State Policy and Standards Related to Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)

| By: Committee for Children

The CASEL State Policy and Standards web page provides a number of important resources about state policies and standards. Following are several key points from CASEL’s review.

In the past decade, significant progress has been made in establishing SEL as a component of education policy, most notably the adoption of state policies that led to the development of standards for social-emotional learning in Illinois in 2004. Several other states have adopted similar policies or are currently considering and developing such policies.  At the CASEL State Policy and Standards web page, you can download a report from the University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs on how Illinois legislators adopted policies that led to the development of the state’s K–12 SEL standards. 

For the past three years, CASEL has been conducting a scan of state standards for SEL in all 50 states. Download a brief from 2014 that summarizes the most recent findings from the CASEL State Scan.  This brief identifies the key elements (based on research) of high-quality standards in SEL and assesses progress in developing standards for SEL, preschool through high school, in all 50 states. The brief also makes recommendations for high-quality SEL standards using examples from various states.

Another report available on the CASEL State Policy and Standards web page discusses the development of preschool through high school standards for SEL in Illinois and Pennsylvania, two states that have made significant advances in adopting and implementing SEL standards. Download the report.   

Resources from other organizations with which we’re familiar are also available. For example, in October 2013 the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) chose SEL as the subject of a new periodical titled From Practice to Policy. Introducing the periodical on its web site, NASBE wrote, “The recognized need for public schools to support students in areas beyond academics is not new, but recent developments in social-emotional learning (SEL) go beyond what has come before—and are starting to show improvements in both student behavior and academic outcomes.” Go to the NASBE website  to download the publication.