Why Most Schools are not Implementing
Scientifically-Sound SEL Practices—Wasting Time and Resources
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Dear Colleagues,
It seems that
educators can’t go anywhere on their on-line news feeds (e.g., the74,
ASCD’s and others’ SmartBriefs, Learning Forward, the Huffington
Post, Education Dive K-12, Education Week, etc.) without
hearing about the virtues of Social-Emotional Learning (SEL).
Yes. . . SEL has become education’s newest bandwagon. And, districts are jumping on.
Indeed, in the
September 28, 2018 issue of Education Week’s Market Brief, Holly Yettick
reported that, “Nearly 90 percent of district leaders say they have already
invested in social and emotional learning products, or plan to do so over the
next year.”
This past week,
Allstate’s Foundation committed $45 million to social-emotional learning
initiatives over the next five years.
And, Learning
Forward—also this week—got into “the game” by stating that, “(A)s more
practitioners and researchers recognize the importance of addressing students'
social and emotional learning (SEL) in schools, we can't leave to chance the
professional learning needed to make these efforts effective.”
And yet, what is not
being reported is that:
- SEL’s recent popularity (and legitimacy—at least, in the media) is the result of a multi-year effort to court foundations, politicians, well-regarded educators, and other powerful national figures;
- Many SEL programs and research studies have significant science-to-practice limitations;
- Many districts and schools are purchasing “SEL programs and curricula” without independently and objectively evaluating (a) their research to determine if they are “ready” for field-based implementation; (b) whether they “fit” the demographics, students, and needs of their schools; and (c) whether they have a high probability of positively impacting the social, emotional, and behavioral student outcomes that they seek; and
- The SEL movement has become incredibly profitable for some publishers and vendors—leading to “marketing campaigns” that mask the questionable quality of some programs and curricula.
_ _ _ _ _
In this two-part Blog,
I would like to discuss the concerns above.
In a nut shell, SEL
has become a non-stop “movement” (see below), and many districts and schools
are “searching for SEL in all the wrong places.”
The fundamental problem
is that many educators do not understand the (political) history, its current
research-to-practice status and its scientific limitations, the true outcomes
of an effective SEL program, the absence of valid implementation strategies,
and SEL’s potential strengths and limitations.
And in the rush to
implement, many districts and schools are choosing incomplete, ineffective, and
inconsequential (if not counterproductive) strategies that are wasting classroom
time, squandering schools’ precious resources, and undermining districts’
professional development decisions.
Districts and
schools are also inappropriately attributing their social, emotional, and
behavioral “successes” (often limited to declining discipline problems, rather
than improving student self-management) to their “SEL programs.”
I say
“inappropriately” because they are making causal statements that, “Our
SEL program was directly responsible for our decreased office discipline
referrals”. . . when the relationship is correlational at best. . . and
there are other more directly relevant factors to explain whatever successes
they are having.
Finally, what is not
recognized is that all of the “positive press” about SEL program “success”
is a biased sample. The press is not
going to report the unsuccessful SEL initiatives, because virtually no
one is interested in these. My work around
the country suggests that the ratio of schools implementing SEL to the schools
directly successful because of SEL is very low.
And this is not to
mention the fact that most schools have been unable to sustain their SEL
strategies for more than three years at a time.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Where Did SEL Come
From? The Collaborative for
Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and its Political History
SEL is inextricably
tied to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning
(CASEL) which was formed in 1994 by a group of researchers, educators, and
child advocates. With Daniel Goleman’s
Emotional Intelligence work as an early building-block, CASEL functioned
originally as a “research-based thought group” that ultimately wanted to impact
schools and classrooms.
Despite this goal,
CASEL has no interest in large-scale training, or in deploying legions of
consultants to “scale-up” its work across the country. While it has partnered with a number
of state departments of education and large city school districts, it has done
this to advance its agenda, and to collect the “data” to support its
“movement.” Critically, most of CASEL’s
efficacy data have been published in its own technical reports. They have never been independently evaluated
through an objective, refereed process—like articles in most professional
journals.
And make no mistake
about it, CASEL does want SEL to be “a movement.”
To support this
statement, the history of CASEL’s interactions with politicians, foundations,
celebrities, and the National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic
Development (which it established) is detailed.
[Please read the entire Blog]
Relative to
foundations, they clearly have the right to fund whatever they want to
fund. But the funds often come “with
strings attached.” And few
financially-strapped school districts are going to refuse the funds—even though
the initiative may actually result in (a) a loss of staff trust and morale, (b)
the establishment of faulty student/instructional systems that will take many
years to repair, and (c) a generation of students who have missed more
effective educational opportunities.
Indeed, there is a
growing history where some foundations’ conceptualizations of “effective educational
practices” were not effective, and were retroactively proven to be misguided
and counterproductive.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
The foundation to
CASEL’s SEL movement are “three” research studies that are continually cited by
districts and schools nationwide as the empirical “proof” that SEL
“works.”
All “three” studies
involve meta-analyses—a statistical approach that pools the results of many
other individual studies, that have studied the “same” area, variables, or
approaches, into a single “effect size.”
The cited studies
are by Payton and colleagues (published by CASEL in 2008), a “study” by Durlak
and colleagues (published in the journal Child Development in 2011), and
a more recent study by Taylor and colleagues (also published in Child
Development in 2017).
The Blog continues
with a critique of the three studies. . . which have significant flaws that
result in questions about their validity and utility. A brief discussion on meta-analysis follows.
. . emphasizing the characteristics of good meta-analytic research, and the
science-to-practice limitations of this statistical technique.
The critical
take-away is that, just because we know that a meta-analysis has established a
legitimate connection between a program, strategy, or intervention and student
behavior or learning, we do not necessarily know the implementation steps
that were used by each individual study included in the analysis.
Moreover, we cannot
assume that all or most of the studies used (a) the same or similar
implementation steps, or (b) the most effective or best implementation
steps. We also do not know if the
implementation steps can be realistically replicated in “the real world” as
many studies are conducted under controlled “experimental” conditions.
In order to know
exactly what implementation steps to replicate with our staff and students (to
maximize the program or intervention’s student outcomes), educators need to
“research the research” that was included in a specific meta-analysis.
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Entire Blog]
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
The Blog concludes
by describing the characteristics of an effective social skills program—one of
the most-cited and used approaches for SEL implementation. The top evidence-based social skills programs
are identified.
Then, the message
describes how districts should select their SEL program or approach in the same
way that they select a new reading or math curriculum. . . using a
district-level committee that reviews and evaluates the research and available
programs in a systematic, planned, and thoughtful way.
The point is: if a district (or school) rushes into an SEL
decision and gets it “wrong,” time, training, money, personnel, and other
resources are wasted. But more
importantly, student learning and proficiency also may be compromised by a
faulty decision—and student outcomes are the real reason why these decisions
are made in the first place.
Right now,
school-based SEL programming and implementation across the country is based more
on personal testimony, tacit acceptance of “expert opinion,” and passive
decision-making.
This is not about
stopping the train. It is about improving
the journey and its outcomes.
What do you think?
Best,
Howie
[CLICK HERE for the
Entire Blog]
