The Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model provides a framework for promoting greater alignment, integration, and collaboration between health and education across the school setting and improving students' cognitive, physical, social, and emotional development. By providing a learning environment that ensures each student is emotionally and physically healthy, safe, actively engaged, supported, and challenged, the WSCC model presents a framework for school systems to evaluate, streamline, implement, and sustain policies, processes, and practices.
This article examines the essential roles of the school district and of schools in aligning, developing, and implementing policy, processes, and practices to create optimal learning environments that support the whole child.
Three key factors advance efforts to align policies, processes, and practices. These include hiring a coordinator at the district and school levels, having collaborative teams address health and learning at the district and school levels, and using data to make decisions and build health outcomes into school and district accountability systems.
These key factors provide a road map for successfully implementing WSCC. More research is needed to determine the extent that coordinators, collaborative teams, and the inclusion of health indicators in accountability systems impact student health and learning.
The Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model provides a framework for promoting greater alignment, integration, and collaboration across the school setting and improving each child's cognitive, physical, social, and emotional development. Policies, processes, and practices addressing these developmental factors must be aligned across the entire school spectrum to achieve the best outcomes for students. In his publication,
There is broad recognition and understanding that physical, mental, and behavioral health concerns have a profound effect on learning and performance.
The WSCC model provides the structure to advance education reform in ways that break down traditional siloes through a coordinated and comprehensive set of services, policies, and programs that focus on the whole child and reduce barriers to learning. By providing a learning environment that ensures each student is emotionally and physically healthy, safe, actively engaged, supported, and challenged, the WSCC model presents a framework for school systems to evaluate, streamline, implement, and sustain policies, processes, and practices. This article examines the essential roles of the school district and of schools in aligning, developing, and implementing policy, processes, and practices to create optimal learning environments that support the whole child.
Policy can compel the implementation of processes and practices. However, adopting policy is a complex and challenging process. Generally speaking, policies are statements that define requirements and provide guidance. Education policies exist at the federal, state, and local levels. Constitutionally, state governments hold responsibility for public education with local school boards acting as their agents.
School policy is critical to create and sustain processes and practices that advance health and learning. The WSCC model can inform the development of new policies and provides a framework to review existing school policies that keep the whole child in focus. The 10 components provide a lens for a comprehensive scan of all policies, processes, and practices that foster learning environments where each student is emotionally and physically healthy, safe, actively engaged, supported, and challenged. It moves health and wellness from another “to do” for schools and districts to the work of supporting the whole child in an effort to reduce barriers to learning and improved health. In doing so, education leaders will be able to identify gaps, overlaps, and supports to better align, streamline, and be accountable for systems that support health and learning.
Establishing a policy alone does not ensure effective or consistent implementation. According to the National Association of State Boards of Education's
The purpose of WSCC is to align policy, practices, and resources to support each student's academic learning and provide experiences that encourage the development of the whole child—“one who is knowledgeable, healthy, motivated, and engaged.”
A coordinator at both the district and school level is a critical factor in boosting school health efforts. Northouse states: “leadership is a process that involves influence, occurs in a group context, and involves goal attainment.”
The district coordinator role takes on great significance for implementing the WSCC framework. In particular, the coordinator should be part of broader school improvement and accountability teams, providing important insight into health problems within school communities that impact student learning. The coordinator has an intimate knowledge of existing health-related policies, processes, practices, and community resources and can leverage this knowledge to identify necessary health and safety supports for students. Districts should consider a coordinator's placement within the organizational structure and how to best leverage their expertise, knowledge, and skills to be a champion for implementing best practices to reduce health-related barriers to learning.
As districts conduct a comprehensive scan of existing policies, processes, and practices, the coordinator will be integral to outlining priorities, identifying gaps, and recommending strategies to improve the health of students. A district coordinator is also necessary to facilitate and lead coordination between the 10 WSCC components and to engage community stakeholders and resources. Given that human and material resources are limited in districts and schools, coordinators should seek opportunities for synergy among stakeholders in the WSCC model, making certain the sum of outcomes is greater than its parts.
Having a coordinator, or leader, at the school level is also essential. Strong leaders have been shown across a wide range of studies to be an important component supporting implementation of policies, processes, and practices at the school level.
Within the WSCC framework, the school leader plays a key role by steering a team to develop and implement an action plan that addresses how the school will create a culture where each student is healthy, safe, challenged, supported, and engaged. Health and safety can be addressed within this structure by developing a school health improvement plan that is linked to or embedded within school improvement efforts, and connecting students, families, and staff to health-promoting resources and referrals.
