Social, Emotional, and Academic Development: Recommendations for a Policy Agenda

John Bridgeland, Gene Wilhoit, Steve Canavero, James Comer, Linda Darling-Hammond, Camille Farrington, Robert Pianta, Pedro Noguera, Jim Shelton, Tim Shriver, and Ross Wiener

IntroductionIn states and communities across the country, policymakers are working with educators, parents, employers, and community leaders to improve educational outcomes for young people. Their motivations are urgent and diverse: achieving equity, meeting increasing and shifting workplace demands, improving the quality of public discourse, and boosting civic engagement. America’s creed of equal opportunity depends on providing each and every child a quality education and comprehensive supports to succeed in school, work, and civic life. Policymakers now have two powerful allies to advance this work – science tells us more than ever about how children learn and develop 1 and mounting evidence demonstrates that integrating social, emotional, and academic development boosts outcomes for children and youth.2

State and local policymakers, therefore, have a unique opportunity to help integrate social, emotional, and academic development, particularly in this time of resurgent state and local authority over education. Each state constitution creates an affirmative state responsibility for public education that has been asserted by the courts. With this responsibility comes the obligation to think strategically about the state’s role, as well as which decisions are in the province of local leaders. State leaders have a responsibility to fulfill their constitutional mandates, such as ensuring that a fair, complete, and equal education is provided to students across their state. Many decisions about integrating social, emotional, and academic development, however, ought to happen at the local level (in districts, schools, and their communities), in part to ensure shared ownership and “fit” with local context. Although the recommendations that follow principally target state and local policymakers, they also acknowledge and advance the important roles that the federal government can play in supporting education policy across the country.

Students need an integrated approach to learning and development that focuses on the acquisition of a broad set of skills and competencies across the social, emotional, and cognitive domains. The growing science of learning and development tells us that this integrated approach is how young people learn and how our education system can set up all young people for success. But adopting this approach does not mean the work looks the same everywhere. We need to make sure that as this work develops and grows, it does so with an asset-based approach that seeks to unlock the great potential within each young person.

While new science and research are being translated into more effective practice, there are still tremendous opportunities to push the field further to improve outcomes for young people and society. There also is a need for field-building – to connect different disciplines, and to call on educators and leaders in youth-serving organizations

1 Pamela Cantor, David Osher, Juliette Berg, Lily Steyer, & Todd Rose, “Malleability, Plasticity, and Individuality: How Children Learn and Develop in Context,” January 24, 2018, Applied Developmental Science, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10888691.2017.13986492 Stephanie M. Jones & Jennifer Kahn, The Evidence Base for How We Learn: Supporting Students’ Social, Emotional, and Academic Development: Consensus Statements of Evidence from the Council of Distinguished Scientists, Sept. 13, 2017, National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development, The Aspen Institute.

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across the PreK-12 education ecosystem (see graphic) to embrace an integrated approach to educating the whole student.

This effort should not be viewed as a new initiative. Rather, it is a rebalancing of the PreK-12 education ecosystem to focus on the broad set of skills and competencies that each and every student needs to be a lifelong learner, productive worker, and engaged citizen. This can be accomplished through supportive, engaging, and challenging experiences both in and out of school that provide opportunities for students to learn, demonstrate, and practice these skills and competencies.

In pursuing this work, state and local leaders should utilize the expertise that resides within state education agencies, district offices, and other key state, district, and community partners to help with implementation, staff capacity, reporting, and data collection. And they should consider opportunities to help share existing knowledge and resources across these groups. State and local agencies along with their community partners already have significant work underway that can and should be leveraged and amplified. To move from ideas to implementation, there are many opportunities for policymakers at the state, local, and in some cases, federal levels for leadership to support a shared vision for students’ social, emotional, and academic development.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR A POLICY AGENDA Our policy recommendations seek to accelerate efforts by leaders in states and local communities by strengthening four broad categories that impact student outcomes:

I. Articulate a Clear VisionArticulating a clear vision of students’ comprehensive development that reflects the interconnection of the social, emotional, and academic dimensions of learning as the basis for a policy framework that is grounded in evidence;

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II. Foster and Support Continuous Improvement of Learning EnvironmentsCreating youth-centered, developmentally appropriate, personalized learning environments that are aligned across the PreK-12 education ecosystem, inclusive of the places and spaces where learning happens;

III. Promote Development of Adult CapacityPreparing and supporting educators (classroom teachers, school support personnel, counselors, school leaders, and youth development professionals operating inside and outside of schools) to understand, model, and teach social, emotional, and cognitive skills and competencies; and

IV. Align Resources Efficiently and EquitablyAligning and allocating resources—funding, training, time, and community capacity—more efficiently and equitably to create a cohesive PreK-12 education ecosystem that can support students holistically.

