Sandra Vamos and Theresa Lewallen
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) is pleased to announce the release of the Healthy School Report Card—Canadian Edition (HSRCC). Recognizing that education and health contexts vary from nation to nation, ASCD created the HSRCC to assist schools across the provinces and territories of Canada in their efforts to create health-promoting schools. The HSRCC is designed to be used with Creating a Healthy School Using the Healthy School Report Card: An ASCD Action Tool and is based on research and best practices from Canada as well as other nations.
Like the original edition of the Healthy School Report Card (HSRC), the Canadian edition is a self-assessment process designed to bring school and community stakeholders together to highlight the health programming areas that meet or exceed recognized standards and to determine the areas that need improvement. The process is a systemic approach to creating healthier environments that support learning and teaching. Results of the HSRCC provide an evidence-based view of the quality of the school's health programming.
The Canadian edition is unique in that it is designed specifically for the Canadian context, reflecting national, provincial, and territorial guidelines as well as evidence-based practices from across Canada. It was developed with input and feedback from Canadian experts and stakeholders and incorporates health and education standards, regulations, and guidelines common to programs across the country and internationally. The HSRCC also includes appropriate Canadian resources, which provide contextual and practical references to assist with action planning.
The HSRCC consists of 11 characteristics with corresponding indicators that describe the aspects of a health-promoting school. The evidence-based indicators support the implementation and sustainability of comprehensive school health programming. These 11 characteristics are:
- School Health Program—District Coordination, Policy, and Support
- Coordination of School Health Programs
- Healthy Emotional and Social Environment
- Family and Community Involvement
- Healthy Physical Environment
- Health Education
- Physical Education and Physical Activity
- Nutrition Services
- School Health Services
- Counseling, Psychological, and Social Work Services
- School Health Promotion for Staff
The HSRCC is designed to enable, motivate, and support stakeholders to improve school-based health promotion efforts. It provides a catalyst for comprehensive, coordinated action based on data and research.
Results of the self-assessment process are designed to be input into an online system. The system generates a report that indicates the areas of school health programming that meet or exceed standards and recommends a prioritization of those that need improvement.
The HSRCC does not generate a summary score for either the individual characteristics or the entire instrument. Instead, the online scoring system revolves around planning purposes only and there is no grade given to a school. Each indicator under every characteristic is assigned three questions:
- Does it exist, and, if so is the quality what it should be?
- How much benefit would accrue from undertaking efforts to improve it?
- How much effort would improving it require?
The combined answers to these three questions produce a color-coded scoring result to determine whether each indicator needs to be maintained or improved and the level of priority its improvement should be given. The HSRCC is intentionally designed to respond to each school's local context. The reporting system was developed to preclude attempts to generate hierarchical rankings or comparisons.
Using the HSRCC, schools and communities work together to design a school improvement plan that will help them achieve their goal of improving the health and learning of children and youth through a systemic and sustainable process. This approach over time will assure positive outcomes for each student and over time will improve the health of the nation.