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The Center for Whole-Child Education

Who We Are

The Center for Whole-Child Education (formerly Turnaround for Children) advances key insights from educator practice, scientific research, and student experience so that together we can create equitable learning environments. We partner with educators, schools, districts, and community organizations through our professional learning and consulting services.

The Center is part of an innovative ecosystem at ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teacher’s college that includes the Center on Reinventing Public Education, the Next Education Workforce initiative and the Urban Collaborative. The combined insight and commitment of these entities is a powerful force for designing scalable solutions that can make education practice and education systems more effective, equitable and sustainable.

Our Journey

When Turnaround for Children was founded 20 years ago by child psychiatrist Pamela Cantor, M.D., we worked hard to get underneath the impact of trauma on student learning. We followed the science, and it led us to a deep realization about how much context matters for academic success and healthy development.

As Dr. Cantor says, “The context we’re exposed to is the primary driver of who we become.” The environments, experiences, and relationships in a young person’s life—at home, at school, everywhere—have a huge impact on them. Sometimes that impact is negative, and kids carry the stress with them when they show up in the classroom. But what we now know is we can intentionally design supportive, positive contexts in our learning settings that are filled with protective factors. We can help buffer the stress and get the obstacles out of the way so that each student can learn and flourish on their own individual pathway.

Today, the way educators understand the impact of adversity on learning has changed and we are beginning to see an embrace of a broader definition of educational success. To truly transform the education system, we need an integrated approach to student development and learning, one that is grounded in the science of how young people actually learn and grow. One that honors the relationships, environments and experiences that support that learning and growth.

2001

In the wake of September 11

Dr. Pamela Cantor helps lead a team commissioned by the New York City Board of Education to assess the impact of the terrorist attacks on city's public schoolchildren. Surprisingly, while 68% of the children they observe have experienced trauma sufficient to impair their functioning in school, it is from their ongoing experience of growing up in poverty, not from what they witnessed that terrifying September day. What's more, Dr. Cantor and her researchers find schools in high-poverty communities in a state of chaos, woefully ill-equipped to meet the intense psychological and academic needs of their students.
2001

The Children's Mental Health Alliance is established

With support from the 9/11 fund, the Robin Hood Foundation, the Tiger Foundation and the New York Times Foundation, Dr. Cantor and educator Greg Greicius, working as the Children’s Mental Health Alliance, seek to address the recurring, predictable challenges that plague chronically underperforming public schools. As a child psychiatrist, Dr. Cantor knows how to help each patient who enters her office get well, but designing a program to serve hundreds of students at once is a new challenge.
2002

Turnaround for Children's begins work with schools

The Children's Mental Health Alliance becomes Turnaround for Children. At P.S. 132 in Washington Heights, one of the lowest performing elementary schools in New York City, a pilot program begins. The approach: pair on-site student support capacity (a novel idea at the time) with community mental health providers. The goal: make sure high-needs students receive the care necessary to get on track emotionally and academically. The school experiences rapid, measurable improvements in school climate.
2003

Turnaround's work expands in NYC

United Way asks Turnaround to be managing partner of a public/private collaboration called the Safe Schools Successful Students Initiative, in six high-need Bronx middle schools. The hypothesis: increasing access to mental health services for high-needs students would positively impact school culture and climate, reducing, for example, suspensions and calls to 911.
2009

Promising outcomes reported by AIR

American Institutes for Research publishes an evaluation on the effectiveness of Turnaround's model. The report states: "At the school level, results for schools that participated in the Safe Schools Initiative were overwhelmingly positive. Both quantitative and qualitative data showed that schools that had been in states of profound crisis were functioning better across multiple outcomes."
2010

National expansion

Turnaround launches partnerships with three schools in Washington D.C., complementing efforts by the Office of the Deputy Mayor and D.C. Public Schools to address students’ social-emotional needs. Our work would later expand nationally, partnering with districts and schools in New Jersey, Oklahoma, California, and more.
2015

Every Student Succeeds Act

Turnaround engages in reauthorization process of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, advocating for inclusion of and attention to language on nonacademic skills and learning environments focused on student development.
2016

Building Blocks for Learning white paper

Turnaround releases framework for the development of evidence-based skills and mindsets proven by research to predict academic achievement.
2016

Turnaround's work in the national conversation

Turnaround for Children's work is recognized in print, broadcast and online including The Atlantic, Forbes and The Economist. In May, Paul Tough publishes Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why, highlighting Turnaround for Children's work of creating safe, supportive school environments. In June, Turnaround's work with Washington, D.C. partner, Houston Elementary School, is highlighted in The Washington Post. In September, PBS airs NOVA's School of the Future. This two-hour documentary features Dr. Pamela Cantor and New York partner Fairmont Neighborhood School and explores the science of learning, including research and insights from neuroscientists, psychologists and educators working to reimagine the future of education.
2016

The Science of Learning and Development Initiative (SoLD)

The Science of Learning and Development (SoLD) initiative is a collaborative effort focused on elevating and translating a diverse but increasingly convergent body of scientific literature to support the transformation of the systems that educate children from birth to adulthood. It is funded by several organizations, including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Ford Foundation and the Raikes Foundation, and includes 6 partner organizations: the American Institute for Research (AIR), the Center for Individual Opportunity, EducationCounsel, the Learning Policy Institute, The Opportunity Institute and Turnaround for Children. SoLD's goal is to synthesize, integrate and translate scientific research into educational practice in order to dramatically improve outcomes for students, regardless of their start in life.
2018

SoLD peer-reviewed papers published in Applied Developmental Science

Two landmark papers, co-authored by Pamela Cantor, M.D. and Lily Steyer from Turnaround for Children, along with colleagues David Osher and Juliette Berg from the American Institutes for Research, and Todd Rose from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Center for Individual Opportunity are simultaneously published in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Developmental Science. The first paper, Malleability, Plasticity, and Individuality: How Children Learn and Develop in Context, examines what nourishes or hinders healthy brain development. The second, Drivers of Human Development: How Relationships and Context Shape Learning and Development, focuses on how family, peer, caregiver and teacher relationships, as well as home, community and school environments impact the ways young people develop. Combined, these papers aim to answer the following questions: What science should we pay attention to when considering how to foster healthy developmental trajectories for all children? What do we know now that could help all students learn to the fullest?
2020

Featured in U.S. Surgeon General's report on youth mental health

A rare public advisory from U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy reports that the pandemic intensified mental health issues that were already widespread by the spring of 2020. The report points to Turnaround's online toolbox for educators as a resource for action on this national emergency (as declared by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children’s Hospital Association).
2023

Turnaround joins ASU as the Center for Whole-Child Education

Turnaround for Children is now the Center for Whole-Child Education, a part of Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. Joining forces with ASU positions Turnaround to continue its mission and drive toward our long-term vision, with opportunities for greater impact, scalability, and sustainability than ever before. Like Turnaround, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College is committed to developing educational practices and building learning environments that are learner-centered: responsive to the personal, social, and cultural experiences of learners. ASU is consistently recognized as one of the most innovative institutions of higher education.
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