The team may include a coordinator specifically for school health efforts. This coordinator can work with the team and faculty leaders to facilitate communication and engage students, families, and the community, and leverage resources to support health and learning. A school coordinator also ensures instruction and services provided through various components of the school health program and overall environment are mutually reinforcing and present consistent messages; facilitates collaboration among school personnel; assists the principal and other administrative staff with the integration, management, and supervision of the school health program; provides or arranges for necessary technical assistance; identifies essential resources; facilitates collaboration between the district, school, and other community agencies; conducts evaluation activities that assess the implementation and results of the school health program, and reports evaluation results.
This work, essential to improving the school climate, can ensure collaboration across traditional siloes and eliminate duplication of efforts. In Colorado, school teams are encouraged to have co-leaders, which allow for a shared workload and supports sustainability during turnover. Whereas it can be a challenge to build the capacity of 2 leaders, teams have found this model effective. In fact, busy school professionals are often more willing to take on shared coordinator responsibilities, thus making recruitment easier.
Finally, district coordinators and school leaders will want to remain in close contact with one another to leverage support and resources. This critical communication between coordinators and leaders ensures district policies are translated into processes and practices at each school. In Maine, O'Brien et al
Creating and fostering high-functioning, collaborative teams, both at the district and school levels, whose common mission is to enhance student health has been a hallmark of the Coordinated School Health approach.
The WSCC framework intentionally wraps the role of community around the entire model, thereby signaling its importance to developing the whole child. Council membership should reflect the makeup and views of the community and be as broad and diverse as possible, including those who understand the cultural, political, geographic, demographic, and economic structure of the community. Stakeholders who are invested in the system, including students and parents, are vital members. Districts are encouraged to welcome the participation of health-promoting and youth-focused community organizations and participation from law-enforcement, legal services, transportation, business, and faith communities. Diverse community representation enriches the level of discussion, ensures local community values are understood, and increases acceptance of proposed activities. Councils are well positioned to engage with district leaders and accountability teams to conduct comprehensive scans of policies, processes, and practices that support whole child development.
The Whole Child council would encompass and integrate the scope of work of a traditional district health council, which is to assess
In doing so, Whole Child councils will be able to develop meaningful policy, process, and practice recommendations that bolster student health and learning for district administration and local school board consideration.
School Whole Child teams should mirror district council membership, with a focus on the school community. Teams can engage school staff, parents, and students to identify local health priorities using a continuous improvement process. Teams examine local data, create a school health improvement plan based on best practices, implement the plan, and observe implementation effectiveness. District policies provide guidance to teams. However, teams should be afforded a degree of autonomy to adapt processes and practices to local needs. These efforts should be built around the whole child and support the WSCC tenets with a specific focus on reducing health-related barriers to learning.
The one specified goal within the WSCC framework is to improve learning and health. Together, council and team members from all community sectors will generate education goals that consider the whole child when identifying priority areas. To implement the WSCC framework more completely, district councils and schools teams should work to integrate plans into school improvement and school accountability systems. In this manner, they can best identify opportunities, through coordinated policies, processes, and practices, to decrease health-related barriers to learning.
Districts and schools are held accountable for a myriad of academic outcomes and process measures. As a result, “school improvement policy primarily emphasizes instruction and, in the process, usually marginalizes considerations related to dealing with barriers” to learning.
Incorporating metrics related to health and wellness into data tracking and school accountability systems will provide educators, policymakers, and the public with a refined understanding of how to achieve learning and academic outcomes. The WSCC framework's 10 components provide a high-level view of elements that can be embedded within accountability systems. The framework's emphasis on improving student health and learning together expands the narrow focus on school improvement through instructional and academic goals alone. More importantly, it provides the foundation for making improvements wherein health as a barrier to learning is addressed.
Other data such as attendance, discipline, student behavior, graduation rates, truancy, school connectedness, and school safety are important measures that can be aligned with school level intervention efforts. For example, when implementing a breakfast program, schools will want to examine changes in attendance rates and student behavioral data that may be attributed to the intervention. Effective use of data allows districts and schools to connect school health efforts to academic achievement and to show meaningful change in student and staff behavior which will inform policy, processes, and practices. Beyond data, policy assessment and practice measurement tools such as the School Health Index provide measures to inform decisions and best practices.
Tacoma Public Schools (TPS) has created a “Whole Child Accountability System,”
Districts and schools may also employ an acknowledgement program that encourages adoption of best practices. Chicago Public Schools report card features a prominent “Healthy School Certification,” icon based on their achievement in the HealthierUS School Challenge. “This deeper understanding of how health impacts student learning can inform resource management and teaching practices, ensuring that student health and wellness is tracked over time and that school stakeholders understand the connection between health and learning.”
