SEL Assessment » CASEL's Work

Creating assessment tools to guide SEL practice, measure the impacts of these practices, inform improvements in SEL instruction, and ensure accountability is one of CASEL’s main priorities for the next five years and beyond. During this time, we will create, field test, and publish an SEL Assessment Guide and Toolkit for the measurement of school climate and SEL-related educator, student, and school outcomes. (See our Strategic Plan for further details on our work in this area.)

Over the past few years, our assessment work has focused on helping to create SEL learning standards and benchmarks for students preK-12. Our home state of Illinois has made some of the strongest advances in SEL, becoming the first state to adopt SEL learning standards as part of the state student learning standards. Several other states (notably New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Wisconsin) are following this lead in adopting statewide SEL policies and/or standards. We also worked closely with the Chicago Public Schools to develop the Student Connection portion of their High School Scorecard. This portion shares data about each school’s conditions for learning (safety, support, high expectations) and students’ capacities for learning (student self-reported SEL skill levels). CPS will soon become the first large urban district to measure and share this information transparently.

We have also been compiling and creating tools that (a) educators can use to assess SEL-related student and school outcomes and (b) schools and districts can use to monitor and improve their implementation of SEL programs and approaches. We are currently field testing the most promising tools and procedures in a variety of school settings as part of our Collaborating Sites project.