A Consumer Alert: Student Awareness Does Not Usually Change Student Behavior-- Do We Need to Dig a Moat Around CASEL’s Approach to Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)?
Dear Colleagues,
Introduction: Schools, as Consumers, are Responsible for their Own Actions
As our students continue to deal with the social, emotional, and behavioral “ups and downs” of the Pandemic (one of my districts has again closed for the next three weeks to contain a new COVID-19 spike in their community), schools continue to look at “Social Emotional Learning” (SEL) approaches as a primary solution.
And with billions of dollars coming to districts across the country from the American Rescue Plan, you know that SEL, PBIS, and other vendors will be “lining up” their virtual pitches on how “they” are best prepared to meet our students’ needs.
Indeed, an e-mail that I received from the U.S. Department of Education yesterday (March 19, 2021) stated:
On March 11, President Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act of 2021.
The ARP includes a total of $169.5 billion in funding for education, with $129.6 billion for K-12 education and $39.6 billion for higher education.
Specifically for K-12 education, the ARP provides $122 billion for new Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund awards to State Education Agencies (SEAs), which must allocate 90% of their funding to local educational agencies (LEAs). LEAs must use at least 20% of their funding to address learning time loss for students. They can use the remaining 80% for other activities that address needs arising from the pandemic.
The act also provides more than $3 billion for Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) state formula grants, another $2.75 billion in Emergency Assistance for Non-Public Schools, $850 million for the nation’s Outlying Areas, $800 million to meet the pandemic-related needs of homeless children and youth, and $190 million for Tribal Education Agencies, Alaska Native Education, and Native Hawaiian Education.
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Relative to the virtual SEL, PBIS, and other vendor pitches to come, note:
- Many of the SEL vendors will cite their adherence to or affiliation with CASEL (the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) as testimony to their competence and potential success.
- And the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) vendors with include folks from the National PBIS Technical Assistance Center—funded somewhat incestuously by the U.S. Department of Education, and the Center’s “affiliates” within or encouraged by your State Department of Education.
As a caution, remember that CASEL must be registered (although it is implicit via its website) as a 501(c)(3) public charity as it (a) takes tax-deductible donations—as well as millions from well-endowed corporate and other foundations (like the Novo Foundation run by the daughter of Warren Buffett); and (b) has lobbied influential U.S. Congressional delegations for years—one of its chief politic sources of power.
As such, CASEL largely writes its own rules. For example, when it publishes its “research-validated” Guides to “Effective Social and Emotional Learning Programs,” it does this as an independent organization with no official ties to any federally-designated national accreditation or certification office (more on this to come below).
Moreover, CASEL’s SEL framework encourages districts and schools to “pick-what-you-want” in the absence of a well-researched and field-validated model of implementation grounded by essential practices. And its “five broad and interrelated areas of competence” (i.e., self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making) have similarly never been empirically validated in well-designed, large-scale factor analytic research studies.
Thus, as I have stated in the past, most school-based “SEL Programs” are largely whatever a school or district defines or wants it to be.
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As a related caution, remember also that the National PBIS Technical Assistance Center and its affiliates received millions of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds, during our last national financial crisis beginning in February 2009, with few student-related social, emotional, or behavioral outcomes to show for our taxpayer money.
Moreover, PBIS is another pick-what-you-want framework that has never been independently evaluated as a whole, and has never demonstrated objective, consistently meaningful and sustained student outcomes. And this is after almost 25 years of funding from the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) involving well over $100 million in taxpayer dollars.
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I have critiqued and discussed the documented flaws in the SEL and PBIS frameworks, respectively, in the past.
See, for example:
June 3, 2019. [CLICK HERE]
Analyzing Your School Discipline Data and Your SEL (PBIS or School Discipline Program: Students’ Discipline Problems are Increasing Nationally Despite Widespread SEL Use
March 29, 2019. [CLICK HERE]
The Art of Doubling Down: How the U.S. Department of Education Creates Grant Programs to Fund and Validate its own Frameworks. Call Congress: The Tainting of RtI, PBIS, MTSS, and SEL.
But the message to my district and school colleagues is:
- As consumers, you are responsible for how you invest and spend federal, state, and other publicly-provided funds.
- You need to independently review and vet the testimonials, claims, and “research” cited by those approaching you with social, emotional, and behavioral programs, curricula, or practices.
- Remember that anyone can publish their own research—that does not make the research sound, or the results objectively accurate or generalizable.
