Key Points
Back to top- The second post in our blog series on the importance of and practices for continuous measure improvement digs into the critical planning phase of the social and emotional learning (SEL) continuous improvement (CI) journey.
- This post explores the kinds of data you need to collect at the start of the journey: assessments for student and staff social-emotional competencies (SECs), staff surveys, and inventories of existing SEL curriculum, practices, and programs.
- Our SEL CI experts also explain how to best select and adapt the tools you’ll be using to measure progress in SEL implementation.
The authors of “Using Social and Emotional Competency Assessments for the Continuous Improvement of SEL,” a chapter within the second edition of the Handbook of Social and Emotional Learning, are sharing a blog series that extends their chapter to include additional examples of how to engage in continuous measure improvement. This second post continues the metaphor of a road trip, focusing on initial planning for the SEL journey that incorporates continuous measure improvement. These blogs are authored by Laura Davidson, Rachel Gordon, and Marisa Crowder.
Congratulations! Your school system is beginning its SEL journey. As described in Part 1 of this blog series, “Planning for a Great SEL Road Trip Through SEL Measure Improvement: An Introduction,”effective SEL involves alignment between SEL systems (programs, practices, policies) and SEL measures (assessments, practice inventories, administrative data). Extending the metaphor of our SEL road trip, you are in the planning phase of your CI journey.
Why Is it Important to Plan Ahead?
Back to topResearch shows that planning for SEL helps ensure the work positively impacts student outcomes (CASEL, 2025; CASEL & National Equity Project, n.d.).
Data plays an important role in that planning. As we discussed in our previous blog, planning, implementing, and continuously improving SEL implementation involves two interconnected and mutually informing processes: continuous systems improvement (CSI) and continuous measure improvement (CMI), which we described as the CSI-CMI model.
Returning to our road trip metaphor, before you set out, you’ll need to know whether you’ll be driving a well-equipped tour bus filled with state-of-the-art gauges or a less reliable car with less predictable gauges. Translating this metaphor to planning for SEL implementation, you’ll need to understand the current budget and resources you have available for your SEL journey.
Here are some tools that can provide the kinds of data that can inform your SEL implementation planning:
- Assessments for student and staff SECs to determine a baseline,
- Staff surveys to understand whether they have bandwidth to implement SEL, and/or
- Inventories of existing SEL curriculum, practices, and programs the schools are currently using that can be leveraged, replaced, or adjusted to fit your new SEL vision.
As the CSI-CMI model indicates, you’ll want to plan how you’ll implement SEL and what data you will collect, but also how you’ll check whether your data tools are giving you accurate and meaningful information about your SEL system.
For example, let’s say you choose a student self-assessment survey to gauge baseline levels of students’ SECs. You’d want to ask:
- How comfortable would students be answering questions about their SECs (which affects how well their individual responses reflect their actual feelings and behaviors)?
- How confident are you that your participating students represent the larger student body (which affects how well summaries across students’ responses reflect the school as a whole)?
Answers to these questions may lead you to alter your recruitment approach and survey administration protocol.
Selecting, Using, and Adapting Measures
Back to topLike many school districts, you may be planning to collect self-report measures of students’ SECs. If you already use an “off-the-shelf” measure developed by a vendor or researcher, consider whether you have investigated the reliability and validity evidence in your own context.
Your findings may indicate whether you should use the off-the-shelf measure as is, adapt it, or identify a different measure. When selecting or adapting a measure, consider:
- Why are you using the measure? An important, but often overlooked step to the planning phase is clarifying how you intend to use the measure(s). Questions to discuss with your stakeholder team include: Why are you using this measure? Who will draw meanings from the data gathered with this measure? How (and how often) will these individuals use these data interpretations to make decisions?
- Does the reliability and validity evidence align with your context and intended use? Similar to what you may do when buying or renting a car, you want to go beyond what the marketing materials and salespeople tell you. You’ll want to identify whether prior studies have examined the reliability and validity of the measure with similar populations, and with similar goals in mind. You’ll also want to determine whether the source of the evidence comes from a party independent from the developer. This is important because the developer may have vested financial or reputational interests that affect how they present evidence, even subtly and unintentionally.
- How often will you check whether the measure works as intended? Once you’ve selected a measure, you’ll want to plan for how often you’ll examine how well it’s performing in your local context. This helps you build evidence about whether it’s doing what you hoped it would do.
At the planning stage, it’s also helpful to consider your capacity to analyze the data to build this evidence. For instance, do you have a research team, or can you partner with researchers to analyze and present the data either from an existing or adapted/new measure? If you’re selecting an existing measure, does the measure supplier provide detailed information about students’ responses that allows you to build new evidence, and does the supplier allow for the measure to be adjusted over time, based on the new evidence you produce?
By taking the time and effort to take these steps and answer these questions at the start of the journey, you’ll be better equipped to reach your destination! Stay tuned for our next blog, which will explore strategies for “tuning up” your SEL systems and measures.
