The Whole Child Initiative: Sustainable

These indicators may serve as a needs assessment, a set of strategic goals and outcomes, a framework for decision making, or the definition of what a whole child approach to education truly requires. In fact, these indicators are among those we consider in the selection process for Vision in Action: The ASCD Whole Child Award. However you choose to use them, please share them widely among your stakeholders and involve many voices in soliciting evidence related to their implementation. Although these are largely school-based, a whole child approach to education requires the engagement of the entire community to ensure that each child is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.

Schools implementing a whole child approach use collaboration, coordination, and integration to ensure the approach's long term success.

1. Implementation of a whole child approach to education is a cornerstone of our school improvement plan and is included in our data collection and analysis process.

2. Our professional development plan reflects emphasis on and implementation of a whole child approach to education, is individualized to meet staff needs, and is coordinated with ongoing school improvement efforts.

3. Our school regularly reviews the alignment of our policies and practices to ensure the health, safety, engagement, support, and challenge of our students.

4. Our school uses a balanced approach to formative and summative assessments that provide reliable, developmentally appropriate information about student learning.

5. Our professional evaluation process emphasizes meeting the needs of the whole child and provides opportunities for individualized professional growth.

6. Our school identifies and collaborates with community agencies, service providers, and organizations to meet specific goals for students.

7. Our school implements a proactive approach to identifying students' social, emotional, physical, and academic needs and designs coordinated interventions among all service providers.

8. Our school leaders implement a distributed leadership plan to ensure progress.

9. Our school staff, community-based service providers, families, and other adult stakeholders share research, appropriate data, idea generation, and resources to provide a coordinated, whole child approach for each student.

10. Our school and all our partners consistently assess and monitor our progress on all indicators of student success to ensure progress and make necessary changes in a timely manner.

Change the conversation about education in your school and community. Download the set of sustainability indicators (PDF). Explore free, in-depth resources to help you move from a vision for educating the whole child to action that results in successful, well-rounded young people.