As federal pandemic relief funds phase out, school and district leaders must decide how to sustain investments to best support students’ social, emotional, and academic learning. To help school and district leaders make decisions that maximize student impact, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) today released a 2024 update to The CASEL Guide to Evidence-Based Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Programs. These updates will assist educational leaders in selecting effective SEL programs that best meet the unique needs of their communities.
With the emphasis on evidence-based practices as critical to school improvement efforts under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states and districts have increasingly leveraged SEL given the strong evidence of benefits to a wide range of student outcomes. Education leaders often adopt SEL programming to support academic acceleration, attendance, mental wellness, supportive learning environments, workforce readiness, and other key priorities.
As nearly 90 percent of schools report increasing social and emotional support for students, the CASEL Program Guide offers a free, Consumer Reports-style tool to help district and school leaders identify evidence-based programs that have been shown to be effective using rigorous scientific standards. With the addition of 14 new programs, the Program Guide now includes 99 programs that can support student learning.
“At a time when academic recovery is of the utmost importance, it is heartening to see education leaders provide consistent and high-quality opportunities for students to learn and practice critical social and emotional skills that contribute to academic success,” said Dr. Ally Skoog-Hoffman, Senior Director of Research and Learning at CASEL. “This latest review cycle saw an 11% increase in program applicants that focused on integrating SEL within core academic contents areas. Furthermore, the addition of 14 new programs is CASEL’s largest accepted set of applications. This signals that the SEL field is growing and evolving to meet the current needs of educators and students across the country. At the same time, SEL program providers are conducting rigorous evaluation research that furthers the evidence-base for the field.”
Because SEL programs are not one-size-fits-all, the CASEL Program Guide allows users to search effective programs in terms of local priorities, compare programs, and determine opportunities for professional learning and implementation support for school and district staff.
Programs in the guide are designated as ‘SELect’ (met or exceeded all criteria), ‘Promising’ (met or exceeded most criteria), or ‘SEL-Supportive’ (met evidence criteria but did not fully meet design criteria). The criteria CASEL uses for these designations align with ESSA evidence criteria. Learn more about the inclusion criteria and alignment with ESSA here.
Among the new additions, nine were deemed ‘SELect’ and five were deemed ‘Promising’:
New ‘SELect’ programs:
- Better Together Cubed
- CharacterStrong’s PurposeFull People
- CharacterStrong’s Secondary Curriculum
- CharacterStrong’s S.E.R.V.E. Model
- Nexus Curriculum
- PeerLearning.net
- SEE Learning
- SSIS Social Emotional Health Edition Classwide Intervention Program
- Wayfinder
New ‘Promising’ programs:
- Flourish: The Compassionate Schools Project Curriculum
- Move This World
- Social Emotional Learning Language Arts (SELLA)
- Toolbox Project
- Well-being
Learn more at: https://pg.casel.org/
