Assessment

CASEL Moves Forward on SEL Assessment

Our staff and collaborators have long recognized that the ability to assess school-based social and emotional learning is critical to building the field and sustaining high-quality SEL. This is especially true in the current climate of school accountability, where, as the old saying goes, “What gets assessed gets addressed.”

To advance the state of the art of SEL assessment, in 2007 CASEL established an Assessment Work Group with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Kirlin Foundation, and the Rauner Family Foundation. The group is co-chaired by CASEL President Roger P. Weissberg and Susanne Denham, a leading scholar in areas of SEL assessment and intervention at George Mason University. Its members include renowned SEL researchers and practitioners from universities and research organizations across the country. The group has been actively engaged in a variety of activities:

• Reviewing and reporting on SEL assessment methods at both the preschool level and grades K-5.
• Developing criteria for reviewing and documenting high-quality assessment tools.
• Developing guidelines for effective assessment of school-based SEL programming.
• Creating a compendium of available SEL assessment tools.
• Creating an SEL Assessment Toolkit—a work currently in progress that ultimately will be made available on the CASEL website.

An important outgrowth of the project has a nationwide review of state SEL standards and policies funded by the Buena Vista Foundation. Also, as part of CASEL’s Provider Work Group, the subgroup on assessment has undertaken reviews and activities that parallel those of the Assessment Work Group for middle and high schools.

This section provides links to a variety of student outcome measures, school climate measures, and school SEL practice tools to help you assess the impact and quality of your SEL programming.