The Urgent Need for Whole Child Equity

Every single child is born with potential that education can help unleash. But we know that a child’s ability to learn can be affected by poverty, trauma and other adversities.

Far too often, a vulnerable child’s needs go unmet by either the school or other agency, such as health, mental health, or child welfare services. The needs of adults who provide relational supports to students can also be overlooked.

These effects can be mitigated — or even undone — because of the brain’s neuroplasticity. However, this requires appropriate interventions and supports.

The key is to match supports and resources to each child in a way that is developmentally appropriate considering that child’s context, especially any exposure to adversities. It is also critical that students have multiple opportunities to succeed and pathways for new talents to develop and flourish.

Past “reforms” intended to narrow disparities in group achievement have generally been disappointing to education decision-makers and stakeholders alike. Poverty is the most villainous explanation, and structural racism is often its sidekick.

But the new science warrants new optimism for the progress of educational opportunity and racial/ethnic justice.

Science now makes it clear

A child-centered transformation of instructional and social and emotional learning practices requires tailored responses to the circumstances of individual children and youth. And those responses cannot come entirely from schools or school budgets.

Learning is Dynamic

What we need to know about the adolescent stage of development that can help guide our work with them.
1. Adolescence is a time of learning and development that provides opportunities for life-long impact.
2. Adolescents are learning how to make decisions and take responsibility for shaping one’s life.
3. Forming a personal identity and a sense of self is a hallmark of adolescence.
4. Supportive relationships with adults and peers are critical to positive outcomes in adolescence.
5. The adolescent brain has exceptional capacity to adapt and become resilient.
6. Disparities, bias, discrimination, and inequity can severely curtail the promise of adolescents.

Applying these recent advances in child development and brain sciences is essential to improving education outcomes — social, emotional, and academic — for children of color and children who are economically disadvantaged, who are most vulnerable to the failures of schools and “adjacent” child-serving agencies. With new knowledge about both science and practice, public policy can take this transformation to scale.

This work is built off of our former Science of Learning and Development project.