Monday, June 3, 2019

Analyzing Your School Discipline Data and Your SEL (PBIS or School Discipline) Program (Part I)


Students’ Discipline Problems are Increasing Nationally Despite Widespread SEL Use

[CLICK HERE for the Full Blog Message]

Dear Colleagues,

Introduction

   Happy June !!!

   With everyone consumed with testing, end-of-year activities, and graduations, it may seem counterintuitive that this is one of the busiest times of the year for me as a school improvement consultant.  And it’s not because I am doing a lot of presentations during the professional development days that some districts have once students leave for summer vacation.

   [In fact, I never really understood the value of doing professional development in June (a) when staff are focused more on their vacations than on the training; (b) when new staff, who are hired later in the summer, have obviously missed the training; and (c) when many staff “lose” the essence of the training during the summer—just like the “learning losses” that we all experience with students.]

   No. . . my time right now as a consultant is typically spent with my School and District Leadership Teams as we analyze this past year’s outcomes, and make strategic plans and organizational decisions for how the new year needs to start.

   In fact, these activities are a continuation of the theme that I discussed in my last Blog, The Beginning of the Next School Year Starts Now: The Get-Go Process . . .

[CLICK HERE to Re-Read]

. . . where I discussed the importance of reviewing, in April or May, every students’ end-of-year academic and behavioral status, and how much they learned and progressed during the entire school year. 

   We recommended that this information be systematically used (a) to make student class assignments (so that teachers can effectively differentiate instruction); (b) to identify needed multi-tiered services and supports (so that these are in place on the first day of the new school year); and (c) to determine the best personnel arrangements (so that schools with greater student needs receive “Core Plus” staffing).
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   Whether on a student level or an organizational level, the theme here is:

“The Beginning of the New School Year Starts in April.”

And the functional point of the theme is that:

When schools complete evaluations of their organizational, curricular, instructional, intervention, and student processes in April, May, and June, they can use the data to (a) align and adapt existing resources; (b) acquire and activate new resources; and/or (c) retire or reserve other, unneeded resources all to address as many students’ collective and individual needs on the first day of the new year.
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   Today’s Blog (Part I of III) encourages schools to evaluate their Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), Positive Behavioral Support System (PBSS), or school safety and discipline systems and outcomes for this past year. 

   We are recommending that schools analyze their discipline data now (we will show you how below) so that they can identify large-scale school problems that have consumed significant amounts of staff time this past year.  Once these problems are specifically analyzed, the goal is to design any needed organizational, procedural, or instructional strategies or interventions during the summer so they can be implemented on the first day of the new school year. 

   To create a context toward improving schools’ SEL programs, this Blog will first review a number of recent national reports that surveyed educators about students’ behavioral problems in their schools, and other reports suggesting that bullying (including cyberbullying) is increasing in our schools nationwide.
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   In Part II of this Blog Series, we will introduce our Special Situation Analysis process, and apply it to analyzing and developing systemic interventions for school bullying.  The hope is that schools will use this process, once again, to develop and implement “prevention and early response” approaches now . . . for immediate roll-out on the first day of the new school year.

   In Part III of this Series, we will use the Special Situation Analysis process to address cafeteria and bus situations.
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The Back Story

   While I am constantly reading new national reports and following different thought-leaders, many of these Blogs also begin with a recent consultation experience. 

   As noted above, I spend many consultation meetings at the end of the school year helping districts and schools to comprehensively analyze their end-of-year student, staff, and system data, so that we can consciously plan for the next school year.  I was doing just this last week with urban three high schools as we moved to “Year 2” of the new multi-tiered system of supports that we have been designing and initiating.

   During one conversation, as we were analyzing their discipline and SEL outcome data, it became apparent that the schools were reactively dealing with almost-daily “cyber-dramas” that were escalating into classroom disruptions, peer conflicts, and innumerable fights.  These situations were not only were negatively impacting school safety and climate, but they were necessitating time-consuming threat analyses, crisis-containment “Code Blues,” and post-incident interviews and debriefings.

   All of this was dominating the time of administrators, counselors, social workers, and school psychologists.  In fact, one some days, it was nearly impossible for these professionals to have a meeting. . . as one student “blow-up” after another were constant interruptions.

   And all of this was residually impacting other students and many classroom teachers.

   When I began asking questions in our Special Situation Analysis protocol, it was clear that we did not have a full understanding of the different root causes of the problem.  We did, however, know that many of the problems were originating from students’ out-of-school interactions on social media.

   The district and these three schools also had to acknowledge that their “SEL program” was not having “real-life” impact.  That is, it looked great on paper, but the time, staff, and process was not producing a social, emotional, or behavioral “return on investment.”