As the Council of Distinguished Educators noted, integrating social, emotional, and academic development is relational work that does not respond well to compliance-driven reform efforts.3 The plan for change needs to reflect and model the very skills and attitudes that we want embodied in schools, classrooms, and community-based organizations. Policymakers need to fully understand why the change is necessary, how it will benefit students’ academic learning and well-being, and how it will positively impact the culture and climate of the learning environment .4 Educators need to be compelled by the vision, appreciate the coherence of the approach, and feel supported in making changes to both instruction and classroom organization. Change efforts need to intentionally build trust and agency among those involved and be responsive to the needs of each locality.

For these reasons, the Commission believes that the role of policy should be to create the enabling conditions for communities to implement locally crafted approaches that support students’ social, emotional, and academic development. In effect, we need both a bottom-up and a top-down approach that act in a supportive and coherent way and rely more on data and continuous improvement to drive change, rather than a one-size-fits all solution. Thus, the Commission’s policy framework aligns strategically with the Commission’s practice agenda to ensure policy can facilitate leadership and innovation from local communities.

3 Sheldon Berman with Sydney Chaffee & Julia Sarmiento, The Practice Base for How We Learn: Supporting Students’ Social, Emotional, and Academic Development. March 12, 2018, Consensus Statements of Practice from the Council of Distinguished Educators, National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development, The Aspen Institute.4 Ibid

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Through their voice, their priorities, their allocation of time and resources, and the specific laws, policy guidance, and contractual and partner agreements, state and local leaders can help support a more comprehensive and holistic approach to student learning and development. This includes the broad range of leaders who impact the PreK-12 education ecosystem: governors, state legislators, state and local school board members, chief state school officers and district superintendents, mayors, city and county legislators, and those who work in state and local education and other youth-serving organizations including afterschool and youth development.

At the core of these recommendations is a new vision for how state players and their local partners can operate in a more collaborative, coherent fashion to support each community’s vision for teaching and learning, informed by best practice as articulated by the Council of Distinguished Educators, and grounded in the evidence summarized by the Council of Distinguished Scientists. This vision requires moving from policies focused on compliance to enabling policies that support best practice; from disconnected programs and supports to integrated and aligned strategies that focus on the well-being of the whole student; from using assessments for accountability to using evidence for continuous improvement; from responding to federal directives to prioritizing community needs; and from a definition of success limited to test scores to a more inclusive definition that reflects the mastery of social, emotional, and academic competencies and civic awareness, informed by a broad, collaborative network of partners. In this way, we can ensure each and every child receives the quality education and comprehensive supports needed to succeed in school, in the evolving workplace, and in community and civic life.

I. Across the PreK-12 education ecosystem, state and local leaders should articulate a clear vision for students’ comprehensive development.Efforts to improve educational outcomes need to be guided by an overarching vision of student success. Many states, and school districts, have a vision or mission statement that captures characteristics of a successful graduate. This statement is often aligned with a definition of what students need to be ready for college, career, and participation in

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community life and linked with overall vision for a community’s success. The processes of setting clear expectations through vision and mission statements and providing the supports to meet them have been critical elements to boosting student success. This is an opportune moment to revisit these statements to better align with our growing understanding of how learning happens. State and local leaders need a clear vision of what each and every student should know and be able to do, grounded in the evidence that learning has social, emotional, and academic dimensions. A clear, common message across all stakeholders signals the importance of this work and ideally positions it, not as the desire of one or two elected leaders, but as a community-wide priority. Clear, consistent messages across all key state and local leaders also highlight the interconnected nature of this work and serve as an organizing vision for current efforts across a state, district, and community.

Strategy: For both schools and youth-serving organizations, state and local leaders in partnership with communities should articulate the essential knowledge, skills, and abilities of a successful high school graduate that is inclusive of the social and emotional competencies demonstrated to contribute to academic progress and workforce success, as well as prepare students to become productive members of their communities.

The development of this shared vision of student success should begin with community conversations aimed at building consensus on the purpose of elementary and secondary education, as well as the essential knowledge, skills, and abilities that students need to effectively participate in further education, the workforce, their communities, and our democratic society. Once articulated, key state and district leaders across the PreK-12 education ecosystem must demonstrate and communicate their commitment to this vision of student success, share the evidence of how such a vision and approach boosts child and youth outcomes, and identify critical elements of the vision that have not been getting adequate attention. For state education leaders, there is an opportunity to leverage the state’s ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) plan to articulate this vision of student success and to align it with specific strategies, including ESSA’s focus on evidence of effectiveness. ESSA is the current reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which embodies the nation’s longstanding commitment to equal opportunity for all students.

To effectively communicate this shared vision, states can include in strategic planning documents, mission statements, and other policy guidance. In turn, local school boards, districts, and schools can include such an integrated vision in their similar documents, statements, and guidance. At Austin Independent School District (AISD), the importance of social emotional skills in the district’s long-term vision is clear from its inclusion in the strategic plan. Beginning in Fall 2014, more than 150 diverse stakeholders collaborated with the superintendent and board of trustees to develop a comprehensive, five-year strategic plan: AISD Strategic Plan 2015-2020: Reinventing the Urban School Experience Together. The strategic plan consists of a framework that includes statements of the district’s vision, core beliefs and commitments, values, and a five-year implementation plan. Additionally, a scorecard was created with performance indicators and targets related to each of the core beliefs that is used to measure the extent to which the district is meeting the goals outlined in the strategic plan.

