Child Left Behind

By Gene R. Carter, Executive Director, ASCD

Advocacy for the whole child is at the heart of the ASCD mission. Our position calls for comprehensive education of all children from preschool through college. The success of this endeavor depends on broad engagement of all stakeholders, including parents, teachers, communities, and policymakers at all levels.

We believe that education must move away from single assessments to more innovative approaches that better measure the skills needed for success in an increasingly competitive world. The U.S. Congress can accelerate this achievement with the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

Although the United States continues to be among the leaders in innovation and academics, this status is neither a guarantee, nor a right. Our position as world leader is temporary, unless we ask more of our students and those who are responsible for their learning.

ASCD commends Congress for its commitment to improve the effectiveness of NCLB by reaching out to the educators who live with NCLB on a daily basis. Through this effective collaboration, we are hopeful the reauthorized version of the legislation will yield a more positive, effective, and user-friendly approach to education.

To this end, ASCD has provided Congress with specific recommendations for improving NCLB (PDF). In summary, ASCD recommends the following:

• Adjust the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) model to incorporate multiple measures of assessment, including growth models, formative assessments, grade point averages, student exhibitions, AP and IB courses, and portfolio assessments. The current model is flawed and superficial in terms of gauging student performance. One day of testing can have too many adverse affects on student, school, and district performance. It is akin to judging the entire performance of Congress on one vote.
• Offer the full complement of sanctions and intervention strategies immediately. The intervention options should be uniformly offered and should enable a school to choose between supplemental service options and public school choice. The existing federal model is prescriptive, inflexible, and inconsistent among states.
• Require supplemental service providers to use only instructors who meet the same criteria in the definition of "highly qualified" required of public school educators.
• Enable the states to determine the requirements for "highly qualified" teachers. Based on state-level curriculum and accountability frameworks, states are the most knowledgeable entity to make this determination.
• Expand the Teacher Incentive Fund and similar programs that provide incentives to teachers and school leaders who work in high-need, high-poverty school districts. We need to ensure that the best teachers are helping those students with the greatest need.
• Increase targeted federal resources to those schools and programs that serve populations with the neediest children by increasing the weighting factor of poverty in federal formulas.
• Redesign current competitive grant programs to categorical programs that will drive funds to those school districts with high-poverty and high-need students, rather than those school districts with effective grant writers.
• Allow English language learners the flexibility to demonstrate progress over the course of three years, rather than the current one-year construct. Schools should be allowed to demonstrate growth and progress over a three-year period before being sanctioned.
• Support the student-specific Individualized Education Plan (IEP) as the measure for the learning of students with disabilities, rather than a state assessment. The IEP is a more accurate plan of a student's abilities and disabilities and is better than the arbitrary target created by Congress.

ASCD encourages Congress to adopt these recommendations as part of the NCLB reauthorization. Each of the recommendations specifically addresses different difficulties or obstacles schools have faced since the inception of this law. Through a collaborative effort with educators, Congress can remove these obstacles, implement these recommendations, and ensure that our children are whole children, ready to compete in the 21st century.

Learn more about ASCD's Whole Child Initiative.