Updated on October 31, 2009<\/p>\n
From an original article that first appeared on September 5, 2008 in the Union Leader…<\/a><\/p>\n Lyonel Tracy addressed the New Hampshire Administrators Association:<\/p>\n He said every school district in the Granite State has embraced a new approach to education which takes into account the “whole child.” Tracy said the initiative, known as “Follow the Child,” addresses four areas of growth: physical, personal, social, and academic.<\/strong><\/p>\n “You need to know their physical, personal, social, and academic skills right off so that you can now make sure that you’re contributing to the education and health of kids,” Tracy said.<\/strong><\/p>\n Over time, he said educators should “follow” children as they grow in those four areas. “Unless you start and finish with the child then you are not properly assessing your successes in education,” he said.<\/p>\n The model, he added, could be adopted at the national level in the next round of education reform, after November general election.<\/em><\/p>\n Unfortunately this is the same old reform stuff that is being promoted all over the country, in most any program that is mandated or sold to the schools.<\/p>\n CNHT investigators recently uncovered the fact that the state of NH spent $1.3M in funding to promote ‘Follow the Child’. They were told that FTC is not a program but a ‘philosophy’. Included was payment of $250K to one Russell Quaglia, school ‘reformer’ and ‘consultant’, (www.qisa.org) who promotes himself as an ‘expert’ on ‘student aspirations’ for administering surveys to the children to find out how well they liked school as part of the ‘whole child’ examination. The NH Dept of Education could not produce any textbooks or materials that would be used in the program and stated that “Follow The Child is not a prescribed set of uniform measures, but rather a vision for child-centered learning that can be met as each school and district best sees fit.”<\/p>\n