Social and emotional skill-related outcomes are part of the annual scorecard, including the percentage of students who feel safe in their schools, the percentage of students who say they like to come to school, and the number of students with discretionary removals or emergency placements. AISD executive leaders publicly stated the importance of social and emotional skill development and are committed not only to ensuring that students and staff espouse these skills, but also to measuring the degree to which students and staff meet social emotional skill-related goal.

Strategy: State standards, guidance, or frameworks should signal to districts and communities the importance of a more integrated approach to student learning experiences.

More specifically, state leaders can: Adopt policies that allow districts to utilize a competency-based approach to education that allows for

personalization/customization to their articulated competencies;

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Adopt state-level standards or competencies; Require local communities to articulate learning standards and/or competencies for social and emotional skills;

o Share examples of high quality, vertically integrated standards and/or competencies as examples for local communities to adopt to their local context;

Embed social and emotional competencies into existing academic standards:o Set benchmarks for students inclusive of the social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions of learning;

Leverage existing guidance/standards from early childhood education and/or youth development to ensure alignment across the PreK-12 education ecosystem;

State policies and guidance documents take various forms. Different states are at different points in the process, with varied priorities and sensitivities, and each state is using an approach that works for its own districts and schools. For example: Massachusetts created preschool and kindergarten standards for social emotional skills (and Approaches to Play and Learning) in 2015 but has opted not to develop standalone K–12 social emotional skill standards at this time. Instead, the state’s team is working to infuse social emotional skills into existing “high-leverage” policies and guidance, including ELA/literacy, math, and history/social sciences curriculum frameworks as well as comprehensive health frameworks.

Additionally, the state of Connecticut adopted a strong and widely used set of school climate standards. Its current priority has been to revise and expand those standards to explicitly infuse social emotional skills and competencies. The Connecticut team is collaborating closely with districts in this work. The team has also worked to engage stakeholder groups throughout the state, including institutions of higher education and local nonprofit providers, to consider the relationship between social and emotional competencies and prevention including trauma-informed practice, and chronic stress reduction. State leaders in Connecticut are working with various stakeholders to expand entry points for social and emotional skills, including civics and leadership, parent engagement, drug use prevention, and artistic expression. With one of the strongest anti-bullying laws in the country, adopted in 2011, Connecticut’s leaders are moving the state toward a more integrated preventive model.

II. States leaders should enable districts and schools to create and continually improve supportive and affirming learning environments that ensure strong relationships, personalized supports for students, and engaging, relevant learning opportunities. Evidence affirms the importance of creating safe learning environments that generate a strong sense of community among both students and educators. Such environments have high, consistent, and clear expectations for students academically and behaviorally. A positive learning environment is associated with higher academic achievement; better emotional, mental, and physical health; better behavioral outcomes; and increased teacher retention. Research also demonstrates that the primary role of principals in influencing school achievement is through changes in the school climate and culture.

When students feel known, valued, and supported by both adults and peers, they are empowered to take the risks necessary to learn and grow. Such a culture and climate are inclusive of and responsive to the diversity of interests, aptitudes, perspectives, races, and cultures represented in the classroom. These types of learning environments give students voice, opportunities to be engaged and heard, and agency in their own learning and development. Enabling students to feel respected for their identities and perspectives is an essential element in creating safe, affirming, and inclusive classrooms.

School safety also is enhanced by creating a positive learning environment. Evidence suggests that when schools put in place a positive approach to discipline, focus on building strong relationships, and teach students social and emotional skills such as resolving conflicts and relating well to others, schools become safer. Rather than viewing students as the problem, this approach directs adults to explore the broader environmental and social context in which students learn.

For all of these reasons, the Council of Distinguished Educators made the development of safe, supportive learning

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environments one of the core tenets of its recommendations. State and local policies have unique roles to play in framing the elements necessary to design, create, and improve learning environments than can support students’ social, emotional, and academic growth. Such learning environments need to be developmentally appropriate and acknowledge that, while the principles are the same, there are different strategies to pursue in early childhood, elementary, and secondary schools, as well as in afterschool and youth development organizations.

Strategy: State leaders should provide funding, technical assistance, and other resources (e.g. measurement and assessment tools) that help state and local agencies and community-based organizations support district and school leaders to create quality learning environments that foster students’ comprehensive cognitive, social, and emotional skill development while reflecting local priorities.

