Education Week - June 10, 2015 - 12

Districts' Social-Emotional Learning Plans Are Measured
initiative that is allowing researchers to study their systemwide socialemotional learning programs. Such
programs blend evidence-based classroom curriculum with school climate
improvements and efforts to infuse
social and emotional concepts into the
teaching of traditional subjects like
history.
In Cleveland, for example, posters
illustrated with colorful stoplights
hang on the walls of elementary
classrooms, advising students how
to talk through problems.
Social-emotional lessons are taught
in a district-prescribed sequence, similar to traditional learning objectives.
Elementary teachers use a curriculum
called Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies, or paths. High schools
have adopted varied approaches, including using history and writing
assignments to help students share
what they value and care about.
Each school has designated
teams of staff members to lead
social-emotional-learning efforts,
work with families, and coordinate
student supports.
Throughout the district, rooms previously used for in-school suspensions
have been converted into "planning
centers," where teachers refer misbehaving students to talk through problematic or disruptive actions as an
alternative to traditional discipline.

Data Driven
Every district brings a unique approach to the multidistrict initiative,
which is led by the Chicago-based Collaborative for Academic, Social, and
Emotional Learning, or casel. What
sets Cleveland apart is its use of data.
Teachers and principals at the district's 96 schools rely on students' responses on "conditions for learning"
surveys, administered online three
times a year to grades 3-12, to guide
their work. The surveys are akin to
formative assessments, but instead
of gauging student progress in math
and reading, responses help educators size up whether students feel
safe, supported, and challenged, and
how students think their peers stack
up socially and emotionally.
"We are constantly looking at the
data," Wade Park Principal Janet
McDowell told leaders from other
casel districts who came to observe
her classrooms in the spring. "I meet
with the teachers weekly."
Cleveland school leaders developed
their social-emotional-learning strategy after a 2007 school shooting. In
that incident, a 14-year-old gunman
shot two students and two teachers
at one of the district's alternative
high schools before killing himself.
Afterward, the district built up
its safety hardware, installing more
equipment like metal detectors to
make buildings safer, said Eric Gordon, the district's chief executive officer. But leaders also recognized a
need to build emotional safety and
supports for students, a strategy they
refer to as "humanware."
The district began using the conditions for learning survey in 2008
after it worked with the Washington-

Dustin Franz for Education Week

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Madison Reid, a student in a combined 2nd and 3rd grade classroom, leads a discussion on good listening with her classmates during a morning session
at Cleveland's Wade Park Elementary School. Such classroom exercises are part of Cleveland's districtwide social-emotional learning plan.

based research and evaluation organization American Institutes for Research to identify its strengths and
weaknesses in supporting students.
The air initially proposed using the
survey-which was first developed
for the Chicago school district-just
once to gauge students' perceptions,
said David Osher, an air vice president and the co-director of its health
and social-development program. But
leaders instead opted to administer
the survey repeatedly to track the
district's work. Some other districts
take annual surveys on issues such
as school climate, but few are as extensive or administered as regularly
as they are in Cleveland.
The plan has buy-in from the district's teachers' union, which agreed
to include the survey results in its
differentiated-pay plan. If a school
shows agreed-upon amounts of
growth in several areas of the survey's results, every union member
in the building gets a small stipend.
"I imagine over time, people will be
doing this more," the air's Mr. Osher
said of Cleveland's data-driven approach. The U.S. Department of Education will soon release a free survey
that districts can use to measure factors like student safety, support, and
comfort at school, he said.

'A Safe Haven'
Teachers and principals said that
building supportive school environments and nurturing so-called "soft
skills" can be challenging in highpoverty districts like Cleveland,
where all students receive free and
reduced-price lunches.
Situations outside of school-often
related to poverty, crime, or commu-

12 | EDUCATION WEEK | June 10, 2015 | www.edweek.org

nity conflicts-can make it difficult
for students to focus in the classroom, teachers said.
The city's police department has
been singled out by the U.S. Department of Justice for using overly aggressive tactics, leading to a sense of
distrust in low-income and predominantly African-American communities. Last November, a Cleveland police officer shot and killed 12-year-old
Tamir Rice, who had been a student
in the district. That shooting, along
with events in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., have sparked national conversations about race and the limits
of police power.
In advisory sessions with teachers
held as part of the district's socialemotional-learning program, high
school students, many of whom know
the Rice family, talked about their own
experiences with police and the family problems they carry with them into
the classroom, principals said.
As the district prepared for a potentially controversial verdict in
another police-shooting case in May,
administrators worked with teachers to hold classroom conversations
to discuss students' feelings about
the case, as well as larger race and
justice issues.
"In an urban district, we cannot
control what happens outside of
school," Christopher Broughton, the
district's director of research and
evaluation, told school district leaders from across the country who observed Cleveland's programs in May.
"But, if inside school, students feel
this is a safe haven, this is a place
where they can grow and be challenged, we've done our job."
Cleveland's leaders describe the
development of the district's social-

emotional learning strategies as an
ongoing process. They've learned a
few things along the way.
For example, high school students
score their schools much lower on
conditions for learning surveys than
their younger peers. That may be
because they have higher expectations or because such strategies are
harder to implement in secondary
schools, high school principals said.
But Mr. Osher believes data collected between 2008 and 2013 indicate the strategy is proving its
merit. Those data show a strong
correlation between growth in students' responses on the conditions
for learning survey and performance on state-administered tests,
he said.

Measuring Results
Air researchers are also working
to analyze the work of the other
districts participating in casel's initiative: Anchorage, Alaska; Austin,
Texas; Chicago; Nashville, Tenn.;
Oakland, Calif.; Sacramento, Calif.;
and Washoe County, Nev.
As part of the initiative, those
districts will each receive a total of
$1.6 million from the NoVo Foundation over six years to plan and help
implement their social-emotionallearning strategies, said Melissa
Schlinger, casel's vice president of
programs and practice. (Funding
from the NoVo Foundation helps
support Education Week's coverage
of social-emotional learning.)
The initiative's immediate goal
was to determine if it's possible to
implement social-emotional learning districtwide in a large school
system, Ms. Schlinger said.

Preliminary research shows that
it is. Using staff and student surveys, interviews, and observations,
researchers found high levels of fidelity in program implementation
in participating districts, despite
such challenges as changes in superintendents since the initiative
began.
They also found drops in discipline rates, improved attendance,
and, in many cases, improved academic performance in schools with
higher levels of implementation.
The broader discussion about
social-emotional and noncognitive
skills has accelerated among both
policymakers and educators since
the initiative launched in 2011, Ms.
Schlinger noted.
That new focus has led to state
laws focusing on "whole child" issues, improved school climate, and
social-emotional-learning programs.
On the federal level, bills have
been introduced in both houses of
Congress that would allow federal
professional-development funds for
teachers to be spent on training for
social-emotional-learning programs.
In Cleveland, Mr. Gordon, the
ceo, said he's made it a habit to call
newly appointed superintendents in
districts with social-emotional learning programs to say "you have important work that you need to know
about on day one of your new job."
And leaders of the casel districts
hope others can learn from their
successes and struggles if they decide to adopt similar approaches.
"I don't know that there's any one
right starting point from our experience," Mr. Gordon said. "It is about
an intentionality, and it's about just
starting."

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Education Week - June 10, 2015

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