An investigation of the relationship between behavioral feedback on social-emotional skills on report cards and academic achievement

Instruction and emphasis on Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) have increasingly become a focus of educational policy at the local, state and federal levels. As schools are required to emphasize SEL skills, accurate and feasible methods to assess student progress on skill development are necessary. Systematic reviews of SEL measures have identified few that are psychometrically sound and valid in assessing essential SEL skill areas. Of these measures, even fewer demonstrate feasibility and scalability for use in schools across the nation or abroad. This study seeks to investigate the potential utility of measuring SEL via a behavior feedback mechanism already in place in schools; report card comments. Preliminary research by the SEL Lab at Rutgers University has identified report card comments to be partially representative of SEL skills and to have a relationship with achievement. The current sample of 113 students enrolled in a suburban elementary school received a report card that included a typical comment menu and Likert ratings items based on SEL programming in practice. Results indicated typical comment and Likert rating items were partially representative of SEL skills. Both comments and explicit SEL Likert rating items were found to be associated with achievement. However, after controlling for previous achievement, only SEL Likert rating items were found to have a significant link to achievement. These findings show that an alternative report card comment structure that included Likert rating items explicitly related to SEL demonstrated stronger concurrent validity, accounted for a more significant portion of unique variance, beyond typical comments. The school developed and effectively implemented the adapted report card comments section in this study, suggesting its feasibility and scalability as a method of SEL assessment in schools.Psy.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Joseph Ferrit