Collaborating to keep SEL on course: A reply to Josh Starr

Thank you, Josh Starr, for your timely essay, “Can we keep SEL on course?” We appreciate your analysis of the challenges and opportunities facing the social and emotional learning (SEL) field.

The issues you raise are ones that keep CASEL leaders up at night, and they form the backbone of our updated strategic plan. We, too, are very concerned about how the heartening embrace of SEL that is sweeping the nation’s schools could easily be undermined by shoddy implementation. We, too, are focused on the equity issues that must be part of any SEL agenda. Finally, like you, CASEL is acutely aware of the dangers inherent in a “quick fix” approach to SEL, which is why we have been such staunch promoters of systemic, strength-based implementation throughout the education system for students and adults alike.

As the organization that introduced and defined the SEL field 25 years ago, CASEL has a special responsibility to address the challenges you discuss, among others. Our multipronged, collaborative initiatives span research (addressing the many issues about evidence and metrics that you rightly raise), policy (ensuring that SEL is supported by the levers necessary to achieve sustainable scale), and practice (where our emphasis on knowledge development and knowledge sharing with our more than 20 collaborating districts and nearly 30 collaborating states helps ensure that we’re all traveling up the same learning curve).