Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Policy makers, educators, and the broader public increasingly agree that students’ development of social-emotional skills is important for success in academic and life outcomes. Research provides evidence that schools can facilitate the development of these skills, both directly and through the implementation of policies and practices that improve a school’s culture and climate and promote positive relationships. Growing confidence that schools can contribute to students’ social-emotional development has led some districts and states nationwide to consider including measures of social-emotional learning (SEL) and school culture and climate (CC) in systems of school accountability and continuous improvement. Interest in local measurement is fueled in part by federal policy; the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 requires that states measure at least one indicator of “School Quality or Student Success,” defined broadly to include measures of student engagement, educator engagement, student access to and completion of advanced coursework, post-secondary readiness, or school climate and safety. In this paper, we use data from the CORE districts — eight districts in California serving nearly one million students who have embraced systematic measurement of SEL and CC — to provide guidance for state and local policy makers about the suitability of SEL and CC surveys as school performance indicators and how they can be used in a broader set of measures to support school improvement. We find that the CORE measures of SEL and CC distinguish between schools, are related to other academic and non-academic measures, and illuminate dimensions of student achievement that go beyond traditional indicators, all initial indications of the measures’ promise for informing school improvement. Our results also demonstrate the importance of reporting SEL and CC measures by subgroup, as African American and Hispanic/Latino students report lower SEL and CC compared to peers even within the same schools. While the measures of SEL and CC provide new information for school improvement, given remaining questions about the measures’ sensitivity to change over time, the effect of schools on improving SEL and CC outcomes, and the potential for measures to be gamed, further research is needed to understand the advantages and disadvantages of incorporating them into higher stakes accountability systems.