Advocate
On
August 11, 2006, Operation Respect convened its first meeting of the United
Voices for Education (UVE) at the National Association of Elementary School
Principals headquarters in Virgina. A UVE Interim Steering Committee (ISC)
was elected by attendees and
has subsequently met twice to develop the mission, vision and goals of UVE.
UVE’s first outreach is a jointly endorsed statement of recommendations
to the Commission on No Child Left Behind.
UVE Recommendations
to the Commission on No Child
Left Behind
Who We Are
UVE is a coalition of representatives
from 42 educational stakeholder organizations that are dedicated
to excellence in education for all children.
What We Believe
UVE believes that we cannot reach the goal of all children graduating from
high school prepared for success in further education, work, college, and
citizenship unless we focus on educating the whole child. Educating the “whole child” refers
to meeting both the academic and the social emotional needs of a student.
Educating the whole child includes ensuring that all students are provided
with a safe, respectful, bully-free and violence-free school environment that
is conducive to and free of crucial impediments to their full, healthy academic,
social and emotional growth and development. Educating the whole child also
includes programs in the arts, community-based learning, service learning,
character development, physical education, and personal wellness programs.
UVE’s Recommendations to the Commission on No Child Left Behind
UVE strongly believes that children’s education should balance elements
that address the needs, development and growth of the whole child; that
is, the social and emotional growth of children, as well as their academic
growth.
UVE strongly believes that success in the academic arena cannot take place
if various impediments to children’s growth are not reduced or eliminated
through the establishment of a safe, caring, respectful school environment.
UVE strongly believes that effective and proven interventions, strategies and
programs that are supportive of educating the whole child, if responsibly implemented,
develop social skills, community awareness and civic responsibility among students
and will in turn lead to increased academic achievement.
UVE believes that schools should be offered the opportunity, but not be compelled
to implement, any single strategy or program; rather they should be given access
to an array of alternative strategies and programs that promote the creation
of civil, caring school climate embodying conditions that contribute to the
development of the whole child. Schools should only implement those strategies
and programs that they believe fit the needs of their students. Implementation
of such efforts without willingness and belief in their potential success,
UVE believes, will be certain to fail.
UVE Recommendations
UVE agrees that schools should be held accountable for their continued annual
improvement in the area of creating a school climate that is conducive to the
development of the whole child, as evidenced in a variety of hard data measurements
already being made as part of NCLB accountability in such areas as attendance,
school drop out rates, incidences of violence, etc., This data should be combined
with other new data sources that assess conditions for learning and school
climate to monitor improvement.
UVE further agrees that such improvement should count strongly in the evaluation
of a school’s being considered successfulor in need of improvement in
regard to its efforts to raise the quality of education for its students, and
that such assessment of progress in school climate be counted as centrally
and importantly as school success demonstrated by adequate yearly improvement
in students’ academic scores on standardized tests.
UVE agrees that it is crucial for NCLB to include accountability structures
and metrics for improvement by schools in regard to yearly progress in
the creation of safe, respectful, violence-free environments that are conducive
to the development of the whole child, with such improvement being given
equal emphasis and importance to that of measurements and assessment of
students’ academic
progress.
UVE acknowledges that such assessment of progress in school climate would necessitate
a major change for schools and in light of that fact, UVE suggests that, over
the next 5 year authorization, schools, districts and states should only be
required to publicly report progress on these new school climate measures when
they issue their NCLB report cards -- and that states should identify schools
in need of improvement. However, UVE suggests that the calculation of AYP in
this area of school accountability to determine consequences for insufficient
improvement should be deferred until we have more experience with these new
metrics.
UVE unanimously agrees that such accountability is essential; otherwise
schools will not address climate improvement as a priority, and will be
more likely
to focus on students’ academic improvementalone, which improvement,
UVE strongly believes, will be severely limited and continue to be so until
the
conditions that support learning improve as well.
Synopsis
UVE strongly believes that for the academic success of schools to improve,
conditions for learning in schools must improve as well, and that such
improvement evolves only when the education of the whole child takes place
in an environment
that is safe, respectful and bully-free, and therefore conducive to all
aspects of children and youth’s growth and developmen
