Whole Child Education Resources

On September 7, 2018, Policy Analysis for California Education and the Learning Policy Institute hosted Supporting the Whole Child: Practice, Policy, and Measurement, an event on how schools can be organized to support the whole child, which featured a series of panels with leading researchers, policymakers, and practitioners.

In this webinar, co-hosted by the Learning Policy Institute and the National Urban League, we shared and discussed tools and resources designed to support advocates and policymakers as they work to leverage opportunities to inform and support continuous improvement across all schools as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is implemented.

On February 5th, the Learning Policy Institute and the National Urban League hosted a webinar entitled, “Using School Climate Data to Meet Student Needs" on how states are measuring, collecting, and reporting on a variety of school climate and social and emotional learning indicators under the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights Data Collection demonstrate that students of color, students with disabilities, and other historically underserved students are disproportionately impacted by zero-tolerance school discipline policies. During this briefing, panelists highlighted alternative, research-based school discipline policies and practices which create safe, inclusive learning environments for all students. LPI also released a new report, Protecting Students’ Civil Rights: The Federal Role in School Discipline.

Decades of research show that whole child education is essential to students' academic and life success and can reduce the negative effects of poverty on achievement. Speakers at this briefing examined federal policy levers that state and local policymakers can use to invest in research-based whole child approaches to learning, including integrated student supports, community schools, and other approaches that foster academic enrichment.

Decades of research make it clear that social and emotional habits and skills are intimately related to academic learning and life success. However, educator preparation and training do not always provide teachers with effective strategies to support social and emotional learning. This webinar looked at the benefits and challenges of integrating social, emotional, and academic learning in the classroom and explored strategies to inform practice.

How can social and emotional learning and cultural competence be integrated into educator preparation programs? Expert researchers and policymakers discussed this question in this webinar, with the goal of equipping teachers to consider the needs of the whole child with equity in mind.

This webinar featured CCSSO's Carissa Moffat Miller and LPI's Linda Darling-Hammond who, with state education leaders, discussed both how lessons from the science of learning and development can inform restart and recovery plans to support student well-being and learning and how state chiefs are already taking a whole child approach to pandemic response.

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly expanded awareness of the deep and long-standing inequities in the U.S. education system. In this webinar, prominent education and civil rights leaders discussed how policymakers, educators, and advocates can seize this moment to reinvent schools around principles of equity, authentic learning, and stronger relationships in order to transform learning experiences and close opportunity and achievement gaps.

With widespread need for virtual learning over the previous year, the importance of centering learning on social and emotional development and student and educator well-being emerged as an essential strategy to develop engaging, relevant learning and to address student trauma. In this briefing, students, members of Congress, and experts in child development discussed the importance of social emotional learning concepts and how they can be advanced through federal policy.