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It’s time to re-envision the Nation’s Report Card to consider not just academic achievement, but also physical and emotional health.

 

I suspect most people would agree that cognitive skills alone do not prepare young people to succeed in college, at work, and in other parts of adult life. Most would agree, too, that schools play an essential role not just in teaching academic content and skills but also in helping to meet students’ physical, social, and emotional needs. For instance, according to the 2013 PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, a majority of Americans strongly agree that schools should promote students’ well-being and build their character (Bushaw & Lopez, 2013).  

However, many Americans are unconvinced that their schools are doing these things successfully. Among parents who were surveyed in that PDK poll, almost one-third said they agree, and another third said they agree strongly, with the statement “My child has substantially higher wellness because of the school he or she attends” — but that leaves a third of parents expressing neutral or negative views about their school’s contribution to their child’s well-being. 

Similarly, only a little more than half of parents agreed or strongly agreed that their child’s school helped students become healthier and build positive relationships with family and friends. A previous study, using data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten, found that only 30% of students met expectations for their “well-balanced” cognitive, socioemotional, and physical development. And those who did meet the expectations of such whole child development were significantly more likely to be white and socioeconomically advantaged (Hair et al., 2006). 

A number of national organizations have advocated a more balanced and holistic approach to meeting students’ full range of developmental needs. Although the specific goals of these efforts vary, they tend to use the umbrella term whole child education. ASCD’s Whole Child approach (www.ascd.org/whole-child.aspx), for example, calls for a transition away from a narrow focus on academic achievement to a system that promotes student health and safety alongside their emotional and academic growth. Likewise, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model (www.cdc.gov/healthyschools) also calls for greater attention to each child’s cognitive, physical, social, and emotional development, as have efforts to promote 21st-century skills and readiness for the 3C’s (college, career, and civic life) (National Research Council, 2012).  

But while these efforts have received widespread support, the country’s best-known measure of student performance, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — known as “the Nation’s Report Card” — continues to focus solely on students’ scores on standardized achievement tests. To be sure, the NAEP is well-regarded, and it provides important insights into how student achievement has changed over time, in a variety of subject areas, and in schools and districts across the country. Yet, it tells us nothing about children’s growth in other important areas. 

It is high time that we redesigned the Nation’s Report Card so that it can inform the public about not just students’ academic progress in school, but also their physical, social, and emotional development, and the ways in which such growth is or is not supported by their local environment, including both schools and the whole community (Comer et al., 1996; Lee et al., 2019; Maier et al., 2017). Under the current pandemic crisis, this transformation is more of an imperative than ever before. 

A report card that focuses on the “whole child in the whole community” (Figure 1) will provide useful data that help answer two key questions: When it comes to meeting children’s full range of developmental needs, how are our states (and the entire country) doing? And if some states have been more successful than others in supporting whole-child development, what factors account for the difference?  

Linking up the data 

The NAEP serves as the Nation’s Report Card on academic achievement, but it lacks critical information related to children’s health and well-being. In contrast, the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) provides comprehensive information about child health and well-being, but it provides no data on achievement. Linking datasets such as NSCH and NAEP would help fill the gaps, which could then inform government policies intended to improve children’s physical and emotional health and their academic learning (National Research Council & Institute of Medicine, 2009). Other relevant national data sources on child development and community environment could also be incorporated, including the National Institute on Drug Abuse Monitoring the Future survey and the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System and School Health Profiles. 

As I demonstrated in a recent study, a combination of data from the NAEP and NSCH can be used to create a holistic measure of the whole child and the whole community.  

The whole child index 

NAEP (www.nationsreportcard.gov) assesses 4th- and 8th-grade students’ proficiency rates in reading, math, and science and 8th-grade students’ proficiency in civics, geography, and U.S. history. For my study, I drew on data from 2015, which sampled 139,900 grade 4 students and 136,900 grade 8 students in mathematics and 139,100 grade 4 students and 136,500 grade 8 students in reading.  

I then combined these data with results from the 2016 NSCH (http://nschdata.org), which surveyed almost 140,000 households in which children were present, and administered more than 50,000 questionnaires about those children’s physical and socioemotional health, as well as their family, school, and neighborhood environments.  

This allowed me to create three separate measures:  

  •  An academic proficiency index consisting of the average percentage of grade 4 and grade 8 students at or above proficient on the 2015 NAEP reading, math, science, and social studies (civics, geography, and U.S. history) assessments.  
  •  socioemotional wellness index based on parental responses to NSCH survey questions on topics such as their children’s active engagement in school (e.g., how much they appeared to care about doing well and completing required homework); their interest and curiosity in learning new things; their persistence in working to finish tasks, and their ability to stay calm when facing a challenge. 
  •  physical health index based on parental responses to NSCH survey questions about topics such as their children’s health, weight, frequency of exercise, and physical challenges (such as asthma, difficulty walking, or problems with hearing or seeing).  