   The schools are now conducting a full Special Situation Analysis so that they can roll-out a more effective, multi-faceted process to prevent and address their cyber-dramas beginning this August.
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Recent Reports on Social-Emotional Learning Outcomes

   To begin this section, we need to emphasize that it does not matter what label a school uses for its school discipline program.  Whether it is SEL, PBIS, PBSS, or anything else . . . district and school leaders need to understand that the ultimate focus is on enhancing students’ social, emotional, and behavioral self-management—from preschool through high school—and that the process requires a multi-tiered continuum of services, supports, strategies, and interventions for the challenging students who are not responding to the preventative approaches. 

   Moreover, as discussed in many previous Blogs, a school’s SEL, PBIS, PBSS, teasing and bullying, trauma sensitive, and school discipline/ classroom management approaches should all be integrated and based on the same science-to-practice principles and practices.

   The biggest problem and what does matter in school discipline today is that some school leaders do not recognize the principle above, and their school ends up implementing multiple (sometimes redundant, sometimes conflicting, sometimes innocuous) school-wide initiatives that end up (a) wasting staff development and implementation time, and (b) not producing desired student outcomes.

   I am not blaming anyone here.  Many administrators do not have the psychological or behavioral background needed, and they are doing the best that they can with the understanding (and resources) that they have.

   But the bottom line is that:  Schools’ science-to-practice gaps represent a primary reason for their lack of sustained returns on their SEL, PBIS, etc. investments.

[CLICK HERE for a Past Discussion:

The SEL-ing of Social-Emotional Learning: Education’s Newest Bandwagon... Science-To-Practice Goals, Flaws, and Cautions

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Three Recent SEL Reports  

   As a backdrop to a broader, more focused SEL discussion, let’s overview three recent national survey reports.

[CLICK HERE for the Full Blog Message with these Overviews]

  • Report 1 is a recent survey of 800 nationally-representative kindergarten through high school principals was completed by the MCH Strategic Data company and published last month as K-12 Principals’ Assessment of Education. 
 
  • Report 2 is a report, Breaking Bad Behavior, published by research company EAB that validates and extends the MCH Report above relative to elementary students’ behavioral challenges.

  • Report 3, Teacher and Principal Perspectives on Social and Emotional Learning in America’s Schools, was published earlier this year by the Rand Corporation.  It is based on a Spring, 2018 survey of the American Educator Panels that involved 15,719 nationally-representative teacher and school principal respondents.  These educators answered questions about the importance and value of SEL in schools, how they were promoting and measuring SEL, and how they thought SEL approaches could be improved.

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Analysis

   Earlier SEL surveys (e.g., McGraw-Hill’s Education 2018 Social and Emotional Learning Report involving 1,000 administrators, teachers, and parents) reported that nearly 67% of the educators said that their school is in the process of implementing a school-wide strategic SEL plan.  In addition, while just 22% of the educators said that they felt “very prepared” to teach SEL and 51% said the level of SEL professional development at their school was not sufficient, 75% of the teachers said that they were “teaching SEL” in their classrooms.

   Critically, if educators are expecting social-emotional learning approaches (in Study 2) to address the behavioral issues exhibited by students (in Study 1), we have to do better.  Principal and teachers need to be implementing evidence-based SEL approaches that have demonstrated their ability to change students’ behavior in sustained ways.

   And yet, based on our research and analysis, we believe that the SEL framework, as advocated by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), has a number of significant flaws. 

   These flaws include:

  • CASEL’s approach to SEL in the schools is to provide a loose implementation framework, and to tell schools to “create your own initiative.”  This means that SEL programs across schools cannot be objectively compared or validated, and that many schools may be implementing ineffective approaches that are not producing demonstrable student-focused social, emotional, or behavioral outcomes.

  • CASEL’s five SEL outcomes (Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision-Making) were not scientifically derived, they have never been validated, and they are largely constructs that cannot be reliably or validly measured because they are not discretely observable.

  • Some of the meta-analytic research used by CASEL to validate SEL approaches were conducted internally by CASEL leaders and were not independently and objectively reviewed or published.  A review of this research indicates that this research has significant methodological flaws that call their conclusions into question.

  • The only CASEL-sponsored meta-analytic study that was published in an independent professional journal also had significant methodological shortcomings.

  • CASEL is now sponsoring activities focused on improving the evaluation of SEL outcomes.  This begs the question:  “If CASEL acknowledges that current SEL evaluation instruments and tools are lacking, how can it use existing studies that have utilized these instruments to validate its empirical foundation?”  
 
  •  CASEL’s SEL framework does not address students’ gender, age, cultural, racial, or socio-economic differences; and it does not address the multi-tiered service and support needs of students with disabilities and other behavioral/mental health issues.

