Beyond the Three R's: A Broader Agenda for School Reform

Current educational reform policies are narrowly focused on academic content and performance standards. Although helping students to master basic knowledge and skills in the disciplines is an important goal of schooling, schools also have always had major responsibilities for other aspects of students' development. The attainment of these "nonacademic" outcomes of education is as important as the acquisition of academic outcomes to assuring that students can participate fully and effectively as responsible citizens in a democracy and succeed in a global economy. In this article, we discuss 3 classes of nonacademic outcomes that we believe schools should explicitly seek to foster in their students (social, ethical, and civic dispositions; attitudes toward school and learning motivation; and metacognitive skills) and provide some guidance about how educators might try to accomplish these goals. We suggest that this broader agenda for education reform should not only promote development of the social and ethical dispositions needed to sustain a democratic and pluralistic society but should enhance students' intellectual abilities as well.