Together, these three indices form a composite measure, the whole child index 

The whole community index 

Of course, schools alone aren’t responsible for student outcomes, so I also created a whole community index, meant to highlight factors within families and communities that may affect students. This includes data from six NSCH measures: 

  • No adverse childhood experiences: The percentage of children (ages 0 through 17) who have not experienced challenges such as poverty; the divorce of parents or guardians; the incarceration of a close relative; violence at home or in the neighborhood; living with someone who is mentally ill, suicidal, or severely depressed, or living with someone who has a problem with alcohol or drugs. 
  • Living in a protective family: The percentage of children who meet all age-appropriate criteria for protective family routines and habits, such as no exposure to household smoking; the sharing of meals on four or more days per week; less than two hours of screen time per day; being read to every day (for young children, ages 0-5), and completing required homework (for children ages 6-17). 
  • Not being bullied at school: The percentage of school-age children whose parents report that their child is not bullied, picked on, or excluded by other children.  
  • Going to a safe school: The percentage of school-age children whose parents definitely agree that their children are safe at school. 
  • Living in a supportive neighborhood: The percentage of children whose parents report that they know where to go for help in the community and that people in their neighborhood help each other out and watch out for each other’s children. 
  • Living in a safe neighborhood: The percentage of children whose parents definitely agree that their children are safe in the neighborhood. 

Grading the nation and states 

An integrated analysis of these indices (Table 1) reveals that when we look at a combination of academic, social, personal, and health factors, only about half of American children and youth are doing well (i.e., the country gets a C grade overall). When broken down by domain, we find that the average grades are B+ for physical health (we succeed with well over half of children and youth); C for socioemotional wellness (succeeding with about half), and D for academic proficiency (succeeding with less than half). There are significant variations among states, too, with state grades ranging from C- to B-. Unfortunately, no state gets an A (succeeding with a large majority) on the combined whole child index or any of the three subindices. 

For all 50 states, there appears to be a positive relationship among academic proficiency, socioemotional wellness, and physical health measures, which suggests that these educational goals — improving students’ cognitive, socioemotional, and physical outcomes — can be complementary. Rather than prioritizing one goal at the expense of the others, states can pursue all three simultaneously.  

Further, the whole community index is significantly and positively associated with the whole child index, no matter the children’s level of poverty. In other words, the whole community environment stands out as a driving factor of whole child development. States where students live in a protective and nurturing family-school-neighborhood environment are more likely to produce more physically and emotionally healthy and high-achieving students (see Figure 2). It really does take a whole community to raise a whole child. 

Broadening assessment and accountability 

High-stakes testing policies such as those created under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) push schools to prioritize academic skills over socioemotional development, health, and other outcomes (Lee & Lee, 2020). Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, state and local policy makers have more leeway than under NCLB to incorporate nonacademic measures into their accountability systems. However, state standards related to socioemotional development and health remain sparse, and because they remain largely unconnected to school accountability systems, they continue to receive relatively little attention from education leaders (see CDC, n.d.; Dusenbury, Dermody, & Weissberg, 2018; Lee et al., 2019; Martin, Sargrad, & Batel, 2016).  

As this analysis of NAEP and NSCH data reveals, though, it is not difficult to conduct a holistic assessment of children’s well-being, integrating the measurement of their academic progress with measures of their socioemotional development and health, including information about their family, school, and neighborhood environments. There is no reason why the Nation’s Report Card cannot be expanded to include this broader range of findings. Further, it’s clear that when it comes to whole-child development, some states are doing better than others — and further research may allow states to identify and replicate the most promising approaches to providing integrated services and supports to schools, families, and communities. 

This study also has implications for how we assess school effectiveness. First, we can and should assess not just students’ academic progress but also their socioemotional development and health. Second, when interpreting school accountability results, states should also consider data from assessments of the whole community environment, which give context to and help explain student performance in school and on tests. Third, it is crucial to use what we learn from these measures to provide educators, families, and communities with information, resources, and training on the practices that show the best results. This broader approach to understanding which schools and communities are serving their children well will enable us to extend their success into more communities, helping more children become healthier, happier, and smarter.   

References 

Bushaw, W.J. & Lopez, S.L. (2013). Which way do we go? The 45th annual PDK/Gallup poll of the public’s attitudes toward the public schools. Arlington, VA: PDK International. 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). National health education standards. Atlanta, GA: Author.  

Comer, J.P., Haynes, N.M., Joyner, E.T., & Ben-Avie, M. (Eds.). (1996). Rallying the whole village: The Comer process for reforming education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. 

Dusenbury, L., Dermody, C., & Weissberg, R.P. (2018). 2018 State scorecard scan: More states are supporting social and emotional learning. Chicago, IL: Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. 

Hair, E., Halle, T., Terry-Humen, E., Lavelle, B., & Calkins, J. (2006). Children’s school readiness in the ECLS-K: Predictions to academic, health, and social outcomes in first grade. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 21, 431-454. 

Lee, J., Kim, N., Cobanoglu, A., & O’Connor, M. (2019). Moving to educational accountability system 2.0: Socioemotional learning standards and protective environment for whole child development. Albany, NY: The Rockefeller Institute of the Government.   

Lee, J. & Lee, M. (2020). Is ‘whole child’ education obsolete? Public school principals’ educational goal priorities in the era of accountability. Educational Administration Quarterly.  

Maier, A., Daniel, J., Oakes, J., & Lam, L. (2017). Community schools as an effective school improvement strategy: A review of the evidence. Palo Alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute.  

Martin, C., Sargrad, S., & Batel, S. (2016). Making the grade: A 50-state analysis of school accountability systems. Washington, DC: Center for American Progress. 

National Research Council. (2012). Education for life and work. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. 

National Research Council & Institute of Medicine. (2009). Preventing mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders among young people: Progress and possibilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Jaekyung Lee

JAEKYUNG LEE  is a professor at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. He is the author of The Anatomy of Achievement Gaps .