Local wellness policies offer another accountability mechanism. Required for any school district participating in federal child nutrition programs, local wellness policies guide efforts to establish school environments that promote students' health, well-being, and ability to learn. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 added new provisions for local school wellness policies related to implementation, evaluation, and public reporting on progress, which emphasizes transparency, public engagement, and tracking results.
At the school level, school improvement plans are an integral part of the continuous improvement process held accountable by local parent associations or school accountability committees, which report to district accountability committees. At the classroom level, teachers can utilize student evaluation measures for the whole child. Although student evaluation is most commonly focused on academic achievement, the WSCC tenets offer a frame for teachers to assess the social, emotional, and physical health of students, their safety, and how actively engaged, supported, and challenged students are. Districts and schools can consider how accountability can be built into teacher and administrator evaluation systems that examine the extent that students are safe, engaged, challenged, and supported. Even with policies in place, accountability systems need to be applied to ensure that policies, programs, and practices are aligned and consistently implemented. Sharing of data and publicly disseminating school improvement plans can support broad community buy-in and accountability of whole child efforts.
The WSCC model provides an unprecedented opportunity to rethink the role of health in schools. Eliminating health-related barriers to learning and providing each student with an educational environment that is healthy, safe, challenging, supportive, and engaging will advance educational reform. The alignment, coordination, and implementation of policies, processes, and practices to create this educational environment represent critical steps for WSCC implementation. Policy at all levels is necessary to sustain best practices and processes and accountability for policy implementation is necessary. “School programs cannot survive for the long term without school board policy and support from district leaders.”
District and school policies can require and fund coordinator and leader positions. These roles are critical to maximizing existing resources and impact, carrying out an action plan based on data and prioritization, and championing student health and wellness within the school, community, and district. The district coordinator should also be strategically placed in the organizational structure to best leverage their expertise, knowledge, and skills to be a voice for reducing barriers to learning across all the components of the WSCC model. The school leader should play an important role in integrating health into school accountability systems.
District and school policies are encouraged to consider including the formation of Whole Child teams to standardize the practice and define roles and responsibilities related to health and learning. Such policies may include guidance for individual school budgets, stipends for team leaders, and outline how teams interact with district coordinators to ensure a consistent, data-driven, and aligned approach to addressing health-related barriers to learning.
Colleges of education at institutions of higher education are encouraged to embed health-promoting and learning practices into all aspects of teacher and administrator preparation programs. Future teachers and administrators, regardless of subject matter expertise or professional focus, will play a role in implementing the WSCC framework. Teacher and administrative candidates should be prepared to view student health outcomes as integral to all aspects of learning and the school environment. Future administrators, in particular, are encouraged to understand the importance of enabling the key factors that support WSCC implementation, how to engage families and the community at large to support student health and learning, and measurement and accountability strategies to measure progress.
Robust and comprehensive professional development and in-service training programs for administrators and teachers will prepare current educators to support student health and wellness. Such offerings will equip school staff to integrate health-promoting practices while creating classroom and school environments that reduce health-related barriers to learning and enhance student success. Professional development for school and community partners can also facilitate links to systems and services that meet prioritized health needs.
Using the WSCC framework, new accountability strategies may be developed that address health, safety, and the extent that students are engaged, challenged, and supported. Metrics based on these tenets can be built into teacher and administrator evaluations to provide a more holistic view of the school culture and student experience and inform the implementation of policies, programs, and practices. Schools and districts can garner broad school and community participation in developing plans and publicly sharing progress.
Guidance documents and practice tools for districts and schools will be necessary in developing whole child metrics, building health into accountability systems, and learning how to conduct scans of policy, processes, and practices through the WSCC lens.
Current funding mechanisms supporting student health and wellness are fragmented by topic or health concern. To embrace and support WSCC implementation, funding to districts and schools could be made more flexible to support whole child development. School communities should be given the opportunity to define specific priorities to reduce barriers to learning based on local needs and student data.
Evaluation of existing practices is essential to strengthening the evidence base. More research is needed to determine the impact of coordinators, school teams, and the inclusion of health indicators in accountability and evaluation systems. Research supports that student health and learning are linked. Additional evaluation and research will support and promote best practices at the district and school levels ensuring each student is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and motivated to learn.
This paper involved no human subjects, and therefore, was exempt from examination by an Institutional Review Board.