   In the final analysis, it is difficult to determine the efficacy of SEL initiatives when most of them significantly differ.  Given this, individual districts and schools need to determine whether their SEL programs or strategies are changing student behavior. 

   As I have said many time before: 

Schools don’t credit for activity; they get credit for student outcomes.

   If schools are investing time, training, resources, and effort on SEL programs or strategies, they need to evaluate and be guided by their results.  If the approaches are not working, they may need to consult with an expert who understands the psychoeducational research, and how to operationalize and individualize that research into student-focused practices that create and sustain social, emotional, and behavioral change.
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Recent Reports on School Safety and Bullying

   Two reports have recently been published that involve surveys of students and others on school safety and bullying and their various characteristics and locations.  In combination, they suggest that school bullying is on the rise, and that cyberbullying remains a significant bullying problem.

[CLICK HERE for the Full Blog Message describing these Reports]

  • Report 1 was published by YouthTruth, a San Francisco-based national non-profit that surveys student to give educators feedback on the impact and meaningfulness of their school initiatives.  The Report, Learning from Student Voice: Bullying Today, analyzed responses from students during the 2015-16, 2016-17, and 2017-18 school years regarding their experiences with school climate and safety. 

  • Report 2 involved a survey on student bullying completed by over 1,000 parents.  It was published by Comparitech.
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Analyzing School Discipline Data

   While the five national reports provide some context or guidance in the areas of student behavior, bullying, and cyberbullying, individual districts and schools need to analyze their own data to determine where they are, what they have accomplished (or not), and what they need to plan for the coming school year.

   To do this most effectively, school need to have a high-quality, interactive student information or data management system that tracks—at the very least—students’ Office Discipline Referrals (ODRs) and school suspensions or expulsions across a variety of variables. 

[CLICK HERE for the Full Blog Message with the student discipline-related variables recommended for the Data Management System; and the Data Analytic Reports and Questions that schools should run at the end of the school year.]

   Once analyzed, school administrators and other leaders will be able to identify trends in the data.  For example, are there specific places in the school, days of the week, or times of the day that are more problematic . . . for all students?  for certain grade levels of students?  for certain teachers?

   As related to our discussion above, are there certain offenses that are occurring more often than others?  For example, bullying, cyberbullying, (sexual) harassment, fighting or related physical aggressions?  And who, where, and when are these occurring most often?

   Finally, school administrators and other leaders can correlate the time, training, resources, and quality of implementation of their different SEL, PBSS, or school discipline activities with these (and related) student data to determine the SEL/PBSS return on investment. 

   Related to this is the identification of large-scale school behavior problems, and estimates of how much time and how many resources have been required to address these persistent situations.
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Summary

   The discussion in this Blog (Part I of III) focused on encouraging schools to evaluate their Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), Positive Behavioral Support System (PBSS), or school safety and discipline systems and outcomes from the school year that is now ending.

   Initially, we created a context to help schools to evaluate (with a goal of improving) their SEL programs by reviewing a number of recent national reports that surveyed educators about students’ behavioral problems in their schools, and other reports suggesting that bullying (including cyberbullying) is increasing in our schools nationwide.

   We then recommended that schools analyze their discipline data now so that they can identify large-scale school problems that have consumed significant amounts of staff time this past year. 

   To assist here, we identified a series of analyses and questions that schools can use to evaluate this year’s discipline data from their student information or data management systems.

   In Part II of this Blog Series, we will introduce our Special Situation Analysis process, and apply it to analyzing and developing systemic interventions for school bullying.  The hope is that schools will use this process to develop and implement “prevention and early response” approaches now . . . for immediate roll-out on the first day of the new school year.

   In Part III of this Series, we will use the Special Situation Analysis process to address cafeteria and bus situations.
_ _ _ _ _

   I know that many of you are either finishing your school year, or your school year has just recently ended.  And for some of you, the thought of analyzing the data from the year just ended so that you can begin planning (in earnest) for the coming year simply sounds crazy.

   But the new school year (for some of you) is less than 10 weeks away. 

   And if this past year, academically and/or behaviorally, did not go as well as you wanted, and if nothing has been done to address the root causes of these situations, why would anyone think that the new year is going to be a better year?

   Moreover, if the information and data that you have in-hand is not analyzed, you may not understand that you thought was a pervasive student problem, really is isolated to a small group of students, and that the interventions needed by these students is not as daunting as first thought.

   As always, I look forward to your thoughts and comments.  Even during the Summer, I am still available to provide a free hour of telephone consultation to those who want to discuss their student, school, and/or district needs. 

   Feel free to contact me at any time if there is anything that I can do to support your work.

Best,

Howie

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