Giving Compass' Take:

• CoVitality, an organization that designed a suite of tools for social-emotional learning, provides thoughtful questions for educators to think about before investing in SEL tools for their school districts. 

• What effect will social-emotional learning tools have on classroom dynamics?

• Read about three ways to help educators develop social-emotional skills. 

Classroom teachers are increasingly aware of the wide-ranging and long-lasting benefits of social-emotional learning programs—from improved academic performance to positive family and work relationships and better mental health. At the same time, school leaders must ask themselves how they can develop the most comprehensive and impactful programs to help students build these all-important SEL skills.

Screening tools can help, allowing educators to get to know their students, find out where they’re struggling and understand the key areas in which each student needs support. But how to select a tool that best suits the needs of your school or district?

My organization has developed a suite of tools—called CoVitality—in collaboration with the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Based on our work with thousands of students in 15 countries, we’ve determined the three most important questions to ask when thinking about adopting an SEL screening tool for your school or school district.

  1.  Is It Truly Research-Validated? This is the most important question to ask when choosing any type of assessment tool. A truly research-validated assessment takes significant time and money to develop. So what does that actually mean? In short, a research-validated assessment is one that has been scientifically tested for both validity and reliability.
  2. How Easy Is It To Administer? When selecting an SEL assessment, one of the most critical issues to consider is how quickly and simply it can be administered. Ideally, you want to find an assessment that has enough questions to properly measure the social-emotional skill sets of your students without fatiguing them.
  3.  Are Results Available in Real Time? Real-time results reporting is an extremely useful feature that is offered by only a few assessment providers.

Read the full article about questions about social emotional learning by Austin Ramsdell at EdSurge