How can a whole child approach to education meaningfully address equity and the achievement gap?
Price: We’re not going to be able to close achievement gaps if we don’t take a more holistic look at what’s happening in the lives of children and how schools, communities, parents, and teachers can collaborate in addressing the wave of issues that intrude on the ability of kids to achieve. Many children who are achieving at high levels already have these kinds of supports. They’re second nature in many communities. When you look at what’s going on in the lives of children who are performing poorly in school, you frequently find weaknesses in the development supports. Schools are not attuned to these kinds of issues. They may have been attuned once, but now they have far less capacity to address these issues because of the testing pressures, which have had the perverse effect of squeezing out many of the supports that children need. If we don’t ensure these supports, we’ll see only marginal gains for children who are on the cusp and little progress for kids who are chronically behind.
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