Social-emotional learning has become one of the most important topics in education in recent years — and it’s now intertwined in the work of school districts more than ever before.
But while SEL products and programs have become a top need for districts, they are also high on the list to potentially get cut when federal relief dollars run dry after this year. And they have emerged as a political flashpoint, with school districts in some communities fielding opposition from parents and state officials who have attempted to curtail their use in classrooms.
Critics of SEL largely conflate the longstanding, research-based practice aimed at improving students’ competency in areas such as self-management, communication and social awareness with critical race theory and gender studies, both of which have become targets of Republican culture battles over the past few years.
Amid funding uncertainty and political fights, EdWeek Market Brief asked school district and industry officials a broad question that hangs over SEL: What is its status in schools, now and in the future?
Those district and company leaders sum up the environment surrounding social-emotional learning as follows:
- SEL remains a priority in districts, even though sales have slowed and school systems are engaging in longer conversations before awarding contracts.
- Culture war controversies and attempts to legislate SEL at the state level appear to be waning somewhat.
- And education companies and school district officials have shifted how they discuss SEL to emphasize its positive effects on academic performance and school climate, as a way to combat what they see as misguided opposition to it.
“It is not as though the need for social emotional learning has gone away,” said Jessica Adamson, the co-founder and vice president of partnerships and product for SEL assessment company Aperture Education. “There’s still some trepidation that people have talking about it, and the willingness to move quickly and act on the need has slowed down in some cases.”
‘SEL Has a Major Stake’
In the Chicago Public Schools, the need for SEL has remained constant, said Cynthia Treadwell, the system’s executive director of social emotional learning.
The district, one of the largest in the country with more than 320,000 students, approves a budget in June, and is facing a potentially steep deficit for the 2024-25 school year as federal emergency relief funds run out.
Varying the Language: A number of district officials and advocates say they’ve begun tailoring their descriptions of SEL to the reaction they anticipate from the community.
Purchasing Persists, Albeit More Slowly: SEL providers say districts continue to have a strong appetite for their products, but they’re also more deliberate in making decisions, partly because more local decision-makers appear to be involved.
State-Level Clampdowns Sputter: Most recent state legislative efforts to restrict social-emotional learning have failed, and in some cases they’ve provoked vocal resistance from SEL supporters.
Fewer Reviews of Curriculum: Just 17 percent of K-12 officials said they’re reconsidering SEL programs/products because of restrictive state policies, a drop from a year earlier, an EdWeek Market Brief survey found.
But Treadwell, unlike administrators in some districts surveyed recently by EdWeek Market Brief, said she doesn’t expect cutbacks to SEL programs or anticipate losing SEL-focused positions. Rather, she said, SEL will “continue to be a district priority” in a post-ESSER landscape.
“We’re gonna continue to really embed SEL into our everyday classroom, into our curriculum and things of that nature,” she said. “As we’re thinking about strategy for the next few years, SEL has a major stake in that work.”
The district has integrated SEL into its universal pre-K-12 curriculum called Skyline, Treadwell said, and before the pandemic K-8 students already had access to standalone SEL curriculum. “That will not go away,” she said.
In the Austin Independent School District, a system of about 73,000 students, SEL has been in place since 2011, long before “it was the shiny coin that many people thought would be the fixer of all things,” said Stacia Paschel, director of social-emotional learning and cultural proficiency and inclusiveness in the Texas district.
That commitment continues, she said, even as the school system faces tough budget conditions.
The Austin district approved a budget last year with a $52 million deficit after giving teachers a 7 percent raise and bumping pay for school employees by $4 per hour. District leaders are now working to reduce that deficit by half through a series of actions that include leaving some open positions unfilled, reducing overtime, and reviewing contracts.
Texas school districts had been hoping state lawmakers would provide a per-pupil funding increase during last year’s legislative session, but that did not happen. Now, many school systems throughout the state are dealing with budget deficits.
“A lot of districts, not just ours, are feeling this budget crunch,” Paschel said. “We are currently having budget talks, and we’re looking at what buckets will be able to sustain aspects of our work, and what are pieces of our work that will no longer be able to be sustained.”
The district’s long-standing commitment to SEL has made it easier for programs and positions in Paschel’s department to have “longevity,” even if some are tied to COVID relief funds, she said.
Federal emergency dollars have been paying for SEL facilitators at almost every one of AISD’s 130 campuses. Those employees serve as the “point person” for their schools’ implementation of SEL work, Paschel said.
Before COVID, those positions were paid for by philanthropic donations, but now the district will reallocate funds from a different pot to cover those costs, she said.
