Students’ Discipline Problems are Increasing
Nationally Despite Widespread SEL Use
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).
_ _ _ _ _
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.
_ _ _ _ _
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.
_ _ _ _ _
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.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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
_ _ _ _ _
Three Recent SEL Reports
As a backdrop to a
broader, more focused SEL discussion, let’s overview three recent national
survey reports.
- 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.
_ _ _ _ _
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.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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.
- 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.
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.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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