State and local leaders can both shape and provide the resources for districts to undertake the essential work of defining quality learning environments. Leaders may: Supply tools and resources for district and school leaders to facilitate conversations with their community to

identify the elements of a quality learning environment; Provide measurement and assessment tools (e.g. school climate or culture surveys as well as other mechanisms

that demonstrate mastery), as well as training and support in interpreting and using the data; Build the capacity of all educators to access, use, and share data to monitor the quality of learning environment

and understand its impact on student outcomes; Empower principals to create professional development culture that values the social emotional wellbeing and

continuous improvement of all educators Train cadres of educators with expertise in needed areas (e.g. trauma-informed instruction, restorative practices,

conflict resolution, and the integration of social, emotional, and academic development) as a means to share knowledge and skills through professional learning communities or other forms of professional development;

Design measurement and assessment tools to measure the learning environment across multiple settings, including schools, out-of-school settings, and other community-based organizations.

In 2010, Chapter 92 of the Acts of 2010: An Act Relative to Bullying in Schools, was approved by the Governor of Massachusetts. One of the requirements of this legislation was for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to create guidelines for schools on the implementation of social and emotional learning curricula. The charge was included in Section 16 as follows: “The department of elementary and secondary education shall publish guidelines for the implementation of social and emotional learning curricula in kindergarten to grade 12, inclusive, on or before June 30, 2011. The guidelines shall be updated biennially.” The embedded standards are present in the statewide Health Education curriculum.

Under Senate Bill 7, the Performance Evaluation Reform Act (PERA), the Illinois State Board is now mandated, on a biennial basis, to implement a learning conditions survey that will help paint a more comprehensive portrait of the learning environment. While this survey may help inform state policy and improvement initiatives, it is primarily intended to help local administrators, such as teachers, principals, and superintendents, identify strengths and weaknesses at the district and school level and better target resources and interventions. This statute requires all districts to administer a climate and culture survey annually. To ensure all districts have access to at least one tool, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) partners with University of Chicago Impact to administer the Illinois 5Essentials Survey. The 5Essentials were developed by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research at the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute, in partnership with Chicago Public Schools. The 5Essentials Survey provides school districts with detailed data on school culture and climate by inquiring into five critical areas for school improvement:

o Effective Leaders: The principal works with teachers to implement a clear and strategic vision for school success.

o Collaborative Teachers: Teachers collaborate to promote professional growth.

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o Involved Families: The entire school staff builds strong relationships with families and communities to support learning.

o Supportive Environment: The school is safe and orderly. Teachers have high expectations for students and support students to realize their goals. Classmates also support one another.

o Ambitious Instruction: Classes are academically demanding and engage students by emphasizing the application of knowledge.

The Illinois State Report Card is an online record that provides “school snapshots,” which contextualizes aggregated public school data at a school, district, and state level. However, schools must achieve a 50 percent response rate from students and/or a 50 percent response rate from instructional staff to qualify for a report. Therefore, it is important to encourage complete participation from both teachers and students. Professional learning and development around understanding the research behind the survey, data usage, and improvement efforts are being collaboratively developed to build capacity around improving school climate and culture.

Strategy: State and local leaders should provide districts the flexibility to design and operate schools, and partner with youth-serving programs in ways that create engaging learning experiences and opportunities for students to build skills, competencies, and relationships.

Some of the key policy areas that state and local leaders should consider include: Promote the adoption or development of curricula or skill-building experiences that embed the social and

emotional dimensions of learning and affirm culturally and linguistically diverse communities; Enable flexible use of time to ensure that each and every student is connected to an adult within the school

community through such strategies as advisory programs, mentoring, and class meetings; Be flexible about how credit is awarded to ensure that each and every student demonstrates mastery of academic

content and essential knowledge, skills, and abilities; Provide flexibility for districts to manage human resources and other conditions of schooling to reflect local

priorities; Enable districts and schools to provide work-based learning opportunities that provide a venue for students to

utilize a broad range of skills and competencies; and Understand the source of barriers and remove them in state funding, regulations, and compliance that inhibit

schools and communities from working collaboratively to support students holistically.

In South Carolina, TransformSC invites schools and districts to help articulate the knowledge, skills, and characteristics included in the state’s Profile of a Graduate. TransformSC, an education initiative of the South Carolina Council on Competitiveness, is a collaboration of business leaders, educators, students, parents and policy makers transforming the public education system so that every student graduates prepared for careers, college and citizenship. TransformSC schools and districts are designing, launching, promoting and proving transformative practices in the classroom. Transform SC has identified four innovative practices for implementation: real-world learning, “anytime, anywhere” instruction, real-time information, and students advance when ready.

TransformSC has six Action Teams with members from participating schools, higher education and other education experts. Action Team meetings are a time for educators to celebrate success and collaborate to develop best practices. The meetings are hosted by businesses around the state allowing educators to experience the future work environments of their students. Four of the Action Teams continue to explore the innovative practices and provide on-going input and involvement with TransformSC staff, and an additional Action Team is focused on the culture of innovation. They have also added the Higher Education Action Team, to study the impact of K-12 transformation on higher education. All the Action Teams work with TransformSC staff to extend transformation and develop policies and practices for the continuing work. For example, the groups have developed guidelines for matching current schools/districts to mentor those new to the network, templates and suggestions for school visits and mentoring relationships, etc.

