Social-emotional learning or SEL has become the latest educational catch-phrase. SEL has been broadly defined as “non-cognitive” or “soft” skills, such as interest and engagement, and has been recognized by policy-makers and the broader public as a set of skills...
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...
This brief applies value-added models to student surveys in the CORE Districts to explore whether social-emotional learning (SEL) surveys can be used to measure effective classroom-level supports for SEL. The authors find that classrooms differ in their effect on students’...
Researchers who examined data from five large California school districts have concluded that measures of students’ personal strengths and interpersonal skills are not reliable enough at this point to include in states’ and districts’ school accountability systems.
Transforming Education and Policy Analysis for California Education partnered to analyze data from over 500,000 students across 8 districts in California. This brief provides benchmarking data that is designed to allow practitioners to compare their aggregated data across grade levels...
In The 74, writer Kate Stringer reports on how the Long Beach Unified School District and other CORE Districts are tracking students’ growth in both academic and social-emotional skills. Long Beach Unified is part of the CORE-PACE Research Partnership, established in...
The increasing focus on school climate and students' relationships to their peers and their schools is a potentially powerful catalyst for school improvement and student achievement. How to measure school climate and students' social and emotional development with confidence? For...
Education Week article by Evie Blad describes a report coordinated by the CORE-PACE Research Partnership. The report looks at the experiences of the Fresno Unified School District, part of the CORE districts, a group of California school systems that regularly...
Education dive features PACE research that address the needs and opportunities for social emotional learning (SEL) to include the role of clubs and other after-school activities that help to broaden and extend social-emotional skills such as empathy and communication.
PACE and the Learning Policy Institute hosted an event on how schools can be organized to support the whole child, which featured a series of panels with leading researchers, policymakers, and practitioners. Topics included:
The development of social-emotional skills within the CORE districts, a network of urban California school districts that serve more than 1 million students A new Policy Analysis for California study, " Trends in Student Social-Emotional Learning: Evidence from the CORE Districts,"...
Nowhere is a data-informed approach to social-emotional learning more pronounced than in California's CORE Districts, which embarked on a groundbreaking effort in 2013 to capture a more holistic vision of student success and school quality. There, eight of the largest...
Students’ reports of whether they have developed a growth mindset continue to climb steadily throughout their K-12 years, but their assessments of their social awareness skills and feelings of self-efficacy drop sharply beginning in middle school, according to a recent...
As the conversation grows over how to measure SEL among students grows, gathering their own perspectives is an important part of the picture. States are also beginning to include student surveys as one piece of their accountability plans for the...
Policy Analysis for California Education and CORE, an organization representing eight urban school districts in California, released a new practice brief highlighting lessons learned on implementing social and emotional learning programs from the CORE districts.
With an increased appreciation of students’ social-emotional skills among researchers and policy makers, many states and school districts are moving toward a systematic process to measure Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). In this study, we examine the measurement properties of California's CORE...
California has embraced Social Emotional Learning (SEL) as a crucial aspect of education, integrating emotional management, positive goal setting, empathy, and relationship skills into academic success. This commitment is evident in the state's adoption of SEL components in its educational standards and accountability systems. However, while the state is implementing surveys to gauge school climate, it's yet to fully understand how these relate to academic progress or link social-emotional learning to overall school improvement. The CORE districts have taken strides by measuring specific competencies like self-management and growth mindset, finding that these skills predict student performance at different academic levels. Yet, educators need guidance on using this data for improvement. PACE is studying the CORE districts' innovative accountability system to pinpoint successful policies and practices regarding SEL, aiming to reduce disparities among student sub-groups. Understanding how learning environments foster SEL can inform efforts to improve education across California and potentially nationally. Moving forward, California needs to focus on developing educators' capacity to utilize SEL data effectively and invest in integrating SEL in both school-day and expanded learning environments for continuous improvement.
A new study delves into racial and ethnic disparities in academic achievement within California middle schools and their correlation with school climate, a concept encompassing safety, relationships, and participation opportunities. Analyzing data from the California School Climate, Health, and Learning Survey (Cal-SCHLS) across 754 middle schools, the research focuses on Black-White and Hispanic-White racial climate gaps. It identifies differences in students' perceptions of safety, relationships, and participation based on race within the same schools. Notably, Black students reported lower levels of safety and relationships compared to White peers, while Hispanic students experienced lower safety, relationships, and participation opportunities than their White counterparts. The study also links larger racial achievement gaps to corresponding disparities in perceived safety, relationships, and participation. It emphasizes the importance of considering subgroup-specific climates instead of a general school-level assessment. Particularly relevant for California's education system, which integrates school climate measures into its accountability systems, the study highlights the need for targeted action plans addressing diverse subgroup experiences to promote educational equity.
