Breakthroughs in approaches to student achievement are being pursued from most every angle. Advanced research in learning and delivery methods yield promise but sporadic results. A review of the fundamental principles of human needs may offer strategies for reaching a tipping point regarding breakthroughs in student progression and achievement.Robert H. “Bob” Seemer is a management consultant whose mission is to transform communities by empowering children and families to achieve self-determined goals – providing them the tools, and improving the productivity and capability of social services networks and education systems. Mr. Seemer has been helping organizations in the private and public sectors improve productivity for almost 40 years.
Introduction
What’s wrong with education in America? Regardless of the poll, America ranks poorly. Experts, the media, and futurists want us to believe that students’ problems stem mostly from generational differences to learning, and that new approaches in the classroom are the answer. While we all want answers to the problem of student performance, the solutions proposed may not be attacking the root causes, well, at least not all of them.
Current trends in student performance
By almost any measure, America’s kids are lagging their peers in most other developed countries. The most recent data published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) showed that 15 year olds in the United States ranked 25th of 30 in Math, 24th in Problem Solving, 21st in Science, and 15th in Reading as compared to their peers in other industrialized countries. Furthermore, in most subjects, most countries ranking higher than the U.S. ranked significantly higher on average. Narrowing the view to just the 50 states, an even darker picture emerges. The most recent EPE Research Center data indicate, for example, that 31.7% of 4th graders are proficient in Reading, 31% of 8th graders are proficient in Math, and the national high school graduation rate is 70.6%. Recent studies also suggest that as many as 75% of college students require some remedial education, and ACT scores are flat (Associated Press, August 2008). With education representing a lion’s share of every state’s budget, is it an efficiency issue, an effectiveness issue, or are other factors driving these results?
Are all children ready to learn?
In 1943, Dr. Abraham Maslow published his landmark paper entitled A Theory of Human Motivation. In it he proposed that people seek to fulfill “basic” core level needs and, when met, continue to seek the fulfillment of successively higher needs. Today, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs consists of eight (8) levels:
- Physiological Needs
- Safety Needs
- Belongingness and Love Needs
- Esteem Needs
- Need to Know and Understand
- Aesthetic Needs
- Self-Actualization
- Transcendence
According to Maslow, if there are deficiencies in the first four basic needs, they must be addressed and those needs sufficiently fulfilled before a person is ready to act upon Level 5 and higher needs.
In America today, these basic needs are not being fulfilled for many of our children, as suggested by the following indicators:
- 11%, or over 8 million children do not have health insurance.
- 14% have special healthcare needs.
- 66% of youth who are in custody are there for non-violent offenses.
- 40% of children are living in families in which income is below 200% of the poverty level; 8% are living in extreme poverty.
- 22% of children are living in immigrant families, many of which are non-English speaking.
Numerous studies have established the link between economic well-being and student achievement, with economics being the key factor for access to services which help address the most basic needs of children and families.
Schools partially address these needs and social issues through free and reduced price meals, English language coaches, school nurses, and partnerships with local health and public safety agencies. But these programs are reactive and do not get to the root, and are little more than a band-aid on a patient needing a heart transplant. How can children aspire to learn when such gaps exist in the four basic level needs?
Community Social Services Networks
Communities are composed of public, private, and not-for-profit agencies (service providers) whose missions are to address the basic needs of children and families. Try as they might, these networks fail miserably at satisfying the holistic needs of the community for the following reasons:
- Providers react to those who request a specific service, often failing to understand the holistic needs.
- Many families are unaware of available services or for what services they may qualify.
- If the needs are known, families don’t know how to access the services.
- Providers are at capacity and don’t want more clients, thus discouraging a proactive approach to understanding the total community’s needs.
- Providers, even when at capacity, are often reluctant to refer those in need to providers with similar missions.
- Providers lacking a holistic view of a client’s needs are unable to refer the client to other providers that may address other needs this is known as service fragmentation.
- Fragmented service delivery networks consist of hundreds of organizations which operate as silos, the inability to collaborate cross-functionally, a key factor in resource underutilization and waste in any organization, public or private.
- Funding organizations allocate resources on outputs because those are easy to track (i.e. immunizations given, meals served, etc.), and less so on outcomes (i.e. student achievement or improved quality of life resulting from services); rarely on prevention.
In summary, community-based social services networks are reactive, fragmented, inefficient, and underfunded. As the economy worsens, scarce resources are focused more on reactive, output type services, thus widening the gap of fulfilled needs for our children and their families.
