Policy

A Call to Action!

January 19th, 2012

Sign for Whole Child

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 Future of Assessment

January 12th, 2012

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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?

Teaching and Assessing Meaningfully in a Standards-Based World

January 11th, 2012

Great Performances

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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The #1 Reason Girls Drop Out (and What You Can Do About It)

January 4th, 2012

The United States has the highest teen birthrate in the industrialized world, and teen pregnancy and parenting is the number one reason girls drop out of school. (See the infographic below for the far-reaching effects of teen pregnancy.)

This is an avoidable crisis—teen parents don’t have to be left behind. Not only can access to comprehensive sex education (including information about both abstinence and birth control) help drive down those numbers, but measures to keep pregnant and parenting students in school actually reduce the incidence of repeat teen pregnancies, and lead to improved outcomes for teen parents and their children.

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Connecting the Classroom to the Capitol

December 26th, 2011

What works best for children? What must we all—educators, families, policymakers, and community members—do to ensure their success? Answering those questions pushes us to redefine what a successful learner is and how we measure success.

ASCD’s Whole Child Initiative seeks to change the conversation about education from a focus on narrowly defined academic achievement to one that encompasses a broader definition of accountability. From its inception, the Whole Child Initiative has pursued three goals:

  • Increase awareness and understanding among educators, families, policymakers, and local community members about a whole child approach to learning.
  • Promote engagement between and among our members, our partners, and whole child supporters.
  • Advocate action at local, state, and national levels that advances a whole child approach to learning.

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Assessment 101

December 7th, 2011

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The reality in the United States right now is that we focus extensively on test scores and far too little on the whole child. We then choose one-size-fits-all fixes based on those test scores while ignoring solid research about the infinite ways kids learn and children develop. The true measure of students’ proficiency and readiness for college, career, and citizenship must be based on more than just their scores on any state standardized reading and math assessments. It has to be based on valid, reliable information from multiple sources.

In this episode of the Whole Child Podcast, we’re taking a look at the meaning and purpose of assessment; the different types, including formative and summative, standardized and subjective, and informal and formal; and how assessments are used to monitor student progress, provide timely feedback, and adjust teaching-learning activities to maximize student progress. What should we know that assessments can’t do for us? What should we think about when we look at that data, assess its meaning, and decide how to use it for future planning? You’ll hear from

  • Nancy Frey, professor of literacy in the School of Teacher Education at San Diego State University and coauthor of several ASCD books, including The Formative Assessment Action Plan and Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques for Your Classroom.
  • Tom Whitby, adjunct professor at St. Joseph’s College and founder of #Edchat, which has been recognized with an Edublog Award for the Most Influential Educational Twitter Series.
  • Peter DeWitt, principal of Poestenkill Elementary in New York, consultant for the International Center for Leadership in Education, and author of the Finding Common Ground blog for Education Week and the upcoming book Dignity for All: Safeguarding LGBT Students.

Follow host Molly McCloskey and our guests on Twitter @Molsmcc, @NancyFrey, @tomwhitby, and @PeterMDeWitt and share your thoughts on assessment. In January’s episode of the Whole Child Podcast, we will continue the conversation by looking at what the future of assessments should be.

How do we demonstrate our high expectations of students—and ourselves—through our curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices?

Throughout December and January: Assessment

December 6th, 2011

We focus extensively on test scores and far too little on the whole child. We often choose one-size-fits-all fixes while ignoring solid research about the infinite ways students learn and children develop. The true measure of students’ proficiency and college-, career-, and citizenship-readiness must be based on more than just their scores on state standardized reading and math assessments.

We shouldn’t simply teach to the test. We need to teach for understanding, and assessments are tools to gauge that understanding. When used effectively, assessments can facilitate high levels of student achievement by providing ongoing information about students’ grasp of key concepts and how to enhance their learning to help them meet or exceed academic requirements. States, districts, and schools should provide a more comprehensive picture of student achievement through multiple assessments of and for learning. Join us throughout December and January as we take a look at how assessments can serve a whole child approach to education and inform—not drive—school improvement efforts.

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A Whole Child Approach to Education and the Common Core State Standards Initiative

December 5th, 2011

A whole child approach to education is defined by policies, practices, and relationships that ensure each child, in each school, in each community, is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. It engages all stakeholders—educators, families, policymakers, and community members—in defying the “percentage proficient” culture of too many school reform efforts, to focus on each child. And it further raises the bar of accountability beyond narrow, single-issue “improvement” strategies to efforts that reflect the broad array of factors influencing long-term success rather than short-term achievement.

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The Common Core of a Whole Child Approach

November 21st, 2011

This November, get to the core of the Common Core State Standards with ASCD’s free webinar series, which will provide an overview of the new standards and address how to implement them effectively to serve the needs of the whole child.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011, 3:00 p.m. eastern time

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Common Core: Policy and Implementation

November 14th, 2011

This November, get to the core of the Common Core State Standards with ASCD’s free webinar series, which will provide an overview of the new standards and address how to implement them effectively to serve the needs of the whole child.

Wednesday, November 15, 2011, 3:00 p.m. eastern time
Register now!

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