Social-Emotional Learning Guide: SEL Skills, Research, Curriculum and Policy

Social-emotional learning, usually shortened to SEL, is the part of schooling that deliberately teaches the knowledge, skills and attitudes students need to manage emotions, set and reach goals, understand and get along with others, and make responsible decisions. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), whose framework most American schools use, describes it as “an integral part of education and human development.” It is now common practice: by the 2023–24 school year, 83 percent of principals reported that their schools used an SEL curriculum, up from 76 percent in 2021–22, and 49 states and the District of Columbia had at least one policy or condition that actively promotes SEL, according to a September 2024 RAND and CASEL report. It is also contested. The same report noted that legislators in nine states had proposed bills to prohibit or inhibit SEL instruction, and in September 2025 the U.S. Department of Education said its new grant priority on literacy “rightly avoids references to social and emotional learning.”

This guide to social and emotional learning explains what SEL is and what the five SEL skills are, how widely schools use it, what the research does and does not show, what it costs, why critics object to it, what states and the federal government have done, how districts choose an SEL curriculum, which SEL activities fit each grade band, how social emotional development unfolds with age, how SEL is measured, how it differs from mental health services, and how schools can run it openly with families. It is written for district and school leaders, counselors and teachers, with a section for families. Each section links to edCircuit’s more detailed coverage.

Updated October 2026.

In this guide

• The basics: What SEL is · The five SEL skills · How common it is
• Evidence and debate: What the research shows · Costs and returns · Why SEL is contested · State and federal policy
• Running SEL: Choosing an SEL curriculum · SEL activities by grade band · Social emotional development by age · Measuring SEL
• People: SEL and mental health · Adult SEL · Working with families · Questions to ask

What is social-emotional learning?

Social-emotional learning is the process by which students and adults learn to understand themselves, manage their emotions and behavior, relate to other people and make sound decisions, taught on purpose rather than left to chance. CASEL’s definition, the one most state standards and district plans draw on, calls SEL the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions (CASEL).

CASEL presents its framework as a wheel. At the center are five core competencies, described in the next section. Around them are four settings where students live and grow: classrooms, schools, families and caregivers, and communities. The settings matter as much as the skills. In CASEL’s account, SEL is not only a set of lessons but also the way a school runs: how adults greet students, how discipline works, how teachers organize group work and how the school communicates with families.

In practice, schools deliver SEL in four broad ways, which CASEL’s Program Guide uses to classify programs: free-standing lessons, teaching practices, organizational strategies, and the integration of SEL with academic instruction. A district might adopt a lesson-based curriculum for the elementary grades, train teachers in routines such as structured class meetings and cooperative learning, and set schoolwide expectations for behavior, all under the SEL heading. That breadth is one reason discussions of SEL often talk past each other: one person may mean a weekly lesson, another the whole climate of a school.

Several older and neighboring terms describe overlapping work, including character education, whole-child education, life skills and soft skills. edCircuit has written about SEL’s place in schools since 2015, and its Social-Emotional Learning section collects that coverage. For the case for the approach and its relationship to students’ broader well-being, see:

• Why Social Emotional Learning?
• How SEL Empowers Positive Learning
• Supporting Social Emotional Environments
• Where does Social Emotional Learning (SEL) fit in?

What are the five SEL skills?

The five SEL skills most schools teach are CASEL’s core competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making. CASEL defines each as a set of abilities and lists examples under each heading (CASEL framework):

Two features of the framework are worth knowing. First, the competencies are meant to be taught and practiced together; a student resolving a conflict draws on self-awareness, self-management and relationship skills at once. Second, some of the examples in CASEL’s current wording, such as examining prejudices and biases or identifying unjust social norms, are among the items critics point to when they object to SEL (see Why SEL is contested). Districts that adopt the framework decide how to word and teach each skill for their own community.

