SEL Assessment » Tools

One of the main questions educators ask us is how they can measure their students' SEL skills and how they can evaluate the quality and effects of their SEL programming. In this section, you will find links to a variety of outcome and school climate measures with empirical "track records" demonstrating their sound psychometric properties, and school SEL practices self-assessment tools. Additional tools can also be found in our Sustainable Schoolwide Social and Emotional Learning: Implementation Guide and Toolkit. Please see our SEL Standards section for SEL Learning standards and benchmarks used in different states and countries.

• School Practices Assessment: Surveys, inventories, and rubrics that describe aspects of the school setting, policies, instructional activities, and other elements of schools that are known to affect SEL programming.
• Needs and Outcome Assessments: Surveys to assess overall student risk-behavior rates and resiliency, and measures of student social and emotional competence
• School Climate Assessment: Staff, student, and parent surveys to assess the working and learning climate at your school

The National Center for Educational Statistics website has a free Forum Guide to Educational Indicators (pdf) that provides encyclopedia-type entries for 44 commonly used education indicators. Each indicator entry contains a definition, recommended uses, usage caveats and cautions, related policy questions, data element components, a formula, commonly reported subgroups, and display suggestions. The document will help readers better understand how to appropriately develop, apply, and interpret commonly used education indicators. With respect to SEL assessment, this guide is particularly useful for indicators of high-risk behaviors.