New Sections on Social Emotional Learning and Attendance in Evidence for ESSA!

We are proud to announce the launch of two new sections of our Evidence for ESSA website (www.evidenceforessa.org): K-12 social-emotional learning and attendance. Funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the new sections represent our first foray beyond academic achievement.

The social-emotional learning section represents the greatest departure from our prior work. This is due to the nature of SEL, which combines many quite diverse measures. We identified 17 distinct measures, which we grouped in four overarching categories, as follows:

Academic Competence

• Academic performance
• Academic engagement

Problem Behaviors

• Aggression/misconduct
• Bullying
• Disruptive behavior
• Drug/alcohol abuse
• Sexual/racial harassment or aggression
• Early/risky sexual behavior

Social Relationships

• Empathy
• Interpersonal relationships
• Pro-social behavior
• Social skills
• School climate

Emotional Well-Being

• Reduction of anxiety/depression
• Coping skills/stress management
• Emotional regulation
• Self-esteem/self-efficacy

Evidence for ESSA reports overall effect sizes and ratings for each of the four categories, as well as the 17 individual measures (which are themselves composed of many measures used by various qualifying studies). So in contrast to reading and math, where programs are rated based on the average of all qualifying  reading or math measures, an SEL program could be rated “strong” in one category, “promising” in another, and “no qualifying evidence” or “qualifying studies found no significant positive effects” on others.

Social-Emotional Learning

The SEL review, led by Sooyeon Byun, Amanda Inns, Cynthia Lake, and Liz Kim at Johns Hopkins University, located 24 SEL programs that both met our inclusion standards and had at least one study that met strong, moderate, or promising standards on at least one of the four categories of outcomes.

There is much more evidence at the elementary and middle school levels than at the high school level. Recognizing that some programs had qualifying outcomes at multiple levels, there were 7 programs with positive evidence for pre-K/K, 10 for 1-2, 13 for 3-6, and 9 for middle school. In contrast, there were only 4 programs with positive effects in senior high schools. Fourteen studies took place in urban locations, 5 in suburbs, and 5 in rural districts.

The outcome variables most often showing positive impacts include social skills (12), school climate (10), academic performance (10), pro-social behavior (8), aggression/misconduct (7), disruptive behavior (7), academic engagement (7), interpersonal relationships (7), anxiety/depression (6), bullying (6), and empathy (5). Fifteen of the programs targeted whole classes or schools, and 9 targeted individual students.

Several programs stood out in terms of the size of the impacts. Take the Lead found effect sizes of +0.88 for social relationships and +0.51 for problem behaviors. Check, Connect, and Expect found effect sizes of +0.51 for emotional well-being, +0.29 for problem behaviors, and +0.28 for academic competence. I Can Problem Solve found effect sizes of +0.57 on school climate. The Incredible Years Classroom and Parent Training Approach reported effect sizes of +.57 for emotional regulation, +0.35 for pro-social behavior, and +0.21 for aggression/misconduct. The related Dinosaur School classroom management model reported effect sizes of +0.31 for aggression/misbehavior. Class-Wide Function-Related Intervention Teams (CW-FIT), an intervention for elementary students with emotional and behavioral disorders, had effect sizes of +0.47 and +0.30 across two studies for academic engagement and +0.38 and +0.21 for disruptive behavior. It also reported effect sizes of +0.37 for interpersonal relationships, +0.28 for social skills, and +0.26 for empathy. Student Success Skills reported effect sizes of +0.30 for problem behaviors, +0.23 for academic competence, and +0.16 for social relationships.

In addition to the 24 highlighted programs, Evidence for ESSA lists 145 programs that were no longer available, had no qualifying studies (e.g., no control group), or had one or more qualifying studies but none that met the ESSA Strong, Moderate, or Promising criteria. These programs can be found by clicking on the “search” bar.

There are many problems inherent to interpreting research on social-emotional skills. One is that some programs may appear more effective than others because they use measures such as self-report, or behavior ratings by the teachers who taught the program. In contrast, studies that used more objective measures, such as independent observations or routinely collected data, may obtain smaller impacts. Also, SEL studies typically measure many outcomes and only a few may have positive impacts.

In the coming months, we will be doing analyses and looking for patterns in the data, and will have more to say about overall generalizations. For now, the new SEL section provides a guide to what we know now about individual programs, but there is much more to learn about this important topic.

Attendance

Our attendance review was led by Chenchen Shi, Cynthia Lake, and Amanda Inns. It located ten attendance programs that met our standards. Only three of these reported on chronic absenteeism, which refers to students missing more than 10% of days. Many more focused on average daily attendance (ADA). Among programs focused on average daily attendance, a Milwaukee elementary school program called SPARK had the largest impact (ES=+0.25). This is not an attendance program per se, but it uses AmeriCorps members to provide tutoring services across the school, as well as involving families. SPARK has been shown to have strong effects on reading, as well as its impressive effects on attendance. Positive Action is another schoolwide approach, in this case focused on SEL. It has been found in two major studies in grades K-8 to improve student reading and math achievement, as well as overall attendance, with a mean effect size of +0.20.

The one program to report data on both ADA and chronic absenteeism is called Attendance and Truancy Intervention and Universal Procedures, or ATI-UP. It reported an effect size in grades K-6 of +0.19 for ADA and +0.08 for chronic attendance. Talent Development High School (TDHS) is a ninth grade intervention program that provides interdisciplinary learning communities and “double dose” English and math classes for students who need them. TDHS reported an effect size of +0.17.

An interesting approach with a modest effect size but very modest cost is now called EveryDay Labs (formerly InClass Today). This program helps schools organize and implement a system to send postcards to parents reminding them of the importance of student attendance. If students start missing school, the postcards include this information as well. The effect size across two studies was a respectable +0.16.

As with SEL, we will be doing further work to draw broader lessons from research on attendance in the coming months. One pattern that seems clear already is that effective attendance improvement models work on building close relationships between at-risk students and concerned adults. None of the effective programs primarily uses punishment to improve attendance, but instead they focus on providing information to parents and students and on making it clear to students that they are welcome in school and missed when they are gone.

Both SEL and attendance are topics of much discussion right now, and we hope these new sections will be useful and timely in helping schools make informed choices about how to improve social-emotional and attendance outcomes for all students.

This blog was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.