Several writers for edCircuit have explored individual competencies in depth, including the adult versions leaders and teachers need:

• Understanding Self-Awareness and Impulses
• Avoiding the Self-Awareness Trap
• Improving Self-Management Bit by Bit
• 5 Easy Steps for Teaching Executive Functioning in the Classroom
• Relationships Foster Social Emotional Learning

How common is SEL in American schools?

SEL is now part of most American schools, and educators’ views of it have held steady despite political pushback. The main national measures:

• Curricula. By 2023–24, 83 percent of principals said their schools used an SEL curriculum, up from 76 percent in 2021–22, according to RAND’s American School Leader Panel and American Teacher Panel surveys, merged with CASEL’s scan of state policy (RAND, September 2024). The authors found that principals and teachers in states with more supportive SEL policies were more likely to report SEL implementation, and that teachers who taught SEL were more likely to report a positive school climate and students interested in learning. Those are correlations, not proof that one caused the other.
• State standards. Twenty-seven states have adopted K–12 SEL competencies and all 50 have adopted SEL competencies for pre-K, CASEL reports from its 2022 state scan, the most recent it cites.
• Educators’ views. In EdWeek Research Center surveys of nationally representative samples of teachers, principals and district leaders in 2022, December 2024 and December 2025–January 2026, about half rated SEL’s effects on academic outcomes and soft skills as “somewhat positive,” and about a quarter said SEL had no effect, a view that peaked in 2024. The share citing academic catch-up as the reason they lacked time for SEL fell from 46 percent in 2022 to 28 percent in early 2026 (Education Week, July 2026).

For how districts organize SEL beyond the classroom, through family workshops, mentoring, service learning and community partnerships, see How Districts Support Social-Emotional Learning.

Does social-emotional learning work? What the research shows

Large reviews of controlled studies have found that well-run, school-based SEL programs improve students’ social and emotional skills, behavior and, to a smaller degree, academic achievement; the size of the academic effect, the quality of the underlying studies and the results of some large trials remain in dispute. The main reviews, in order of publication:

• Durlak et al., 2011. A meta-analysis of 213 school-based, universal SEL programs involving 270,034 students from kindergarten through high school found that participants showed significantly improved social and emotional skills, attitudes, behavior and academic performance compared with control groups, the academic gain reflecting an 11-percentile-point improvement in achievement. Programs run by regular school staff were effective, and outcomes depended on using recommended practices and on avoiding implementation problems (Child Development, 2011).
• Taylor et al., 2017. A follow-up meta-analysis of 82 universal SEL interventions involving 97,406 students, 38 of them outside the United States, examined outcomes collected six months to 18 years after the programs ended. Participants fared significantly better than controls in social-emotional skills, attitudes and indicators of well-being, and the benefits were similar regardless of students’ race, socioeconomic background or school location (Child Development, 2017).
• Cipriano et al., 2023. The largest review to date covered 424 studies from 53 countries, 252 distinct interventions and 575,361 students, in studies available from 2008 through 2020. Students in SEL programs showed significantly improved skills, attitudes, behaviors, school climate and safety, peer relationships, school functioning and academic achievement, and the authors found that differences in program content, features, context and implementation quality shaped the results (Child Development, 2023). Yale’s Child Study Center reported that the largest effect was on students’ perceptions of safety and inclusion at school, and that programs that were sequenced, active, focused and explicit and were delivered by teachers had the strongest effects.
• Ha et al., 2025. A narrower meta-analysis focused only on academic achievement in grades 1–12 drew on 40 studies conducted between 2008 and 2020 with 33,737 students and found an average effect of g = 0.101 on test scores and grade point averages, with significant gains in both literacy and math (American Educational Research Association, October 2025). The Hechinger Report translated the result as about 4 percentile points on average, more than 6 points in reading and fewer than 4 in math, with programs lasting longer than four months producing more than 8 points; three-quarters of the 40 studies were randomized controlled trials.