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Strategy: State and local leaders should support networks of districts and schools working collaboratively to build quality learning environments.

State leaders have a powerful role to play in convening school district leaders and their community partners, many of whom have been working to integrate social, emotional, and academic learning and development. Various localities around the country are beginning to collaborate to share lessons with each other about their efforts. This knowledge and expertise should be captured and leveraged by states. In addition to sharing research-supported best practices and highlighting promising practices, state and local leaders can connect districts and localities using similar strategies, tools, or resources to learn from each other through learning communities.

The historic opportunity and availability of resources under ESSA enables state leaders to identify, redesign, and support low-performing schools where 50 percent of off-track students are still found. State leaders should use their convening power to network similarly situated low-performing schools with other schools within the state to share proof points and learnings for how schools comprehensively integrate social, emotional, and academic development and make other changes in climate and culture to produce better outcomes for students.

In Massachusetts, the exSEL Network led by the exSEL Coalition—whose members include the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, Massachusetts Organization of Educational Collaboratives, and Massachusetts School Administrators Association— along with the Rennie Center and Transforming Education works to gain critical insight on how to support the development of social and emotional skills through changes in policy and practice at the district, school, and classroom levels. Participants increase their understanding of the content and importance of social and emotional skills, build their capacity to use actionable data to assess and guide the development of students’ social and emotional skills, and become part of a community where educators can learn from one another and support each other’s systemic and practice shifts. Districts have the option to engage in deeper data analysis work, using existing academic and behavioral indicators to guide their efforts while developing new and effective strategies for tracking and measuring student progress.

Over the course of the 2017-18 school year, nine Massachusetts districts came together to form the first exSEL Network cohort. The districts—Brockton, Canton, Fitchburg, Mendon-Upton, Millbury, Milton, Monomoy (Chatham and Harwich), Tri-Town (Boxford, Middleton, and Topsfield), and Whitman-Hanson—gained greater awareness of what it takes to integrate social and emotional competencies into daily practice, developed preliminary integration plans, and examined strategies for measuring social and emotional learning outcomes. Many of these districts will return as part of the 2018 – 2019 cohort and plan to invite additional districts into their learning community.

Strategy: State and local leaders should promote community partners who serve student needs in ways that connect to the school and operate within and outside school environments.

The Council of Distinguished Scientists found that families and other community institutions, such as health and human services agencies and out-of-school-time organizations, play an essential role in building and supporting students’ social, emotional, and academic skills. This is underscored by the federal government in the articulation of integrated student supports within ESSA. As state and local leaders reorganize to recognize the interconnectedness and shared vision of the PreK-12 education ecosystem, they must allow for other agencies and community-based organizations to be partners both in and out of school. For example, state and local leaders should develop and fund a comprehensive strategy inclusive of resources across the community to promote inclusion and meet all students’ needs by empowering students with the skills to address learning challenges.

In Virginia, Charlottesville City Schools (CCS) partnered with Community Services Board/ Behavioral Health Authority to provide training for school staff in the Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training program (ASIST). CCS allocated staff time to the four action teams tasked with selecting and piloting evidence-based programs. Select schools piloted the evidence-based programs and worked with the district-level team to determine what worked well, what didn’t work

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and whether the program could be scaled. This provided a consistent approach to determining which programs could truly achieve results and be sustained within CCS’s context. The Virginia Department of Education helped CCS to identify evidence-based programs and provided a one-time grant to support the initial training and materials for several of the programs that were piloted. The regional Community Services Board provided training in the ASIST program to CCS at no cost. Throughout the state of Virginia, Community Services Boards and the Behavioral Authority are the single point of entry into publicly funded mental, developmental and substance abuse services. In recent years, Community Service Boards have become more involved in prevention work, which has led to greater collaboration with school districts.

Strategy: State and local leaders should support systems that use data and information to continuously improve learning environments for all students.

State and local leaders should encourage the collection and use of a broad range of data and information related to quality learning environments, including school climate or culture data, teacher and student surveys, holistic early warning data, and other assessment and measurement tools. State leaders should consider how to develop existing assessment and measurement tools to include more robust characteristics of quality learning environments. While there is good data and information available on learning environments, there is still an opportunity to continue augmenting and refining the currently available tools. Additionally, there is an opportunity to better align these tools across the PreK-12 education ecosystem. Most critically, learning environment measures should be included when state agencies and district offices engage in continuous improvement processes and be publicly reported with the goal of better understanding evidence-based, effective practices. State and local leaders should report disaggregated data aligned with best practices for protecting student privacy while ensuring transparency and promoting continuous improvement.