- Make sure that the outcomes focus on social-emotional behaviors that students learn and demonstrate in observable and measurable ways (not just student information or awareness).
- And make sure that even the sound, research-demonstrated approaches are the right ones for your students—that the research was done with students who, demographically and otherwise, are similar to your students.
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A CASEL Case in Point
To provide but one example of the points regarding CASEL noted above, this past week (received via direct e-mail on March 17, 2021), the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences published an independent technical paper on the PATHS (Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies) curriculum through its objective, research-reviewing What Works Clearinghouse (WWC).
In the Summary of its independent review of PATHS, the What Works Clearinghouse Report stated:
The Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies (PATHS®) program is a curriculum that aims to promote emotional and social competencies and to reduce aggression and behavior problems in elementary school children. PATHS® is delivered through short lessons given two to three times a week over the school year.
The program is based on the principle that understanding and regulating emotions are central to effective problem solving. The lessons focus on (1) self-control, (2) emotional literacy, (3) social competence, (4) positive peer relations, and (5) interpersonal problem-solving skills. There is a separate curriculum for each grade.
This What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) intervention report. . . explores the effects of the PATHS® program on student emotional awareness, social interactions, behavior, and academic achievement. The WWC identified 35 studies of the PATHS® program. (Only) (t)wo of these studies meet WWC standards.
The evidence presented in this report is from studies of the effects of the PATHS® program on students—including 70% White, 11% Asian, and 8% Black students, and students with and without disabilities—spanning grades 1 through 5 in both urban and suburban districts.
One study included 1,582 students in 45 schools in 10 districts in the United Kingdom. The second study included 133 students with disabilities in seven elementary schools in three school districts in the state of Washington.
Based on the research, the WWC found that PATHS® has no discernible effects on academic achievement, social interactions, observed individual behavior, or emotional status.
And yet, in almost total contrast, CASEL’s most-recent preschool and elementary school Program Guide to Effective Social and Emotional Learning Programs states that PATHS demonstrates “evidence of effectiveness” in the following areas:
- Increased Positive Social Behavior and Reduced Emotional Distress at the Preschool level; and
- Improved Academic Performance, Increased Positive Social Behavior, Reduced Conduct Problems, and Reduced Emotional Distress at the Elementary School level.
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Critically, if you were a district or school wishing to purchase an SEL curriculum and you looked at the PATHS website, you would only see research that supports this curriculum and your potential purchase.
If you looked at the CASEL website, you would see the statements above that tell you that PATHS has good research evidence for some of a school’s most-desired SEL student outcomes.
And yet, if you looked at the WWC independent Report, you would see that (a) 35 of the 37 PATHS studies reviewed did not even meet the WWC’s criteria for sound research; and (b) that the WWC did not find the same positive results cited by CASEL in the two studies that they objectively reviewed.
So, what is the message here?
First of all, please understand that my goal here is not to disparage my colleagues—those at CASEL, or those involved with PATHS.
The first message is that districts and schools need to know the backgrounds of those who review the different SEL curricula that they are considering for purchase.
Different reviewers set their own—sometimes non-objective or at least different—criteria for determining what is “good” research, what is a “research-based” curriculum, and how much good research is needed to endorse a specific SEL curriculum.
As represented above, some evaluative criteria are broader and more subjective than others (e.g., CASEL), and others—like WWC—use criteria that are defined in federal law.
The second message is a reiteration some of my earlier points. . . that districts and schools looking to purchase an SEL curriculum need to:
- Independently review and vet the testimonials, claims, and “research” cited by those approaching you with social, emotional, and behavioral programs, curricula, or practices; and
- Remember that anyone can publish their own research and post it on a website. This does not make this research—or its results—sound, accurate, or generalizable.
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Student Awareness Does Not Equal Student Behavior
From a different perspective, the poor PATHS results are not surprising for two reasons that go beyond the quality of the research.
First: SEL curricula that focus largely or exclusively on increasing students’ social knowledge, understanding, perspectives, and/or awareness very often do not teach through behavioral instruction.
And if you want students to demonstrate interpersonal, social problem-solving, conflict prevention and resolution, and emotional control, communication, and coping skills, these skills need to be taught, practiced, reinforced or corrected, and applied to real-life situations—including those that involve “conditions of emotionality.”
By way of metaphor, think about the actors in a play. While they need to learn their lines, they also need to get on stage to behaviorally practice the play’s choreography.
And how many times do they physically and behaviorally practice each scene? Until they have memorized both the lines and the choreography. . . and can perform both at a level of automaticity.
