The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) allows US states to use federal funding to adopt research-proven programmes to improve pupil achievement. This includes social-emotional learning (SEL) programmes. To offer some guidance and inform decision makers, RAND has released a report, Social and emotional learning interventions under the Every Student Succeeds Act, which reviews recent evidence on these programmes. The report discusses how ESSA supports SEL programmes and outlines the programmes that meet the ESSA evidence standards.
Specifically, authors found:
- 60 SEL programmes that met strong, moderate, or promising evidence standards in grades K-12 (Years 1 to 13). Most were evaluated at the primary school level in urban communities with minority populations.
- Interpersonal competencies, such as hostile attribution biases, prosocial behaviors, interpersonal communication, and social problem-solving skills, were most likely to be positively affected by these programmes.
- Following that, intrapersonal competencies, such as attention, concentration, emotional regulation, and perseverance, were the second most common outcomes positively impacted by these programmes.
A second report describes these programmes and the research that supports them in detail.