How much do schools and educators impact students’ social-emotional learning?
Inspire SEL Assessment in ActionBy: Libby Pier (Education Analytics) & Heather Hough (Policy Analysis for California Education) In 2014, the CORE Districts—a consortium of eight of the largest school districts in California serving more than one million students—began measuring students’ social-emotional learning (SEL) as part of a No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waiver enabling CORE to develop a holistic school quality measurement system. In collaboration with researchers and SEL content experts, CORE curated items to measure four social-emotional competencies: growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness. Although the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) nullified the NCLB waiver, CORE has continued to measure students’ SEL annually since 2014 and reports school-level averages for informational purposes. Before CORE began administering annual SEL surveys…