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SEL Assessment in Action

The SEL Assessment in Action series is an ongoing effort to collect stories from educators who are using measures of SEL competencies. These vignettes are the product of written testimonies and qualitative interviews, conducted by the guide team, of educators who are using SEL competence assessments in practice.

Over time, this series will represent an increasing variety of contexts and uses of assessment to help illustrate for other practitioners how assessments can be used to improve the social and emotional skills of students.

Connecting the Dots of SEL Assessment: Methodologies that Matter for Students, Teachers, and Policy

Connecting the Dots of SEL Assessment: Methodologies that Matter for Students, Teachers, and Policy

Inspire SEL Assessment in Action

By: Christina Cipriano, Ph.D.   You can’t have evidence-based practice without evidence. You can’t have evidence without assessments. But, what are the “right” assessments for SEL? Assessments that matter for students. Accessible assessments match students’ needs, and their results direct student pathways to engagement and learning. Assessments that matter for practice. Good assessments capture learning in a meaningful way and promote the building of an evidence base of best practice for instruction. Effective assessments provide real-time information for educators to teach from — scores that support student growth and inform teacher instruction. Assessments that matter for policy. Formative, summative, and standardized assessment structures play a key role in federal education and accountability mandates, and scores contribute to funding distributions at the […]

Balancing and Aligning District and School Leader Approaches to SEL Assessment

Balancing and Aligning District and School Leader Approaches to SEL Assessment

Inspire SEL Assessment in Action

Eric Moore, Chief of Accountability, Research and Equity and Interim Chief of Academics Erin Rathke, Principal Justice Page Middle School Minneapolis Public Schools   As a district level administrator and middle school principal, we wanted to jointly write this blog in an attempt to align theory with practice around SEL measurement. From our experiences in education, there is often a disconnect between the grandiose ideas and practices of district office staff and the day to day experience of building principals. In 2017, Minneapolis public schools became a member of the CASEL collaborating district initiative. Our goal as a district is for all seventy-two of our schools to begin integrating elements of social and emotional learning, including SEL measurement, into all […]

Washoe County Schools Embeds SEL Assessment in their Climate Surveys

Washoe County Schools Embeds SEL Assessment in their Climate Surveys

Inspire SEL Assessment in Action

Washoe County Schools uses an SEL assessment embedded in their climate surveys. All students in grades 5-9 and 11 take the survey annually. It is administered online via a link on their website. Washoe County staff didn’t feel comfortable putting SEL scores on student profiles, so they focus on aggregate reporting. They report on SEL in a simple way: for each SEL domain, they report the percent of students who rated the competencies within that domain as easy or difficult. The data are publicly accessible on their website. The climate survey reports (including SEL data) are generated by a vendor. PDFs of overall school results are compiled with other data and given to schools. They developed survey items in part […]

Creative Ways SEL Assessment Informs Curriculum Around the World

Creative Ways SEL Assessment Informs Curriculum Around the World

Inspire SEL Assessment in Action

By Cherilyn G. Leet and Dr. Susan Stillman (Six Seconds)   The results of SEL assessments can be intriguing, motivating, and tied to curriculum. They do not have to be dry, feared, or detached. In our experience working with educators from the Americas to Europe, from the Middle East to Asia to Africa, data from SEL assessments have the potential to imbue a school with life. When all stakeholders come together with curiosity to explore the data and wisdom that can be derived from SEL assessments, the insights gained can lay the groundwork for positive change. Strong SEL assessments can become the axles which bring the school’s curriculum design, behavioral intervention, parent engagement, and teacher collaboration into sync.   The […]

Hoosick Falls Central School District Uses SEL Assessment to Inform Instruction

Hoosick Falls Central School District Uses SEL Assessment to Inform Instruction

Inspire SEL Assessment in Action

Hoosick Falls Central School District in Rensselaer County, New York, has been using the Holistic Student Assessment (HSA) for 5th- to 12th-grade students since 2014. Each school uses physical education and wellness time to administer the survey, which takes 10 to 15 minutes to complete. Why did you choose the the measure? Our district began to incorporate social-emotional learning seven years ago and wanted an assessment that was student self-reported. The measure’s results dashboard allows teachers to view data trends at the student, grade and school-wide levels. This allows practices to be adjusted to be more responsive to students’ needs. How do you use the measure? Our schools use the data from this measure: To inform instructional practices. We examined […]

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