It is only when this automaticity has been attained that actors can truly “act”. . . and only then that the actors in a scene can interdependently act together.
Actors are not ready for Opening Night when they are simply aware of what they need to do on stage. They are ready when they have behaviorally mastered everything that they are required to do on stage.
While awareness is an important prerequisite, an SEL curriculum can only be successful when its behaviorally teaches social, emotional, and behavioral skills.
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But even this is not enough.
The second reason why the PATHS, or any other social skills, curriculum will not result in observable and measurable student behavior is that behavior occurs in an ecological context.
And the science-to-practice components needed to ensure that students will learn and demonstrate social, emotional, and behavioral self-management skills are:
- Positive School and Classroom Climates and Prosocial Relationships
- Clear Behavioral Expectations and Student-Sensitive Social Skills Instruction
- Behavioral Accountability and Motivation
- Consistency (Across the Components Above)
- Training and Implementation across Settings, Peers, and for Students with Specialized Needs
We have discussed these components in a number of Blog articles over the years. The most-recent one is:
October 24, 2020. [CLICK HERE]
Classroom Management and Students’ (Virtual) Academic Engagement and Learning: Don’t Depend on Teacher Training Programs. Districts Need to Reconceptualize their School Discipline Approaches—For Equity, Excellence, and Effectiveness
While we encourage you to read the Blog article immediately above, here is the “bottom line” relative to student behavior:
- If students do not have consistently safe, structured, supportive, positive, and predicable school and classroom environments, and if they do not experience positive and prosocial interactions, they either will not learn their (academic and) social skills, and/or they will not be motivated to demonstrate them.
- If students are not consistently taught (as discussed above) needed interpersonal, social problem-solving, conflict prevention and resolution, and emotional control, communication, and coping skills—from preschool through high school, and in developmentally appropriate ways—and if they do not learn and master these skills, they will not be able to demonstrate them.
- If students are not motivated to demonstrate learned social skills and if they are not held accountable for their appropriate and inappropriate behavior (e.g., by adults, peers, and themselves), then any skills that they have learned with not be consistently demonstrated.
- If students are learning and interacting in inconsistent school or classroom environments, they—from youngest to oldest—may become behaviorally confused, selective, manipulative, unresponsive, or defiant. . . as “inconsistency undermines motivation and accountability, and behavior becomes differential or inappropriate.”
- Finally, students need to learn some social skill behaviors in setting-specific (classroom versus common school areas) ways.
Students also need to learn how to implement some social skills in the face of peer pressure and interactions like teasing, taunting, bullying, harassment, hazing, and physical aggression.
And, some students—because of idiosyncratic conditions, histories, life events, or instructional needs—may require multi-tiered services, supports, or interventions in order to facilitate their social, emotional, and behavioral learning and mastery.
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Summary
The American Rescue Plan provides an important opportunity for districts and schools to address a plethora of health, academic, and social, emotional, and behavioral issues related to the year-long Pandemic.
Nonetheless, we need to learn and apply the lessons from our last past economic and social crisis--one that resulted in millions of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds also going to our schools.
And the one, most important lesson was that money spent on unproven, ineffective, or misapplied frameworks, curricula, programs, or practices resulted not just in wasted time, training, money, and motivation, but also in delayed services and, sometimes, in higher levels of student failure.
As we have said in the past:
Intervention is not a benign act; it is a strategic act.
And in order to be strategic when selecting an SEL curriculum, we remind—once again—our districts and school colleagues that:
- As consumers, you are responsible for how you invest and spend federal, state, and other publicly-provided funds.
- You need to independently review and vet the testimonials, claims, and “research” cited by those approaching you with social, emotional, and behavioral programs, curricula, or practices.
- Remember that anyone can publish their own research—that does not make the research sound, or the results objectively accurate or generalizable.
- Make sure that the outcomes focus on social-emotional behaviors that students learn and demonstrate in observable and measurable ways (not just student information or awareness).
- And make sure that even the sound, research-demonstrated approaches are the right ones for your students—that the research was done with students who, demographically and otherwise, are similar to your students.
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We hope that this information has been useful to you, and that it will motivate you to choose and use your next steps to address the ways that the Pandemic has impacted your students (and staff) wisely.
If there is anything that I can do to guide you through this process, please feel free to contact me with your questions, or—as hundreds of your colleagues have already—to set up a free, one-hour consultation with me and your team.
Best,