Need more guidance on questions to consider and what to do with each type of measure? We’ve developed a table that describes CASEL’s key areas of high-quality district SEL implementation, with core activities of SEL system and SEL measurement planning, including ways you might think about what types of data to collect along the way to monitor progress toward your SEL goals:
| PLOTTING THE COURSE | ||
| Considerations for Continuous System Improvement | Example Data Collection Tools | Considerations for Continuous Measure Improvement |
| Developing and Communicating a Vision | ||
| Core Activities in Phase: Establish what implementation will look like, your SEL theory of action, and how you will communicate this vision to the community. Questions to Consider: What is the need that the SEL initiative will address? What changes do you expect to see as a result (and for whom and by when)? | Surveys or interviews that ask stakeholders if they buy into the plan and think it is feasible and worthwhile. These surveys/interviews may also ask about stakeholder attitudes towards SEL, which can signal your community’s readiness to launch SEL. School records, like behavior, academic achievement, and attendance to identify the major needs of students in the district and inform whether your theory of action for how SEL will impact student outcomes matches your context. | Questions to Consider for Surveys or Interviews: Is a trusted individual conducting the stakeholder surveys or interviews? Have the questions been well-vetted for readability and understanding? Do participants understand the concept of SEL well-enough to provide feedback? Improvement Actions: Submit the survey or interview instruments into software to assess reading levels. Ask AI to provide feedback on understandability of the questions for your populations. Develop a plan for how you will support and listen to stakeholder groups that are skeptical of the plan. |
| Fostering Collaboration | ||
| Core Activities in Phase: Identify who will help support implementation (teachers, central office departments, leadership, community members, etc.). Questions to Consider: Do they want to be involved? To what extent do the individuals have the capacity to participate? Are they familiar with SEL? | Self-assessment by SEL steering committee to identify what areas of SEL implementation they view as being in good/bad shape. Interviews or focus groups with students, staff, and families to see if they understand the language in the communication plans and whether the plans resonate with them. Interviews with leadership members to assess their willingness and readiness to support SEL. | Questions to Consider for SEL Steering Committee Self-assessment: Did a high proportion of steering committee members respond to the self-assessment? Were the “right” people at the table to provide input? What will you do if steering committee member responses about SEL readiness vary widely? Improvement Actions: Use strategies like explaining the purpose of the self-assessment and agreeing whether and how individual responses will be kept confidential to ensure a high response rate. Provide an opportunity for open discussion on reasons for variation in answers across steering committee members. |
| Budgeting and Planning for Resources | ||
| Core Activities in Phase: Identify the budget and resources (staff, coaching, professional learning) that will facilitate SEL implementation. Questions to Consider: How well-resourced is your SEL effort? Are roles well-defined and do you have the budget to match the level of SEL implementation you have planned for? | Inventory of existing SEL curriculum, practices, and interventions available across schools and assessment of staff’s usage of existing tools. Cost analyses to compare your district’s SEL budget to a comparable district’s budget for SEL efforts. | Questions to Consider for an Inventory: What proportion of schools and their staff responded to the inventory? Did staff understand what types of curriculum, practices, and interventions to include in the inventory? Did staff feel safe and motivated to respond honestly about their current levels of SEL implementation? Improvement Actions: Have select staff review the communication around the inventory process beforehand to determine if the steps were clear and if the process would be likely to promote honest responses from all participants. Have respondents complete an “exit ticket” about whether they felt their voices were heard during the process and whether they felt comfortable responding. |
| Determining the Contextual Conditions | ||
| Core Activities in Phase: Determine what type of context your SEL implementation will need to navigate. Questions to Consider: What is the culture and climate within schools and the district? What other “asks” are on schools’ plates right now? Who is the SEL initiative serving? Are staff’s own SEL competencies sufficient to deliver SEL effectively? Is leadership supportive of these efforts? | Assessment to determine baseline student and staff social-emotional competencies (SECs).Survey of staff working conditions to understand whether they have bandwidth to implement SEL. Academic, attendance, and behavioral data and what it indicates about student need and areas to focus SEL efforts. | Questions to Consider for SEC Assessments: How will you know the data is accurate? Did a representative sample of students and staff take the assessment, or are we missing some groups of students (e.g., chronically absent students most likely to miss the assessment opportunity) or staff (e.g., staff who do not trust district surveys). Improvement Actions: Compare SEC assessment data against behavior, attendance, and teacher observation to see if they are all indicating the same pattern. Support staff to ensure response rates are adequate, perhaps with alternative ways to take assessment or scheduling make-up days to capture missing student or staff data. Collect reliability and validity evidence in your local context in addition to what is provided in vendor materials. |
The views in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of CASEL.
Laura Davidson, Ph.D., has been the director of research and evaluation for the Washoe County School District in Reno, Nevada, for the past 14 years. Her team focuses on the use of innovative data tools, program evaluation, and user-friendly research to drive continuous improvement and informed decision-making.
Rachel Gordon, Ph.D., is associate dean for research and administration and professor of health studies in the College of Health and Human Sciences at Northern Illinois University. An engaged policy scholar, throughout her career, Dr. Gordon has worked at the intersection of academic research and social policy. Her most recent projects aim to advance understanding regarding the cost, quality, adaptability and ownership of educational products whose creation and use are publicly funded, as well as the ways in which snap judgments of appearance shape social constructions, identities and experiences.
Marisa Crowder, Ph.D., is a researcher and co-owner of The ElevatEd Initiative, LLC. She has expertise in leading partnerships that center and elevate local voices in the development and implementation of educational initiatives and measurement. She specializes in social and emotional learning, academic engagement, contextualization, and school-based mental health.
Related Posts:
- Planning for a Great SEL Road Trip Through SEL Measure Improvement: An Introduction
- SEL Journal Recap: 3 Ways to Enhance SEL Outcomes for All Students
- Sneak Peek: Excerpt from The Handbook of Social and Emotional Learning, Second Edition
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