“Each child is a physical, mental and spiritual being, interlocked and intertwined, with each dimension significantly affecting the other two.”
William Litterick
More than 50 years ago, ERB President William Litterick wrote that assessments of learning must focus on “what children are rather than what they are not. … Each child is a physical, mental and spiritual being, interlocked and intertwined, with each dimension significantly affecting the other two.”
Today we call this a whole child perspective, one that recognizes the connections between a student’s sense of self-worth, their sense of belonging in the school community, and the likelihood of learning to their potential.
ERB is developing a suite of brief assessments that enable school leaders to “check in” on their student’s emotional well-being, academic engagement, and sense of belonging in the school community. We have also created an assessment of the social-emotional tools that every student must develop to help navigate their environment. Equally important, we have rolled out a data portal called 360 Access that enables administrators and teachers to see the connections between a student’s emotional well-being and academic performance. With easy and intuitive navigation that enables a user to look at trends in a class over time or to dive deeply into one student’s results, 360 Access turns test data into a diagnostic tool supportive of each student reaching their potential.
A dozen ERB member schools are piloting this integrated suite of assessments during the course of this school year. We will report on this project at the April 23-25 ERB Annual Conference, whose overall theme is Connections. Available to all members, ERB will provide the guidance to apply these new tools to unleash the power of data to understand the needs of each student, and to enable each to achieve their full potential.