The evidence also includes a notable null result. In a federal evaluation of seven schoolwide programs to promote social and character development in elementary schools, published by the Institute of Education Sciences in October 2010, the programs increased teachers’ reported use of social and character development activities, but there were no differences in students’ social and emotional competence, behavior, academic performance or perceptions of school climate between program and comparison schools. The evaluators noted that comparison schools also reported many similar activities as routine practice.

Critics raise several further points, which a fair reading of the meta-analyses should weigh. Writing in August 2023, Jill Barshay of The Hechinger Report noted that the 2011 meta-analysis covered only studies through 2007; that many studies in large SEL reviews use surveys designed by the researchers themselves, which can make positive findings more likely; that Max Eden of the American Enterprise Institute called the research claims “oversold”; and that the 2023 analysis found no improvement in three of its 12 outcome categories: disciplinary incidents, physical health and family relationships (FutureEd, August 2023). Much of the research has also been produced by researchers who work to advance SEL; Christina Cipriano, lead author of the 2023 review, has responded that her team sought unpublished negative studies and made its data public.

Taken together, the evidence supports a measured conclusion. Well-designed programs, taught consistently by trained teachers, tend to improve the skills and behaviors they target and the climate students experience, and they appear to produce modest academic gains. The evidence does not show that every program works, that adopting a curriculum is enough without careful implementation, or that SEL can substitute for strong academic instruction. edCircuit’s coverage of how SEL connects to teaching and learning includes Connecting SEL and Formative Instruction and SEL Is Prevention and Intervention.

What does SEL cost, and what does it return?

SEL programs are relatively inexpensive, and the one detailed economic study most often cited found that the benefits it could measure exceeded the costs for every program it examined. In February 2015, economists at the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, led by Clive Belfield and Henry Levin, analyzed six interventions with prior evidence of effectiveness: 4Rs, Positive Action, Life Skills Training, Second Step, Responsive Classroom and Social and Emotional Training, a Swedish program. They reported an average benefit-cost ratio of about 11 to 1 among the six interventions, meaning that, on average, every dollar invested equally across them returned eleven dollars in measured benefits.

The same authors were careful about how the figure should be used. In the version of the study published in the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis later in 2015, they wrote that the interventions “are not representative of SEL generally,” that the estimates are very imprecise, and that they strongly cautioned against comparing benefit-cost ratios across the field of SEL; they also argued that most of the measurement problems were likely to understate SEL’s benefits rather than overstate them. For a district, the practical lesson is that a well-chosen program with evidence behind it can be a sound use of money, but that the 11-to-1 figure describes six particular programs as studied, not any program a district might buy. The real costs to plan for are teacher training and time, coaching, materials and evaluation, and these rise when a program is replaced every few years.

Why is social-emotional learning controversial?

SEL is controversial mainly over who should teach values and emotional skills, what the lessons actually contain, how much school time they take, and how much schools learn about students’ inner lives. Support for the underlying skills is broad; disagreement is concentrated on the label, the content of some programs and the role of the school.

The clearest national picture of parents’ views comes from How to Sell SEL, an August 2021 report by Adam Tyner of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute based on a YouGov survey of 2,000 parents of K–12 children conducted in April 2021:

• The skills are popular. All nine SEL-related skills the survey asked about were supported by more than three-quarters of parents, and more than 90 percent supported teaching students to set goals, approach challenges optimistically and believe in themselves.
• The name is not. Among 12 possible names for a program, “life skills” ranked first with both Republican and Democratic parents, and “social-emotional learning” ranked second to last. Twenty-nine percent of Republican parents named it as the program they would least want, compared with 13 percent of Democrats.
• The role of school divides parents. Sixty-four percent of Republican parents and 41 percent of Democratic parents agreed that schools should focus on academics and leave SEL to parents and others; 65 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of Democrats said there was not enough time to teach both academics and SEL.
• Concerns are practical as well as political. Parents’ biggest concerns overall were that teachers would need more training and that SEL is more complex than many people imagine. About one in four Republican parents with concerns cited conflict with their own values. Parents of every background named families as the most important source of children’s social and emotional development.

