The assessment of students' social-emotional competencies and academic achievement

In order to reduce the burden of mental illness a major shift in intervention research and clinical practice must occur (Kazdin & Blase, 2011). One way to create a major shift in the mental health well-being of youth is through universal school-based prevention and promotion interventions, such as social-emotional learning (SEL). The five core SEL competencies are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making (CASEL, 2005). A recent meta-analysis revealed that universal school-based SEL interventions lead to increases in social emotional skills, positive attitudes towards oneself and others, positive social behaviors, and academic performance, as well as decreases in conduct problems and emotional distress (Durlak et al., 2011). While there is currently no recognized feasible, scalable assessment system for SEL, there is an assessment system in educational practice already utilized in the vast majority of schools: the report card, which contains not only letter grades but also comments on student behavior. This dissertation is the first study to systematically and empirically study how the behavioral ratings and comments sections of the report card relate to SEL, academic grades, and standardized tests in a manner consistent with SEL theory. Over 1,000 report cards from an ethnically diverse, large high school were chosen as a case study. Ten report card comment categories were created using grounded theory; this included a partial representation of the presence and absence of SEL skills/behaviors as well as non-SEL skills/behaviors. Overall, concurrent analyses revealed that report card comments had a small effect size on attendance and a large effect size on letter grades. Comments partially explained academic disparities for gender and ethnicity for these analyses. These findings applied to both "subjective" (i.e., language) and "objective" (i.e., mathematics) academic areas. Additionally, the effects of demographics, attendance, comments, and letter grades on standardized test scores were examined. Finally, the predictive validity of the comments were examined, after controlling for prior academic success. Implications, limitations and future directions for creating individualized, sustainable, and scalable SEL assessments using report card comments are discussed.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Dominic C. Mocer