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Making Social-Emotional Learning Meaningful, Measurable, and Achievable Under ESSA

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Panelists

Carol Wood, Advocacy Specialist, Committee for Children

Dr. Chad d’Entremont, Executive Director of the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy

Dr. Tia Kim, Director of Programs, Partnerships, and Research, Committee for Children

Dr. Michelle Steagall, Chief Academic Officer of CORE Districts, California

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SEL Under ESSA: The Why and How

Carol Wood

Advocacy Specialist

Committee for Children

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Support for Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) in ESSA

Title I: Requires reporting on designated indicators of academic success and also establishes potential non-academic indicators of school quality and student success, such as student engagement and school climate and safety. States must report on at least one of these non-academic indicators.

Title IV, Part A: Programs and activities that result in a well-rounded education and foster safe, healthy, supportive, and drug-free environments that enhance student academic achievement.

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Outcomes of Social-Emotional Competencies

More positive attitudes, social behaviors, and relationships

Improved test scores, grades, and attendance

Decreased behavioral issues and suspensions

Improved graduation rates

More likely to have stable, full-time employment, career success, positive family and work relationships, better mental health, and reduced criminal behavior

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Social-Emotional Learning Policy and Practice

Dr. Chad d’Entremont

Executive Director

Rennie Center for Education

Research & Policy

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What Does Learning Look Like?

Image sources: http://www.renniecenter.org/research/SEL_policybrief.pdf

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Why Focus on SEL Now?

Social-emotional learning is key to succeeding in school and life.

Although the education field has long embraced the importance of supporting the whole child and social-emotional learning, systems and policies haven’t kept up.

Challenges in Assessment and Measurement

Assessments and other measures are not necessarily aligned to interventions.

Work to have SEL measures as part of state/local accountability systems is nascent.

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MA Education Reform Act (1993)

Equity

Increased state funding

Created minimum foundation

Standards

New curriculum frameworks

MCAS and graduation standards

Revision of teacher licensure

Accountability

Evaluation of school and district performance (EQA)

Increased state authority

Choice

Expanded inter-district choice

Authorized charter schools

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Gains Made, but Gaps Remain

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College and Career Readiness in MA

32%

2014

47%

2013

Students enrolled in development (remedial) courses in college

Community college students earning degree/certificates,

30+ credits, or transferring to four-year institutions in six years

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Excellence and equity in education

present a false dichotomy. The

way forward for reform is to realize

that these goals are not separate

and distinct, but rather the inevitable

result of attending to the needs of

the whole child.

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What Are Key Lessons from Other States?

What can be learned from states with SEL-related policies?

What is the policy environment in MA for bringing about statewide change related to SEL?

Changes in practice and measurement?

SEL in States

Local Policy Environment

Key Considerations

Moving Forward Impact on practice

and measurements

Study Approach

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Key Challenges from Policy Scan

Setting priorities

Supporting operations

Integrating with academic learning

Monitoring and evaluation

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KEY CHALLENGE

LESSONS FROM FOCAL DISTRICTS

KEY QUESTIONS FOR DISTRICT LEADERS

Who are the key constituents to engage in the SEL work? What would convince them of its importance?

What local partners have a vested interest in students’ social and emotional success? How have local early education and care programs addressed SEL?

What constituents already support a SEL approach?

Do any of my schools, administrators, or teachers already demonstrate a positive climate or strong SEL focus? How can I help share their successes with others?

Leaders must actively prioritize SEL.

Everyone must contribute to the SEL effort.

SEL must be tailored to the local context.

Prioritizing SEL

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Building a Comprehensive K-12 System of SEL Supports

Key Actions

Address school climate and discipline

Develop tiered systems of support

Provide caring and engaged adults

Develop individual student learning plans

Support use of broader set of student data

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Innovative and Integrative: Promising Practice at Boston Summer Learning Project

Program Quality:

Observer and Student Perspectives

Track Data in Common Database:

Over Time

Citywide Comparisons

Student Enrollment and Program Attendance

Social-Emotional Skills:

Teacher and Student Perspectives

Targeted Professional

Learning

Peer-to-Peer Connections

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“This isn’t something else on the plate; this is our plate. Once you get the plate established, everything else

flourishes.”

