What’s missing from the nation’s report card

Abstract

This study re-envisions the Nation’s Report Card from a “whole child” perspective that considers not just students’ academic achievement, but also their physical and mental health. Jaekyung Lee’s integrated analysis of the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the National Survey of Children’s Health datasets reveals that many of our children and youth are not in good shape, getting the average grade of C, with grades of B+ for physical health, C for socioemotional wellness, and D for academic proficiency. The analysis also shows that better health and wellness measures are associated with higher achievement. In addition, the states with stronger “whole community” scores, which measure protective and nurturing family-school-neighborhood environments, produce students who do better on all measures.

Synthetic Longitudinal Education Database: Linking National Datasets for K-16 Education and College Readiness

“…However, the current school accountability system remains narrow in its scope by exclusive focus on academic indicators, ignoring other important domains of child development such as socioemotional skills, mental well-being and physical health (Lee et al, 2019;Martin et al, 2016;O'Connell et al, 2009). However, previous studies of educational assessment/accountability systems examined the achievement gap or college readiness gap problems by narrowly focusing on the standardized test scores and school grades of academic achievement rather than taking a whole-child education approach including socioemotional and physical development indicators as well as cognitive development measures (Lee, 2020;Lee & Lee, 2020).…”