The ways that educators use early warning indicators to support students have evolved over the last few decades.
Early warning systems (EWS) were originally developed for dropout prevention using the “ABCs” of student data: attendance, behavior, and coursework. With these strong indicators, schools and districts could identify students who were at risk of not graduating high school.
There’s no question that social emotional learning (SEL) is essential to students’ success in school and life.
Extensive research has shown that students who participate in SEL programs demonstrate 11% gains in academics, improved classroom behavior, better stress management, and higher attendance. As the body of research on social-emotional learning grows, district and school leaders are focusing on infusing SEL into the classroom through different programs and activities.
Earlier this year, I was sitting with a district administrator who said something that caught my attention:
I asked her what she meant. “I’m positive that our students of different backgrounds have very different experiences when they walk into our schools. And it’s our job to figure out where those gaps exist and how we can close them.”
For district leaders at Charlotte County Public Schools (Fla.), giving families a voice is more than just “checking a box.” By collecting family survey data and sharing it with school communities, CCPS is able to spark meaningful conversation about how the district can help families better support students’ learning.
But it hasn’t always been this way for CCPS. Although the district has traditionally valued family input, this marks a new approach—one that embraces collaboration and action.
This is a guest blog post by Eric Born, a school psychologist at Lakes Community High School in Lake Villa, Illinois. Eric received his degree as a specialist in school psychology from Western Illinois University.
As a school psychologist, I’m always looking for better ways to proactively support students. We serve over 1,400 students at Lakes Community High School (Lake Villa, Illinois), driven by a district-wide mission to “ignite passion and discovery in every student.”
While our team has made great progress since LCHS opened in 2004, over the past two years we’ve embarked on an especially exciting journey to rethink student success. Our efforts have centered on an important question:
How can we use data to recognize and support the needs of the whole student?
Here’s how we revamped the way we support students to provide LCHS educators and staff with rich, actionable information on every student.
So, your school or district is bought into the concept of social emotional learning (SEL). You’ve established a vision for SEL, shared SEL priorities across the team, and implemented (or started to implement) an SEL program to support students in developing these critical life skills.
As a next step, your team might be planning to gather baseline data on students’ SEL skills through a social emotional learning assessment. Social emotional learning assessments are an easy and scalable way to learn how supported students feel in school and how empowered teachers feel to implement SEL in the classroom.
