Measuring the Social and Emotional Dimensions of Student Success

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Increasingly, education researchers and school reformers see school climate and social-emotional learning as valuable new avenues of school improvement and student success. In response, the congressional drafters of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) included a provision for measuring school performance that went beyond traditional academic metrics like standardized assessments and graduation rates to include metrics such as “school climate” and “student engagement.” 

Three dozen states and the District of Columbia have added chronic student absenteeism to new school accountability systems being implemented under ESSA, a measure that in part captures school culture and students’ social and emotional well-being. New Mexico and seven other states have pledged to introduce school climate and student engagement surveys.

The intensifying interest among education policymakers in the social and emotional dimensions of student success is encouraging news. By complementing the important work in recent years to raise standards and strengthen instruction, the increasing focus on school climate and students' relationships to their peers and their schools is a potentially powerful catalyst for school improvement and student achievement.

But for educators to take advantage of this promising new opportunity, they need to be able to measure school climate and students' social and emotional development with confidence, respond effectively, and gauge if their improvement efforts have been successful.

Those are challenging tasks requiring substantial study.

In California, a consortium of large urban school systems known at the CORE Districts has been surveying nearly a million students, teachers, and parents about the non-academic side of student success for several years. The initiative provides important insights into how school districts are responding to the new information on school performance. 

FutureEd studied the experience of the Fresno Unified School District in California’s Central Valley, the state’s fourth largest school system, to understand how educators have used the new surveys and to gauge the surveys’ impact. 

The results: a new report titled CORE Lessons: Measuring the Social and Emotional Dimensions of Student Success.