The CORE Data Collaborative in California focuses on school and student improvement through highly productive, meaningful partnerships between member school districts. Educators in the collaborative can access a complete picture of school performance, including information that is not collected by or available through the state. School and district profiles include locally-driven measures of growth in student academic performance, a middle school indicator noting students’ high school readiness, chronic absenteeism rates, students’ social and emotional skills, school climate measures and English learner reclassification rates, as well as state-driven measures of student test scores and graduation rates. By being able to compare schools’ performance on multiple measures to the performance of similar schools throughout the state, educators get a clearer picture of strengths and challenges in each area. Student self-report surveys created by Transform Ed ask students to reflect on and assess their own social and emotional competencies and specifically measuring mindsets, essential skills, and habits.

III. State and local leaders should promote the development of adult capacity to support students’ social, emotional, and academic development.As the Council of Distinguished Scientists and the Council of Distinguished Educators note, to be effective, social, emotional, and academic learning must begin with adults. Students are more likely to benefit when educators are supported in attaining the skills, attitudes, and pedagogy needed to integrate social, emotional, and academic learning for students, and to model these competencies in the daily life of the school and classroom.

However, today’s educators typically receive little pre-service or in-service training on how to promote specific social or emotional skills, deal with peer conflict, or support social and emotional development overall. The understanding that learning is social and emotional, as well as academic, should be applied to adult learning as well as to children’s learning. To ensure young people gain the broad set of skills to be successful, the training and development of the adults (educators, specialized support personnel, school leaders, youth development professionals) who create learning environments and experiences are critical.

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State policy governs the educator development pipeline (from initial preparation, induction, and licensure through ongoing professional development); this policy can prioritize educators’ own knowledge base in learning science and youth development strategies in order to build learning environments that support each student’s development. Across the PreK-12 education ecosystem, it is critical to prioritize these skills and competencies in recruitment, hiring, promotion, and compensation policies and in the ongoing professional learning of all educators.

We do not underestimate the magnitude of this task, which will require a significant shift in how educators, administrators, and other youth-serving professionals are educated, trained, and developed over time and in the priority, leadership, and resources necessary from states and other institutions.

The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) in the state of Washington provides a social and emotional learning online education module for professional development. The module, “Washington State Schools: Building Foundations and Strategies,” is a five-part module designed to be a part of OSPI's professional learning constellation of topics and can be used by Educational Service Districts and LEAs for administering clock hours for professional development. This module is designed for educators, administrators, school staff, other professionals, and parents who interact with youth to help them build and improve their understanding of social and emotional skills. The five segments include an introduction to social and emotional learning, embedding social and emotional learning schoolwide, creating a professional culture based on social and emotional learning, integrating social and emotional learning into culturally responsive classrooms, and identifying and selecting evidence-based programs.

Strategy: State leaders should redesign the licensure requirements for school leaders, educators, and specialized support professionals, as well as the approval requirements for educator preparation programs, to reflect the knowledge base and competencies required to integrate social, emotional, and academic development.

State leaders should redesign preparation and credentialing to ensure that educators can acquire: A deep understanding of all areas of child and adolescent development– physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and

ethical– and the ability to apply this knowledge to classroom design, management, and content instruction; Pedagogical strategies that align with the science of learning and development, including how to design motivating

tasks that demand higher-order thinking skills, provide careful scaffolding so that they are accessible for all students, use formative feedback, and explicitly teach students how to understand and reflect on their own learning;

Skills to integrate social and emotional instruction with academic content, including developing social skills, self-control, organizational skills such as setting goals, managing time well, and the ability to focus on a task, and the opportunity to learn from mistakes and to persevere;

An understanding of the effects of adverse childhood experiences on children’s behaviors and learning and how to mediate these effects to support building relationships and learning.

The University of Minnesota has custom licensure programs called the Minnesota Pathways to Teaching (MPT). Approved by the Minnesota Board of Teaching as innovative teacher licensure programs, these nonconventional and alternative programs offer quality preparation to high-potential teacher candidates in partnership with local districts and organizations. MPT works with local school partners and organizations to tailor curriculum delivery and identify promising candidates, many of whom already have extensive experience working in the schools and often in high needs areas. Many candidates are in district positions while working towards their licensure and master's degree coursework. The two programs offered are the The Grow Your Own Teacher Program (MNGOT) and the Dual-Language and Immersion Licensure Program (DLI-L).

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Strategy: State leaders should honor existing micro-credentials and other forms of demonstrated expertise (e.g. National Board Certification) or develop new ways to acknowledge educators’ demonstrated competencies and expertise in the social, emotional, and academic dimensions of learning.

State leaders are uniquely positioned both to acknowledge current forms of recognition and to incent the development of state-specific credentials that can apply both within and across the PreK-12 education ecosystem. Because the bulk of the educator workforce is already in the system, it is important to find incentives and recognition programs to encourage them to develop the knowledge and skills to integrate social, emotional, and academic development that may not have been offered during their prior preparation. Additionally, state and local leaders should align professional development, evaluation, advancement, and compensation policies to enable, recognize, and reward educators who earn micro-credentials or other recognitions of demonstrated expertise in developing students’ social, emotional, and academic competencies.

