Social Emotional Learning is a Multi-billion dollar industry claiming to improve mental health, behavioral problems, academic scores, etc.
Social and emotional learning (SEL) advocates always insist that their enterprise is “evidence-based.” There is, in truth, remarkably little rigorous evidence demonstrating SEL’s academic benefits. A 2017 Rand Corporation review of the SEL literature found a single study meeting its highest threshold for evidentiary rigor demonstrating positive academic achievement effects. But what SEL advocates lack in quality, they make up in quantity. There have been a great many studies of non-cognitive interventions that have shown results, and occasionally academics group these studies together into a meta-analysis alleging to prove that SEL “works.”
The latest such study, published last month, reviewed 424 studies involving a total of over half a million students. Unlike previous meta-analyses, the authors do not offer a list of studies to facilitate spot-checking (an exercise which, when I conducted it on earlier ones, revealed that many of the studies didn’t resemble contemporary SEL programs). But the topline conclusion is that participation in SEL programming “improves skills, attitudes, behavior, school climate and safety, peer relationships, school functioning, and academic achievement.”
Does Social and Emotional Learning Work? Let’s Hope Not
SEL providers screen FCPS students twice a year, beginning in 3rd grade to see if there are changes in behavior, feelings, and environment. These scores are used to “show” effectiveness of the program interventions. A leap that cannot be justified.
Below are the “screeners” your children will get. They raise a number of concerns for outside adult observers:
- Instructions claim there are no right or wrong answers.
- Is the intent to promote moral relativism for good/bad behavior?
- Do program designers believe that students will respond in an “amoral” manner and that all students will give accurate reports of their actual behavior?
- Can “improvement” in scores of students reporting positive behavior (in a screener that claims there is no right or wrong answer) be attributed to the impact of the SEL curriculum or greater understanding of students of “correct answers”?
- Is reporting of behavior on a screener consistent with actual observable behavior of students?
When asked about their feelings and experiences, students are promised that the data will be used to respond to the students’ needs and improve the school environment. Is this promise realized? Does the student ever receive any response? How are parents engaged proactively?
Parents are sent a letter with their child’s scores. Below is a copy of the letter/report. How useful is it to understanding your child’s responses and experiences at school?
parentsoutofexile 