Organized opposition makes sharper arguments. The group Moms for Liberty has told parents that SEL’s goal is to psychologically manipulate students, and other critics argue that social and emotional matters belong at home and that schools should stick to academics, The Hechinger Report summarized in October 2025; some advocates on the left argue the opposite, that standard SEL does not go far enough. In comments on the Department of Education’s 2025 grant priorities, one commenter argued that SEL may divert time from academic instruction, raise administrative costs, reflect political or ideological biases that do not align with all families’ views, and be difficult to assess (Federal Register, September 2025). The author of a 2026 Arizona bill argued that SEL was a way to bring critical race theory into classrooms, and in 2025 the federal government tied SEL to diversity, equity and inclusion and called both discriminatory, EdWeek Market Brief reported in June 2026. CASEL’s policy director, Asher Miller, disputed that view, pointing to civil rights cases in which SEL was used as a remedy for alleged discrimination, and said SEL has historically had bipartisan support.

Several of these objections can be checked locally rather than argued in the abstract. Parents can be shown the actual lessons. Districts can count the minutes SEL takes and say where they come from. Surveys that ask about feelings or mental health can be reviewed against federal and state consent rules (see Working with families). And program content can be compared with the community’s own priorities before it is adopted. Schools that do this work in the open give families a basis for judgment, whatever they conclude.

What have states and the federal government done about SEL?

States have moved in both directions, most bills restricting SEL have failed, and federal policy since 2025 has stepped back from SEL. The main developments:

The broader legislative tally runs the other way. CASEL and the Leading with SEL Coalition tracked more than 232 SEL-related proposals across about 30 statehouses in 2026, most of them to expand or fund SEL, and no explicitly anti-SEL bill passed that year; roughly 10 states a year include SEL-specific funding in their budgets, often tied to multi-tiered systems of support or after-school programs, EdWeek Market Brief reported in June 2026. The same report noted that Iowa’s state education agency removed CASEL resources after a 2023 bill to limit them stalled, and that Arizona’s state superintendent, an opponent of SEL, has taken unilateral actions to limit it.

At the federal level, RAND’s 2017 review found that several Every Student Succeeds Act funding streams can support SEL, most directly Title IV (21st Century Schools), with Titles I and II also offering opportunities. The Department of Education’s discretionary priorities have changed. On September 9, 2025, the department finalized new supplemental priorities on evidence-based literacy, education choice and returning education to the states, repealing its 2021 priorities, which commenters had defended partly for their support of SEL. In its response, the department said the 2021 priorities encouraged recipients to violate civil rights law and wrote that its literacy priority “rightly avoids references to social and emotional learning” (Federal Register, 2025-17310). The priorities shape which applicants score well in federal grant competitions; they do not prohibit districts from teaching SEL with their own or formula funds. District leaders should check their own state’s laws and guidance, which now differ considerably.

How should a district choose an SEL curriculum?

A district choosing an SEL curriculum should start with what it wants students to learn, then look for programs with rigorous evidence in settings like its own, and only then compare materials and price. Two independent yardsticks help with the evidence.

The first is federal. The Every Student Succeeds Act defines an “evidence-based” activity in four tiers: strong evidence from an experimental study, moderate evidence from a quasi-experimental study, promising evidence from a correlational study with statistical controls, or a rationale based on high-quality research with ongoing efforts to examine its effects (20 U.S.C. 7801(21)). The What Works Clearinghouse explains that the top two tiers also require a statistically significant positive effect, at least 350 students and at least two educational sites. RAND’s 2017 evidence review identified 60 SEL interventions evaluated in U.S. K–12 schools that met Tiers I through III; most had been evaluated in elementary schools and urban communities, which leaves fewer well-tested options for secondary and rural schools.