BloomBoard and Digital Promise have partnered with some states to offer professional development credits for awarded micro-credentials. These credits or points can often be used toward re-licensure/re-certification and continuing education requirements. In these cases, an educator who is earns a micro-credential is eligible to receive credits in those states. Massachusetts currently recognizes up to 2 micro-credentials for a total of 10 professional development points for re-certification. Tennessee also recognizes micro-credentials for professional learning that supports recertification. Other states that have started to give teachers the option of using micro-credentials for their continuing education units include Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New York, North Carolina, Texas, and Wyoming.

Strategy: State and local leaders should restructure recruitment, hiring, performance management, and career advancement practices, including educator leadership positions, to prioritize demonstrated competency in integrating students’ social, emotional, and academic development among both teachers, specialized support professionals, school leaders.

In order to reinforce the integration of social, emotional, and academic development, the human capital and performance management system(s) should reflect our new understanding of how students learn and develop. By aligning the disparate pieces of this system, state and local leaders can help ensure an adult workforce that has the requisite knowledge and skills. Recruitment and selection, onboarding and induction, performance management, compensation and tenure decisions, as well as ongoing support and professional advancement should all work together to reinforce the expectations we have of educators.

To ensure professional development is aligned with the local context, either the school or district should serve as the center of support for professional growth and development for individuals and groups of educators within a professional learning community. This might include building cadres of teachers with expertise in needed areas – such as trauma-informed instruction, restorative practices, conflict resolution, and the integration of social and emotional skills into academic instruction – and creating ways for them to share their knowledge and skills with other educators through professional learning communities and other forms of professional development.

Strategy: State leaders should incent educator preparation programs to work collaboratively on building comprehensive preparation experiences focused on understanding and modeling the integrated nature of social, emotional, and academic development.

States leaders can network educator preparation programs and build stronger pipelines between institutions of higher

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education, K-12 districts, and other youth-serving organizations and partners. This includes redesigning clinical experiences to focus on applying the principles of human and child development in diverse settings. Strategies include: Providing well-trained mentors during clinical experiences who have been selected for their ability to integrate the

social, emotional, and academic dimensions of learning; Having a portion of clinical experiences occur in youth development settings, which focus on practices and

environments to help children manage their behavior, relationships, attention, and motivation in order to gain a sense of their own agency;

Creating ongoing structured, collaborative relationships with teaching schools, including having their educators serve as clinical faculty, similar to teaching hospitals in the medical field;

When possible, having educator preparation programs provide continued support to their graduates after they enter the profession.

In Washoe County School District (Nevada), each school leadership team is responsible for implementation of social and emotional competencies through a “train the trainer” model. Support is provided by the Social and Emotional Learning/Multi-tiered Systems of Support (social and emotional learning/MTSS) Department through a three-day leadership training for all schools, supplemented by quarterly mini-conferences, monthly “Saturday Café” professional development, site coaching, and other professional learning opportunities.

The San Francisco Unified School District offers a Paraprofessional to Teacher Training. The Paraprofessional to Teacher Training Program (PTTP) is a para-educator to teacher pipeline program. The goal of the program is to recruit and support SFUSD paraprofessionals to become credentialed, exemplary teachers in the district's high need areas of Special Education, Secondary Mathematics and Science and Special Education and Bilingual (BCLAD ) teachers. The San Francisco Paraprofessional to Teacher Program, is a collaboration between SFUSD, the union, partner universities and City College of San Francisco.

IV. Federal, state, and local government leaders should ensure the efficient, aligned, and equitable allocation of resources to support the success of the whole student.States and local leaders must ensure that all students have equitable access to learning environments that are safe, inclusive, and welcoming, including adequate physical facilities, high-quality learning opportunities, well-prepared teachers, engaging extracurricular activities, and a supportive school climate and culture.

It is becoming clearer that this integrated set of competencies is essential for success in the increasingly complex, global, and rapidly changing world in which our students will function as adults. Thus, the impact of development in these areas reaches far beyond individual or school success and has significant benefits for the well-being of our economy and society. As the Council of Distinguished Scientists found, low-cost social emotional and related interventions can deliver a substantial return on investment. For example, a benefit-cost analysis of prominent social emotional interventions revealed a positive return on investment averaging a yield of $11 in long-term benefits over a range of outcomes for every $1 invested.

State and local leaders must take responsibility through leveraging policy and resources to ensure each and every student has access to quality learning environments across districts and schools. Resources broadly include funding, training, time, and community assets that must be aligned to support the ability to continually innovate.

Strategy: Federal, state, and local leaders should distribute resources equitably and adequately to ensure each and every young person has what they need to be successful.

Federal, state, and local leaders must consider resources broadly to include: a diverse and stable cadre of well-qualified educators, reasonable class sizes, ratios of counselors/other support staff to students, and health and mental health services. Additionally, government leaders at all levels must evaluate the adequacy of resources in each

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community in relation to student needs as a basis for investments.