Closing Thoughts

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Rennie Center’s Work on SEL

Further Reading Recent Report

Social and Emotional

Learning: Opportunities

for Massachusetts, Lessons

for the Nation

Available at www.renniecenter.org/topics/SEL_policy.html

Rennie Center’s Condition of Education in the Commonwealth 2016

Provides an annual, evidence-based review of student progress and proficiency throughout the education pipeline from birth into adulthood. 2016 focused on social-emotional learning in Massachusetts and produced a data report and action guide for policymakers.

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Using Data to Support Social-Emotional Learning Programs in Schools

Dr. Tia Kim

Director of Programs,

Partnerships, and Research

Committee for Children

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Get buy-in

Sustainability

Individualized support

Program effectiveness

Why Collect Data?

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School-level data 1

Implementation fidelity 2

Types of Data

Individual assessments 3

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Assessments

Middle School

Social, Emotional, and

Bullying Behavior

Survey (SEBBS)

K-5

Devereux Student

Strengths Assessment-

Second Step Edition

(DESSA-SSE)

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Emerging Findings

Using Surveys of Students’ Social-Emotional Skills and School Culture for Accountability and Continuous Improvement

Dr. Michelle Steagall

Chief Academic Officer of CORE Districts

California

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8 school districts

> 1M students

~ 1,500 schools

> 51,000 teachers

Background: CORE consists of 8 districts that educate more than 1 million children in California.

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The SQII uses a system of multiple measures to provide schools and teachers with more and better information to improve student learning.

In addition to academic achievement, the Index includes a first-in-nation use of social-emotional learning and school climate indicators.

The Index also makes more students visible by including results for any student group with 20 or more students.

Background: What’s the School Quality Improvement Index (SQII)?

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Academic Domain

Social-Emotional & Culture-Climate

Domain

• Achievement and Growth • Graduation Rate • High School Readiness

Rate (Grade 8)

• Chronic Absenteeism • Student/Staff/Parent Culture-

Climate Surveys • Suspension/Expulsion Rate • Social-Emotional Skills • ELL Re-Designation Rate • Special Education Disproportionality

Elimination of Disparity & Disproportionality

Making all students

visible: N size of 20, resulting

in over 150,000 additional students counted!

Background: Designing the School Quality Improvement Index

All Students Group & Subgroups

College & Career Ready Graduates

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Measurable Actionable Meaningful

Each indicator has been carefully developed, refined, and analyzed before inclusion in the Index.

• Evidence of validity, reliability, and stability through the examination of baseline and/or field test data.

• Evidence from research that schools can influence and affect the outcome in question.

• Evidence from baseline data that schools serving similar youth demonstrate notably different outcomes (such that there is evidence that schools play a substantive role in the outcome).

• Clearly connected (e.g., through research) to college and career readiness, and the elimination of disparity and disproportionality (e.g., based on the current presence of substantive gaps in performance).

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Background: What’s Measured in Social-Emotional Skills?

Social-Emotional Competency

Definition

Growth mindset

The belief that one’s abilities can grow with effort. Students with a growth mindset see effort as necessary for success, embrace challenges, learn from criticism, and persist in the face of setbacks.

Self-efficacy The belief in one’s own ability to succeed in achieving an outcome or reaching a goal. Self-efficacy reflects confidence in the ability to exert control over one’s own motivation, behavior, and environment.

Self-management

The ability to regulate one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations. This includes managing stress, delaying gratification, motivating oneself, and setting and working toward personal and academic goals.

Social awareness

The ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others from diverse backgrounds and cultures, to understand social and ethical norms for behavior, and to recognize family, school, and community resources and supports.

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Field test analyses demonstrate:

Strong reliability and positive correlation with key indicators of academic performance and behavior (West)

An encouraging view of the potential for self-reports of social-emotional skills as an input into a system for evaluating school performance

Concerns exist about measuring student social-emotional skills and schools’ culture climate for accountability (e.g., Duckworth and Yeager).

The data currently being gathered by CORE provide a unique opportunity for researchers to study the role of schools in developing student skills and the design of educational accountability systems. (West)

Studying the use of SEL/CC Surveys in the SQII

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Background: What’s Measured in School Culture-Climate?

