ASCD Positions

Since its beginning in 1943, ASCD has been a strong voice in the debate about educational issues that affect learning and teaching. As a nonpartisan education association, ASCD continues to advocate for policies and practices that ensure each child has access to educational excellence and equity. Learn about our current positions, browse a full listing of all ASCD positions, and read about our position development process. 

Current Positions

Educating Students in a Changing World | The Whole Child | Health and Learning 

Closing the Achievement Gap | Multiple Measures of Assessment

Educating Students in a Changing World

As educators in the 21st century, we are charged with educating students to be successful in a complex, interconnected world. This responsibility requires schools to prepare students for technological, cultural, economic, informational, and demographic changes.

ASCD supports changes in teaching, learning, and leadership that adequately prepare students for the 21st century and graduate students who:

• Acquire and apply core knowledge and critical-thinking skill sets that are essential in an information age;
• Demonstrate creativity, innovation, and flexibility when partnering with business and community members to advance common goals;
• Make decisions and solve problems ethically and collaboratively;
• Utilize technology to gather, analyze, and synthesize information for application in a global economy;
• Exhibit positive interpersonal relationships that value multiple languages, cultures, and all persons; and
• Display leadership skills that inspire others to achieve, serve, and work together.

^Return to top.

The Whole Child

The current direction in educational practice and policy focuses overwhelmingly on academic achievement. However, academic achievement is but one element of student learning and development and only a part of any complete system of educational accountability. ASCD believes a comprehensive approach to learning recognizes that successful young people are knowledgeable, emotionally and physically healthy, motivated, civically inspired, engaged in the arts, prepared for work and economic self-sufficiency, and ready for the world beyond their own borders.

Together, these elements support the development of a child who is healthy, knowledgeable, motivated, and engaged. To develop a whole child requires the following contributions:

Communities provide

• A safe environment in which students can learn.
• Family support and involvement.
• Government, civic, and business support and resources.
• Volunteers and advocates.
• Support for their districts' coordinated school health councils or other collaborative structures.

Schools provide

• Access to challenging and engaging curriculum for all students.
• High-quality professional development with collaborative planning time embedded within the school day.
• A safe, healthy, orderly, and trusting environment.
• High-quality teachers and administrators.
• A climate that supports strong relationships between adults and students.
• Support for coordinated school health councils or other collaborative structures that are active in the school.

Teachers provide

• Evidence-based assessment and instructional practices.
• Rich content and an engaging learning climate.
• Student and family connectedness.
• Effective classroom management.
• Modeling of healthy behaviors.

^Return to top.

Health and Learning

Successful learners are not only knowledgeable and productive but also emotionally and physically healthy, motivated, civically engaged, prepared for work and economic self-sufficiency, and ready for the world beyond their own borders.

Because emotional and physical health are critical to the development of the whole child, ASCD believes that health should be fully embedded into the educational environment for all students. Health and learning

• Is a multifaceted concept that includes the intellectual, physical, civic, and mental health of students.
• Provides coordinated and comprehensive health efforts that give students and staff effective teacher, school, family, community, and policy resources.
• Supports the development of a child who is healthy, knowledgeable, motivated, engaged, and connected.
• Is the reciprocal responsibility of communities, families, schools, teachers, and policymakers.

^Return to top.

Closing the Achievement Gap

For all students to excel academically and thrive as individuals, we must raise the bar and provide them with the access to high-quality learning, curriculum, and instruction. Educators, policymakers, and the public must understand the grave consequences of persistent gaps in student achievement and demand that addressing these gaps becomes a policy and funding priority. ASCD believes that to close the achievement gap, all underserved populations—high-poverty students, students with special learning needs, students of different cultural backgrounds, nonnative speakers, and urban and rural students—must have access to

• Innovative, engaging, and challenging coursework (with academic support) that builds on the strengths of each learner and enables students to develop to their full potential;
• High-quality teachers supported by ongoing professional development; and
• Additional resources for strengthening schools, families, and communities.

^Return to top.

Multiple Measures of Assessment

Decision makers in education—students, parents, educators, community members, and policymakers—all need timely access to information from many sources if they are to make informed judgments about student learning and the success of education programs. Using a single achievement test as the sole measure of learning is inappropriate. Determining success of students, schools, districts, states/provinces, or nations should be based on multiple assessments of and for learning. ASCD supports the use of multiple measures in assessment systems that are

• Fair, balanced, and grounded in the art and science of learning and teaching;
• Reflective of curricular and developmental goals and representative of content that students have had an opportunity to learn;
• Used to inform and improve instruction;
• Designed to accommodate nonnative speakers and special needs students; and
• Valid, reliable, and supported by professional, scientific, and ethical standards designed to fairly assess the unique and diverse abilities and knowledge base of all students.

^Return to top.

Position Development Process

Professional educators need to provide leadership in creating the conditions necessary for all children to have access to high-quality education and to find their places in an increasingly complex world. Educators must promote the creation of educational policy that supports best practice, as well as a modern accountability system that uses a variety of methods when making judgments about student achievement and learning. ASCD's position adoption process is one example of how the Association fosters public and policy support for its beliefs, values, goals, and immediate policy concerns.

In March 2004, the ASCD Leadership Council approved a new process for adopting official positions of the Association. The process makes use of member-led Position Development and Position Action Teams and involves

• Identifying issues through surveys, staff resources, and other policy scanning information.
• Establishing issues priorities for proposed positions.
• Drafting positions in preparation for the Leadership Council's deliberation.
• Deliberating on proposed positions by the Leadership Council.
• Refining draft positions, based on Leadership Council deliberation, by ASCD staff.
• Adopting positions by majority vote of the Leadership Council.
• Developing plans for action on the adopted positions.

^Return to top.