In California, the local control funding formula (LCFF) was enacted in 2013–14, and it replaced the previous K–12 finance system which had been in existence for roughly 40 years. For school districts and charter schools, the LCFF establishes base, supplemental, and concentration grants in place of the myriad of previously existing K–12 funding streams, including revenue limits, general purpose block grants, and most of the 50-plus state categorical programs that existed at the time. For county offices of education (COEs), the LCFF establishes separate funding streams for oversight activities and instructional programs.

Strategy: State and local leaders should evaluate how to reduce fragmentation and improve alignment across programs and funding in order to advance an integrated approach to social, emotional, and academic development.

Alignment of strategies, funding, and other resources in support of a state’s or district’s vision for social, emotional, and academic development is essential for authentic integration and to make this work doable at the district and school levels. Forging coherence and drawing connections to existing and important bodies of work is a critical next step that state leaders can take in the short term. States can start by auditing current priorities and articulating ways in which an integrated approach to social, emotional, and academic development can be embedded in that work, rather than seen as its own, separate area of work. Such an approach includes the opportunity to align performance measures, accountability, and public reporting for schools, youth-serving organizations, and community partners with the essential knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for a successful high school graduate that includes social and emotional competencies. As federal, state, and local leaders consider investments in school safety, they should explicitly support the teaching of social and emotional skills and provide comprehensive student support services through collaboration with community-based partners who support students in and out of school.

Strategy: State leaders must create and clearly communicate a mechanism that allows districts and localities to combine and align (or blend and braid) school-based and community-based resources to more effectively meet students’ needs.

State leadership should include clear, proactive communications and messaging to districts and schools around the allowable uses of funds and the ability to blend and braid resources within schools and communities to boost outcomes for students. States can be a resource or provide funds for dedicated staff to help local leaders align funding and manage partnerships to integrate social, emotional, and academic development. For example, many communities are unaware of their ability to use federal funds to support services and supports from community-based partners. Clear guidance on allowable uses for federal funds, as well as state categorical funds, can encourage innovative and effective uses of these funds at the school level. Virtually every major program and title of federal financial assistance can be purposed to integrate social, emotional, and academic development. While there is even more flexibility in ESSA than in prior statutes, this flexibility is unlikely to be fully recognized or acted upon without strong and clear state leadership. Additionally, funding and resources should be considered broadly across the preK-12 education ecosystem to include all resources and capacities available to support the state’s efforts.

Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) has built a multi-tiered system of supports that includes robust school-based mental health services. In 2004, MPS received a Safe Schools-Healthy Students grant; a small portion of the grant was used in the start-up of these efforts. The district established a partnership with the county human services department, through which a county staff person was designated to help develop the school-based mental health service model. The start-up funding and staffing enabled MPS to form partnerships with local mental health providers and pilot school-based mental health services in seven schools. The district and county partnership has since successfully expanded services to 49 schools. Providers focus on using evidence-based programs and practices, such as Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). The school-based mental health services are focused primarily at the third tier in the district’s multi-tiered system of

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supports, although efforts at the first and second tiers have grown from strong efforts at individual schools to a district-wide strategic focus. The current superintendent has prioritized social and emotional learning and secured funds from private philanthropy to support technical assistance. MPS allocated resources within their budget to hire five staff people (four part-time and one full-time) to support schools in strengthening their social and emotional learning supports. MPS has also created a cohort of early adopter schools to help inform the district’s approach moving forward.

Strategy: Federal government leaders should remove barriers and provide incentives within federal programs that would allow districts and localities to serve youth more holistically.

Federal policy, both legislation and regulations, can create the enabling conditions for state- and district-level innovation. This includes providing more flexibility for states and districts to combine federal dollars or waive regulatory requirements in exchange for better outcomes for students. It also includes the federal government’s ongoing, historical commitment to provide funding for research and the translation of research into practice. Federal government leaders should support administrative flexibility in the use of funding and the removal of barriers in exchange for greater student outcomes, similar to work in other sectors of government, such as Performance Pilot Partnerships (P3). Additionally, federal government leaders should leverage federal research investments to inform state-level policy and district-level practice via research-to-practice translations across the Departments of Education; Labor, Health, and Human Services; the National Science Foundation; the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development; and other federal agencies.

Conclusion

Policy plays a supportive role in moving these efforts from the periphery to the mainstream of American education by framing expectations, providing resources, and creating the conditions that enable districts and their communities to align around a common vision grounded in how learning happens.

The policy recommendations above create the enabling conditions in states that allow district and school leaders to innovate and implement strategies to support students’ social, emotional, and academic development. Our focus is on how to encourage state leaders to build the capacity of district and school leaders to implement evidence-based strategies that are aligned with each community’s context. Additionally, these recommendations acknowledge the opportunity to leverage the implementation of federal policy and its related funding. While this is not an exhaustive list or a sequential to-do list, these identified opportunities represent the consensus of the many voices that have engaged with the National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development.

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