The second is CASEL’s Program Guide, a consumer-report-style listing of programs that CASEL has reviewed. Its designations work as follows (CASEL, criteria for providers):

Neither list is a recommendation for a particular school. Evidence from one population or grade band does not guarantee results in another, and the research reviewed above shows that implementation quality matters as much as the choice of program. Questions worth asking before adoption include what each lesson asks students to do and disclose, how many minutes a week it takes and from which subject, what training and coaching the price includes, whether parents can see all materials, and how the district will judge in a year or two whether it is working. edCircuit’s coverage of planning and integrating SEL includes:

• Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) in Every Lesson Plan
• SEL and PBL: Let’s Have One Conversation
• How EdTech Can Promote SEL, Equity, and Engagement

What SEL activities work in the classroom?

The most useful SEL activities are short, predictable routines built into ordinary teaching rather than occasional special events: a structured start to class, regular chances for students to work together and talk, and a deliberate close that asks students to reflect. CASEL’s three “signature practices” describe that pattern: open each class or meeting with an inclusive welcome, embed engaging strategies that mix interaction and reflection throughout, and end with an intentional close that names what was learned and the next step. The research reviewed above points the same way: programs that were sequenced, active, focused and explicit, and delivered by teachers, had the strongest effects.

Common activities differ by age. Typical examples by grade band:

• Early grades (pre-K–2). Morning meetings with a greeting and a shared activity; naming feelings with picture charts or a feelings vocabulary; practicing turn-taking and sharing in play; simple calming routines such as slow breathing; and adults modeling and talking through how they handle frustration. Young children still rely heavily on adults to regulate; see Moving Kids from Co-Regulation to Self-Regulation.
• Upper elementary (3–5). Class meetings to solve real classroom problems; cooperative learning with assigned roles; goal-setting and tracking for reading or math; and literature discussions that ask how a character feels and why. See 5 Easy Steps for Teaching Executive Functioning in the Classroom.
• Middle school (6–8). Advisory periods; structured peer feedback and group projects; planning tools for long assignments; and discussions of social media, peer pressure and conflict. See Social Media and Screen Addiction: A Growing Threat to Youth Mental Health.
• High school (9–12). Advisory and mentoring; project-based learning with team roles; reflection on goals, college and careers; student voice in school decisions; and debate and civic discussion across differing views. See Amplifying Student Voice: The Key to Improving Wellbeing.

Check-ins, in which students report briefly how they are feeling or how their learning is going, are among the most widely used SEL activities and also among the most sensitive. They can help a teacher gauge readiness and spot a student who needs help, but they also collect information about students’ emotions, which some state laws now regulate (see Working with families). For question sets teachers can adapt, see edCircuit’s Check-In Questions & Social Emotional Learning and How Are Your Students Feeling? Check-in and Find Out; for seasonal ideas, SEL Activities for Connecting with Kids Over the Holidays.

How does social emotional development change with age?

Social emotional development follows a broad sequence: young children depend on adults to calm them and learn to play alongside and then with other children, school-age children build the self-control and cooperation that classroom life demands, and adolescents continue to develop the planning, judgment and self-regulation that adults rely on. A few anchors from primary sources:

• Age 3. Among the social and emotional milestones the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists, most children by age 3 calm down within 10 minutes after a parent leaves, as at a child care drop-off, and notice other children and join them to play.
• Age 5. By 5, most children follow rules or take turns when playing games with other children, sing, dance or act for an adult, and do simple chores. The CDC defines a milestone as something 75 percent or more of children can do by a given age, so a child who has not yet reached one is not necessarily delayed; families with concerns should talk with their child’s doctor.
• Ages 3 to 5 and beyond. Executive function and self-regulation, the skills of working memory, mental flexibility and self-control, begin developing shortly after birth, with ages 3 to 5 a window of opportunity for dramatic growth, and development continues through adolescence and into early adulthood, according to the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. The center notes that children build these skills when adults support their efforts, model the skills, provide a consistent and reliable presence, and guide them gradually from dependence to independence.

