ASCD’s “Whole Child” blog is an important, action-oriented advocacy site hosted by the nation’s largest educational membership organization on behalf of our country’s school children, their parents, and their teachers. Theirs is a noble cause and one I hope you will join, as I have, by first signing their petition and then finding ways to plug into their efforts to get all of us re-educated to a child-centered, child-nurturing, educationally engaging and developmentally dynamic approach to strengthening and refocusing teaching and learning in our schools and communities.

Fulfilling a Long-Held Hope
Many of us have for decades held fast to our belief in the benefits of weaving principles and practices from the field of child development directly into classroom teaching strategies and instructional programs. It’s heartening for us to see a resurgence of support for “whole child” approaches. We have long hoped that educators and policy makers would come round to see that the path to high achievement and accountability is through more engaged, relational learning with children rather than through a steady diet of standardized direct instruction and high-stakes testing alone.

I believe this is what Marian Wright Edelman had in mind when she had us “Stand for Children” at the Lincoln Memorial in 1996 and said we must “Leave No Child Behind.” But that is not what “No Child Left Behind” became. Instead, our under-funded federal and state educational programs and high-stakes testing juggernaut left millions of children behind academically, doubling our high school dropout rates and making a mockery of a noble slogan, especially in poor communities.

Now we are faced once again with a great need for educational recovery, along with our great need for economic recovery.

Beyond the “Whole Child” to the “Whole Society”
It will not be enough to say we will educate the whole child, for we have known for a long time that “it takes a village to raise a child,” and too many of our villages are struggling mightily to survive economically and socially. In poor school districts, such as the one where I currently serve as an administrator, town and school finance committees argue over scarce resources, meaning mothers and aunts, grandfathers and uncles of the same children in the same villages have to decide between textbooks and police jobs, a town nurse or school teachers.

If we believe in the “whole child” approach for every child, it will be important to join ASCD and help create a national advocacy for every child in the “whole society,” the larger state and federal arenas of power. We must do so because, especially in our poor communities, our children are being unjustly denied the educational rights that “whole children” in wealthier zip code communities receive simply by accident of birth. It is no longer acceptable to continue properly educating just some “whole children.”

Building on a Bold Beginning
Thirty-four years ago this April, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed into law pieces of his vision for a “Great Society,” which created the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the first significant funding ever for the education of poor children; funding for special education; the creation of  Head Start; and the first Assistant Secretary of Education.

It was a bold beginning with many groundbreaking actions. Now might we perhaps finally stand together to take similar action in the light of this new administration to educate all our children the way we know is right for all of them, not just some of them? This, of course, is a matter of educational, economic, and social justice.

All of Our Children Need Fair Funding
Those of us who teach and work in under-resourced schools in under-resourced communities know that a “whole child” approach such as that advocated by ASCD is the best route to success for our eager, hopeful, and industrious young students to acquire the “21st century skills” they need to serve their families, their communities, and the world. We are no less competent or dedicated to our profession than our colleagues in wealthier communities where the vast majority of students will master these skills, graduate from high school, and achieve greater life success because of the resources of their schools and communities and their life circumstances.

In under-resourced communities, we cannot guarantee success for anywhere near the percentage of our children as is possible in wealthier communities, no matter how hard we work or how many extra hours we volunteer. We are in double jeopardy because our funding is lower at the same time as our needs are higher. Our schools require more teachers, smaller classes, and the more-specialized services that are commonplace in wealthier districts. We need librarians, computer teachers, reading and math coaches, and tutors. Our town budgets simply do not have the resources to make that happen. Our state and federal funding formulas designed to support local education continue to discriminate against poor districts by not compensating with significantly equitable formulas, and most justice and legislative systems have yet to show the moral courage to right this wrong.

As we advocate for the “whole child,” let us remember that without fundamental funding reform for our schools, we will continue to leave too many of our children behind.