Resources

Recent attempts to measure schools’ influence on students’ social-emotional learning (SEL) show differences across schools, but whether these estimated differences measure the true effects of schools remain unclear. To better understand these measures, we examine the stability of estimated school-by-grade effects across two years using large-scale survey data.

This infographic highlights EA's research into changes in learning patterns experienced by students in grades 3–8 in California and South Carolina. Using results from winter 2020–21 interim assessments, EA provides an up-to-date picture of the learning lag students have experienced during the pandemic. EA also highlights findings from a well-being student survey collected during the 2020–21 school year.

We drew on data from the CORE Districts' Student Well-Being and Learning Conditions Survey, given to 32,000 students in Grades 4–12 from three districts at the beginning of the 2020–21 school year and to 15,000 students again a few months later. We examined patterns in responses by student characteristics, the connection between well-being and academic performance, and changes in students' responses from fall to winter.

This brief is one in a series aimed at providing K-12 education decision makers and advocates with an evidence base to ground discussions about how to best serve students during and following the novel coronavirus pandemic.

We used mixture IRT models to evaluate confusion due to the negative wording of certain items on a social-emotional learning (SEL) survey. We also evaluated the consequences of the potential confusion. We found evidence of rating scale confusion due to negatively worded items. We also found that confusion was most prevalent at lower grade levels and was positively related to both reading proficiency and ELL status.

We used social-emotional learning survey data to simulate how four constructs—growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness—develop from grades 4 to 12 and how these trends vary by gender, socioeconomic status, and race/ethnicity among students for two consecutive years. We found that, with the exception of growth mindset, self-reports of these constructs do not increase monotonically as students move through school; self-efficacy, social awareness, and, to a lesser degree, self-management decrease after Grade 6.

This guide outlines the steps that organizations might consider for measuring students’ social and emotional learning (SEL). We highlight the lessons we have learned from the research that Education Analytics has conducted on SEL survey measures. We also discuss future directions of SEL measurement that policymakers and practitioners at the state and district level should consider.

We applied 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. We found that classrooms differ in their effect on students’ growth in self-reported SEL—even after accounting for school-level effects.

Using the first large-scale panel surveys of students on SEL, we produced school-level value-added measures by grade for growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness. We found substantive differences across schools in SEL growth, with magnitudes of differences similar to those for growth in academic achievement, but weaker goodness of fit and smaller across-school variance, suggesting caution in interpreting such measures as causal impacts of schools on SEL.