Two points follow for schools. Expectations should match development: a kindergarten lesson on naming feelings and a high school discussion of handling conflict are both SEL, but they ask very different things of students. And because the same skills keep developing into early adulthood, SEL in high school is not remedial; adolescents are still building the planning and self-regulation that secondary coursework demands. Families looking for ways to support these skills at home can start with edCircuit’s Guide to 5 Evidence Based Parenting Strategies.

How is SEL measured, and what are the limits?

SEL can be measured, but less precisely than reading or math, and the main guidance for schools warns against using SEL scores for high-stakes decisions. The fullest practical guide, Choosing and Using SEL Competency Assessments, published in 2018 by CASEL with RAND and Transforming Education, describes the main types and their limits:

• Student self-report surveys are inexpensive and widely used but subject to social desirability bias, in which students give the answers they think are “correct,” and to reference bias, in which students rate themselves against the peers around them. They require reading skill, so most are unsuitable for preschool and early elementary students.
• Teacher, parent or observer ratings are common for younger children, who have less ability to rate themselves accurately, but depend on the rater’s judgment and training.
• Performance tasks and interviews can be more direct but are difficult and costly to administer at scale.

The guide’s authors state plainly that they do not recommend using SEL competency measures for high-stakes decisions or accountability systems, such as state accountability or teacher evaluation, because attaching stakes raises the risk of score corruption, especially with self-reports and teacher ratings that are easy to manipulate. They also describe SEL competency assessment as a young field in which few measures have undergone extensive validation, and they advise districts to ask developers for evidence that an instrument can detect change over time. RAND’s Education Assessment Finder catalogued more than 200 assessments of interpersonal, intrapersonal and higher-order cognitive competencies; RAND now lists the tool as retired.

For district leaders, the practical guidance is to measure for improvement rather than for judgment: use climate surveys and implementation data to see whether the program is being taught as intended, look at attendance, discipline and academic records alongside any SEL measure rather than in place of it, and tell families what is being asked and how the results will be used.

How is SEL different from mental health services?

SEL is a universal, skill-building approach for all students; mental health services are assessment, counseling and treatment for students who need them. The two are related but not interchangeable. CASEL’s own guidance says that SEL and mental health are not the same, though SEL can promote positive mental health, and places SEL inside a tiered system of support:

• Tier 1, for all students: universal strategies that promote strengths and prevent risks. Classroom SEL sits here.
• Tier 2, for some students: targeted or early interventions for students who have been or might be exposed to risk factors.
• Tier 3, for a few students: intensive treatment and intervention supports.

Keeping the distinction clear protects everyone. Teachers delivering SEL lessons are not acting as therapists, and a student who discloses distress during a check-in needs a referral to trained staff, not a classroom conversation. Many districts organize this through a multi-tiered system of support and a student support team. edCircuit covers student mental health separately:

• Student Mental Health: A Growing Focus in Schools
• The Crucial Role of Crisis Prevention, Behavior Support, and Mental Health Teams in Schools
• High School Student Depression: What Principals, Counselors, & Educators Must Know
• Social Media and Screen Addiction: A Growing Threat to Youth Mental Health

Adult SEL: why teachers’ and leaders’ skills matter

Adults’ own social and emotional skills shape how SEL is taught and how a school feels, which is why many districts now include adult SEL in professional learning. CASEL’s definition covers “all young people and adults,” and the 2023 review described above found that programs delivered by teachers had the strongest effects. Parents in the Fordham survey named teacher training as their biggest concern about SEL, ahead of any political objection.

Adult SEL is also bound up with working conditions. A teacher who is exhausted or overwhelmed will find it hard to model calm problem-solving, and edCircuit’s columnists have argued that schools should look at the demands placed on educators, not only at educators’ resilience. For that discussion, and for the separate subject of educators’ mental health, see:

• Teacher SEL-Separating The Canary from the Coal Mine
• Teaching the Teachers: SEL for K-12 Success
• Teacher Mental Health: Causative Stress Factors
• Educator Wellness: Making Work-Life Balance Real

How can schools run SEL openly with families?

