ASCD Community in Action

What Every School Leader Needs to Know About RTI. (2010). By Margaret Searle. Stock No. 109097. Price: $18.95 (member); $23.95 (nonmember).

DVD

Implementing RTI in Secondary Schools DVD Set. Two 45-minute DVDs, each with a professional development program. Stock No. 610011. Price: $309 (member); $369 (nonmember).

Advocating Well-Rounded Education

As part of its Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization efforts, ASCD has joined with partner organizations to develop policy recommendations for how the federal government can better support well-rounded education.

Unfortunately, No Child Left Behind has focused primarily on English language arts and math, to the detriment of other subjects. The Obama administration's fiscal year 11 budget request includes a $38.9 million (or 17 percent) increase in funding to support teaching and learning in the arts, history, civics, foreign languages, geography, and economics. However, the budget request proposes to combine eight subject-specific grant programs into a single competitive grant program that would pit these subjects against one another for resources.

The policy recommendations that ASCD and its partners have developed call for the Obama administration and Congress to

• Include all elements of a well-rounded education in any definition of college-, career-, and citizenship-ready standards.
• Maintain discrete funding streams for each subject area to ensure that each retains federal support individually and that all receive a minimum level of resources reflecting collective support for a well-rounded education.
• Promote grant competitions within disciplines, not among them, that give priority to under served or high-need schools and students and that emphasize best practices, scalability, and cross-subject collaboration and integration.
• Develop a rigorous evaluation process that includes significant input from professional educators to measure the effectiveness of the funded activities and to propose improvements in the respective grant programs.
• Establish meaningful public reporting and accountability requirements regarding student achievement in each of these disciplines at the school, district, and state levels.

More than two dozen organizations have endorsed the recommendations, which ASCD and its partners are sharing with members of Congress as they develop ESEA legislation. ASCD's Whole Child Initiative has long touted the value of a comprehensive approach to education; such an approach exposes students to a multitude of disciplines that expand their learning and spark their creativity. To learn more, visit www.ascd.org/wellrounded.

At the EDge

Since launching in December 2009, ASCD's free social-networking community for educators—ASCD EDge—has grown to more than 11,000 members. Community members can connect and become friends with educators from 88 countries. ASCD EDge also has a number of experts within the community: More than 50 ASCD authors are on the site, and the many superintendents, principals, and award-winning teachers who have joined can also be great resources.

Community members can comment on their personal wall or on others' walls, join any of the more than 70 groups or form one of their own, share audio and video, and even write their own blog for the whole community to see. New functionality now enables members to join private groups, share group documents, and receive e-mail alerts.

Need a personal walk-through? Feel free to contact website@ascd.org; a team member will be happy to schedule a time to take you on a tour of the community. Find out more about ASCD EDge at http://edge.ascd.org.