Solutions are emerging
Technology has been identified as a driver of the change in how kids learn, and a key to solutions in the classroom. Technology is also proving to be a source of empowerment for families and capability for social networks to satisfy the basic needs, offering a complementary solution to advances in the classroom.
A comprehensive solution to learning will require education and social services systems that meet the holistic needs of each child, ensuring each child’s basic needs are satisfied so that he or she is ready to learn; a Whole Child, if you will. A Whole Child is defined as one whose basic needs have been fulfilled in the following six dimensions:
- Health
- Education
- Economics
- Environment
- Social well-being
- Spiritual well-being
Each dimension consists of risk factors, which, if allowed to persist, put the child at risk of undesired outcomes in the respective dimension. For example, risk factors identified in the Health dimension include mental and physical well-being, access to regular medical care, learning and visual ability, and so on. A total of 35 basic risk factors compose the six dimensions. Satisfy them all and we have a Whole Child.
Empowerment through technology
In 2001, a partnership of Electronic Training Solutions, Inc. (ets), the Lawton Chiles Foundation, and local communities in Florida, created the Whole Child initiative, assisting communities to ensure that all children thrive. A “Whole Child community” is one that provides all children with the opportunity to be healthy, contributing members of society, based on the belief that parents have primary responsibility for raising their children, and the community is a partner in this endeavor. It is not just another program but a philosophy that uses strategic planning, web-based technology, performance measurement and broad-based community engagement to build communities where everyone works together to make certain their children thrive. The Whole Child initiative to-date has focused on families with children ages 0-5 years and uses ets’ Whole Child Connection™ web-based technology to do the following:
- Assist parents in identifying needs and connecting with providers.
- Assist providers in building holistic and more productive service delivery networks.
- Assist policy makers, community leaders and advocates to identify critical issues related to the well-being of children 0-5 and develop the capacity to address these issues.
Three Whole Child communities (counties) have been operating in Florida for three to seven years. Seven additional counties in Florida and North Carolina are in the design stages with implementation scheduled by Spring, 2009. In two counties, the system has been expanded to include prenatal and children aged 0-18 years. While each of these communities has adopted the Whole Child philosophy and ets’ Whole Child Connection web-based technology, they have implemented their projects in fashions that are compatible with their environments and local circumstances.
There is growing recognition at the national level that investment in early childhood, beginning with prenatal care and focusing on ages 0-5, is critical to the health and well-being of every community. Similarly, there is increased recognition that single strategy programs are not effective; a holistic approach is needed for nurturing infants and young children which engages parents and incorporates all six dimensions of the Whole Child.
Few proven models demonstrate how services can be provided in a holistic manner. Because communities are organized differently and may have different cultures and capacities to deliver services, holistic service delivery models require local customization; one size does not fit all. Thus, each of the Whole Child communities has had to adjust the system’s development and implementation process to meet its specific needs. The following concepts behind holistic service delivery, however, are common to all Whole Child communities:
- Seeking collaboration, not competition.
- Networking, not fragmentation.
- Ensuring dollars follow the child, not the program.
- Initiating service with screening and assessment.
- Beginning with prevention, not treatment.
- Addressing all dimensions of the whole child.
- Building a “no wrong door” culture with service providers.
- Capitalizing on technology to engage families and to improve the quality of services.
Additionally, a self funding feature is being incorporated by ets in order to build in sustainability for the Whole Child Connection systems, making them resistant to county, state, and federal funding reductions.
Conclusion
Single strategy programs focused on the student and classroom environment do not constitute a comprehensive solution. School districts, admirably, are applying innovative approaches to educational technology, student progression analysis, professional teacher development, and various inclusion scenarios for students with disabilities. Pockets of excellence are evident; however, in the end, and on the national level, education in America is not systemically producing high achievers. The results are what they are.
To have a more significant effect on student achievement, we must develop strategies that prepare kids to learn and that reinforce newly acquired knowledge. Approaches developed which address the basic needs, coupled with advances in the classroom, will likely have better chances for success. In a recent American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) education initiative meeting in Houston with the superintendents of seven of the highest performing school districts in the United States, one said, “if we were able to double spending in the classroom, student achievement might increase, but only incrementally. The greatest impact must come from beyond the classroom, in the home and community ensuring that all children are ready to learn.”
To learn more about the Whole Child philosophy and initiative, go to www.etsfl.com.