2008-03-27

Hot off the presses, our Whole Child partner the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) has released a preliminary report about the impact of school-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programs on academics. Its meta-analysis of 207 studies involving nearly 300,000 children concludes that students who experience SEL programming improve significantly.

Hot off the presses, our Whole Child partner the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) has released a preliminary report about the impact of school-based social and emotional learning (SEL) programs on academics. Its meta-analysis of 207 studies involving nearly 300,000 children concludes that students who experience SEL programming improve significantly with respect to:

• - Social and emotional skills;
• - Attitudes about themselves, others, and school;
• - Social and classroom behavior;
• - Conduct problems such as classroom misbehavior and aggression;
• - Emotional distress such as stress and depression; and
• - Achievement test scores and school grades (by 11 percentile points!).

In fact, they found that "these positive results do not come at the expense of performance in core academic skills, but rather enhance academic achievement" and persist over time. Not surprisingly, CASEL's study also demonstrates that programs conducted by teachers themselves with strong administrative support for high-quality implementation were the most effective. An earlier CASEL study also demonstrated the impact of after-school programs that promote personal and social skills.