Culture-Climate Element Definition

Climate of support for academic learning

Students and teachers feel there is a climate conducive to learning and that teachers use supportive practices, such as encouragement and constructive feedback; varied opportunities to demonstrate knowledge and skills; support for risk-taking and independent thinking; atmosphere conducive to dialog and questioning; academic challenge; and individual attention to support differentiated learning.

Knowledge and fairness of discipline, rules, and norms

Clearly communicated rules and expectations about student and adult behavior, especially regarding physical violence, verbal abuse or harassment, and teasing; clear and consistent enforcement and norms for adult intervention.

Safety Students and adults report feeling safe at school and around school, including feeling safe from verbal abuse, teasing, or exclusion by others in the school.

Sense of belonging (school connectedness)

A positive sense of being accepted, valued, and included by others (teacher and peers) in all school settings. Students and parents report feeling welcome at the school.

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CORE Districts Preliminary Findings

Providing academic and social-emotional/culture-climate factors creates a more holistic and actionable picture of schools.

1

Schools with strong social-emotional/culture-climate performance also tend to have stronger academic performance.

1a

Schools with the same academic performance on the Index often have markedly different performance on other Index indicators.

1b

A school’s culture-climate is related to social-emotional skills reports, and we see a substantive range in school performance, despite comparable levels of youth in poverty.

2

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Providing academic and social-emotional/ culture-climate factors creates a more holistic and actionable picture of schools.

Schools with strong social-emotional/culture-climate performance also tend to have stronger academic performance.

Correlations between academic performance and grad index points earned with social-emotional/culture climate factors are ~0.6, which suggests a strong relationship.

1a

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An AYP/API approach to accountability would have examined all of these schools on a limited set of dimensions.

Providing academic and social-emotional/ culture-climate factors creates a more holistic and actionable picture of schools.

That said, schools with the same academic performance on the Index often have markedly different performance on other Index indicators.

1b

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But grad rates, HS readiness, chronic absence, suspension rates and EL re-designation rates add key information.

Middle schools with comparable ELA/math performance, but markedly different performance in other factors.

Providing academic and social-emotional/ culture-climate factors creates a more holistic and actionable picture of schools.

That said, schools with the same academic performance on the Index often have markedly different performance on other Index indicators.

1b

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Both of these schools have close to 90% of youth in poverty

SEL and Culture-Climate: A school’s culture-climate is related to social-emotional skills reports, and we see a substantive range in school performance, despite comparable levels of youth in poverty.

2

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Should Non-Academic Skills Be Included in School Accountability Systems?

Preliminary Evidence from California’s CORE Districts

Social-emotional skills are positively related with the academic indicators and negative correlated with the two indicators of student (mis-)behavior.

1

A strong correlation between CORE’s summary social-emotional learning measure (the average of the four scales) and English language arts (ELA) achievement exists.

2

Martin West, CEPR

Evidence Speaks Reports, Vol 1, #13

March 17, 2016

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Note: All correlations are statistically significant at the 95 percent confidence level or higher. ELA and math test scores are standardized by grade and subject level. GPAs are standardized within district due to variation in scales. Combined SEL Score is an equally weighted average of the four other scales. Schools with fewer than 25 students with valid survey responses excluded.

The strongest relationships with academic indicators are observed for self-management―a pattern consistent with other research―while self-management and social awareness are equally important predictors of behavior.

1

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Note: ELA test scores and SEL skills are standardized by grade. Schools with fewer than 25 students with valid survey responses excluded.

School-level relationship between combined social-emotional learning (SEL) measure and English language arts (ELA) test scores for CORE district middle schools

2

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Q & A

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Email addresses of panelists:

cwood@cfchildren.org, 206-438-6712

cdentremont@renniecenter.org, 617-354-0002, ext. 2

tkim@cfchildren.org, 206-438-6325

michelle@coredistricts.org, 916-596-2548

Newsletter subscription: cfchildren.org/about-us/enewsletter/subscription

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Resources

Today's Slide Deck (PDF)

Funding for Social-Emotional Learning in ESSA

Health-Related Provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act (The Network for Public Health Law)

CORE District Alignment - Second Step Program and Social-Emotional Skills Metrics (Pre/K-8)

Committee for Children's SEL Program

Social and Emotional Learning: Opportunities for Massachusetts, Lessons for the Nation

Toward a More Comprehensive Vision of Student Learning (2016)

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Thank you!