Schools run SEL with families’ trust when parents can see what is taught, know what information is collected about their children, and have a real way to ask questions or decline particular activities. Federal law already sets a floor for the most sensitive part, surveys. Under the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, no student may be required, without prior written consent from a parent of a minor, to take a survey under a covered federal program that reveals information in eight protected areas, including mental or psychological problems of the student or the student’s family, political beliefs, religious practices and critical appraisals of family members. Districts receiving covered funds must also adopt policies, developed with parents, that let parents inspect surveys and instructional materials, notify parents at least annually, and give them the chance to opt their children out of surveys with sensitive items (20 U.S.C. 1232h). Some states go further; Texas now requires signed written consent before any method designed to elicit a student’s feelings, attitudes or beliefs, including a classroom check-in or a question embedded in a lesson (see State and federal policy).

Practical steps that address the concerns parents most often raise:

• Publish the materials. Post the curriculum, lesson by lesson, where families can read it, and say how many minutes a week SEL takes and in which part of the day.
• Use plain names. Describe what students learn, such as setting goals, managing frustration or working in a team, rather than relying on a label. The Fordham survey found “life skills” far more popular with parents than “social-emotional learning” for the same content.
• Separate teaching from data collection. Explain any survey, screener or check-in, what it asks, who sees the answers, how long they are kept, and how a family can opt out, and confirm it meets federal and state consent rules.
• Invite families in. Offer sessions where parents try the lessons themselves, and give them simple ways to reinforce the same skills at home.
• Have a process for objections. Tell families how to raise a concern about a specific lesson and what alternatives are available.

For families, the most useful questions are often concrete: what will my child be asked to do and to share, and how will I know? edCircuit’s Guide to 5 Evidence Based Parenting Strategies and its articles on social media and screen time and on why a growth mindset matters for creativity offer starting points for parents who want to support these skills at home.

Questions to ask about social-emotional learning in your schools

For school and district leaders

• What specific skills do we want students to learn at each grade, and how will we know in two years whether they have?
• What level of ESSA evidence and which CASEL Program Guide designation, if any, does our program have, and were the studies done with students like ours?
• How many minutes a week does SEL take, and from which subjects or periods?
• Can every family see every lesson, and have we explained what students are asked to do and share?
• Do our surveys, screeners and check-ins meet the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment and our state’s consent rules, and who reviews new ones before use?
• What training, coaching and planning time do teachers receive, and what does the program cost over five years once those are counted?
• Is there a clear referral path from classroom SEL to counselors and mental health staff when a student needs more help?
• Are we measuring for improvement rather than using SEL scores to judge students or teachers?

For teachers

• Does each SEL activity give students a chance to practice a skill, not only to hear about it?
• Is this lesson suited to my students’ age and development?
• Am I asking students to disclose more about their feelings or families than the activity needs, and does it need parental consent where I teach?
• How does this routine connect to the academic work in my class, such as group projects, feedback or reflection on learning?
• Do I know whom to contact if a student’s response suggests a serious concern?
• What support do I need to model the same skills I am asking of students?

Teaching the skills students need to learn

Social-emotional learning rests on an idea few parents or teachers dispute: students learn best when they can manage themselves, work with others and make sound decisions, and those abilities can be taught. The research supports well-designed, well-taught programs while showing that results depend on implementation and that academic gains are real but modest. The disputes are mostly about content, labels, time and privacy, and most of them can be addressed by choosing programs carefully, teaching them consistently and showing families exactly what their children are learning. Schools that do that work in the open are best placed to keep the focus on what students need.

Related reading

• How Districts Support Social-Emotional Learning
• Connecting SEL and Formative Instruction
• Check-In Questions & Social Emotional Learning
• Student Mental Health: A Growing Focus in Schools

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