Schools adopting a whole child approach are reported to see improved attendance, engagement, health, and academic performance¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · designr1·q1
Currency · newest study 2022 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q1 i? When schools adopt a whole child approach, they see improved outcomes for students including attendance, engagement, physical and emotional health, and academic performance. → Breaking Barriers 2022
Evidence¶
Breaking Barriers 2022¶
Breaking Barriers, California Alliance of Child and Family Services, Santa Clara County Office of Education, & WestEd. (2022). Supporting California's children through a whole child approach: A field guide for creating integrated, school-based systems of care. https://WestEd.org/permissions
q1 · i? · design · r1
The guide asserts, citing published reviews (Lewallen et al. 2015; Darling-Hammond & Cook-Harvey 2018), that "schools adopt a whole child approach, they see a wealth of improved outcomes"; no effect sizes are printed in the guide itself.
"When schools adopt a whole child approach, they see a wealth of improved outcomes for students, including improved attendance, engagement, physical and emotional health, and academic performance."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Universal school-based SEL programs improve students' behaviour, with a small and, in recent randomised trials, negligible effect on academic achievement — related
- SEL programs improve social emotional skills — related
- Social-emotional learning benefits persist at follow-up — related
- Family engagement is connected to stronger social-emotional development, higher attendance, and better academic outcomes — related
- Trauma exposure is widespread among school students and is associated with adverse cognitive, academic, behavioral, and socioemotional outcomes — related
- Integrated student supports are associated with improvements in attendance, behavior, social functioning, and academic achievement — related
- Elementary principals most frequently want professional development on whole child education, with rural principals especially likely to want physical and mental health content — related
- Well-implemented, well-attended summer programs show positive outcomes in academic, social, and behavioral areas — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
- Health factors and academic outcomes are linked: meeting nutritional and fitness needs, school-based health centers, and positive school climate are associated with achievement, attendance, and behavior — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
- The WSCC model was developed in 2013 by ASCD and CDC expert panels to unify the Whole Child and coordinated school health approaches — related
- The WSCC model explicitly incorporates the five social determinants of health and aligns health and education sector goals — related
- A field guide asserts that authentic family–school partnerships benefit student achievement and argues that without staff training and coaching the school–family divide persists — related
- Profiled New Mexico community schools showed improvement across attendance, graduation, achievement, climate, health access, and family engagement indicators — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
whole-child-approach-improved-outcomes |
title |
Schools adopting a whole child approach are reported to see improved attendance, engagement, health, and academic performance |
description |
Schools adopting a whole child approach are reported to see improved attendance, engagement, health, and academic performance |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
weak |
newest_evidence |
2022 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-09 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — breaking-barriers-2022 |
Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.