Both the Austin and Chicago districts have been using SEL in their schools for more than a decade. Both have also relied on philanthropy to help fund that work — and they expect that to continue.
For Austin, private donors “were the catalyst for us having SEL,” Paschel said.
In Chicago, “long-standing partnerships have helped us to do this work,” Treadwell said, “so we’re not doing it alone.”
Slower to Buy, But Commitment Remains
While districts’ SEL needs haven’t slowed, the business of selling those products to school has, said Adamson, the co-founder of SEL assessment company Aperture Education.
Adamson, who also serves as the treasurer of the the SEL Providers Association, a national organization that advocates for high-quality SEL implementation, said CEOs in the SEL space she’s talked with had envisioned a bigger post-COVID boom.
And with federal relief dollars winding down this year, the expectation was that more districts would ramp up spending that money on SEL programs, she said. It hasn’t materialized.
“We all budgeted for much larger growth in subsequent years than we’ve seen,” she said. “Some companies staffed up for that kind of growth and then have had to subsequently cut back projections, and many of us have had to also cut back our staffing.”
Contracts are still being signed, she said, and SEL companies are still having robust conversations with prospects. It’s just that districts are moving at a slower pace when it comes to purchases, she said.
“What we’re hearing is that it has a lot to do with just how many stakeholders districts are having to involve in these conversations,” Adamson said.
One reason for the hesitation to buy in general: SEL has been swept into political controversy via some Republican policymakers who have sought to link it to critical race theory and what they see as biased approaches to instruction.
That, Adamson said, has led “everyone at the district level to slow down, get more buy-in and get more layers of approvals.” The impact on vendors has been “huge,” she said.
The upside: Some of the hostility toward SEL has seemingly cooled. SEL advocates are having to push back against opposition to it less frequently, Adamson said, and the topic seems to be less relevant as of recent for leads and clients.
That sentiment echoes results from an EdWeek Research Center survey of 266 district and 160 school leaders conducted in December. In that survey, fewer K-12 officials said they are reconsidering which SEL programs or products they are going to purchase or renew because of restrictive state policies (just 17 percent, compared to 22 percent the previous year).
Statehouse Activity
Over the past few years, state directives have taken aim at SEL products and programs.
One of the most notable emerged last year when the state of Florida rejected a long list of math resources submitted for state adoption, in part due to the “unsolicited” inclusion of SEL.
Policymakers in a number of other states have also targeted SEL. But most of those efforts have failed, said Jordan Posamentier, vice president of policy and advocacy for the Committee for Children, a Seattle-based non-profit SEL curriculum provider.
In all, legislation seeking to ban or restrict SEL was filed in at least eight statehouses between 2022 and 2023, according to the Committee for Children. That included failed attempts last year to ban SEL in K-12 schools in Montana and North Dakota.
It’s just not an effective strategy at the state level to attack social-emotional learning through legislation. That's not to say opponents don't find other ways to get at it if they have an issue.
All of those proposals failed, except for one in Kansas, which was eventually adopted after it was rolled into the state budget, Posamentier said. That measure required for prior notice be given to parents before administering certain questionnaires and surveys related to social-emotional learning.
This year, the Committee for Children is tracking similar legislation in five states: New Hampshire, Iowa, Arizona, Kentucky, and Oklahoma.
The effort in New Hampshire, which called for banning SEL, has already been voted down, and anti-SEL language was removed from the Iowa bill, said Posamentier. Legislation remains pending in the three other states.
Trying to attack SEL has only worked to galvanize SEL advocates to show up in droves at committee hearings to testify against the bills, he said.
“It’s just not an effective strategy at the state level to attack social-emotional learning through legislation,” Posamentier said. “That’s not to say opponents don’t find other ways to get at it if they have an issue. We do see hostility at some state agencies.”
The legislative efforts, despite going down to defeat, nonetheless cast a shadow over efforts to support social-emotional learning in schools, Posamentier said.
“The chill is real,” he said. “These bills really scare our learning communities.”
A New Language
There are also bills filed every year at statehouses that are positive for SEL, Posamentier said.
Increasingly, however, state lawmakers are refraining from using the term SEL in their legislation to avoid potential controversy.
“They’re switching to language that has less connotation,” Posamentier said. “So you’ll see terms like ‘whole child’ and character and life skills, that when defined effectively, refer to the same stuff that social emotional learning has historically referred to.”
“You’re able to assuage some concerns by attaching the concepts of SEL to language that’s more familiar and more resonant,” he added.
Adamson, the treasurer of the SEL Providers Association, said she has seen the same thing happening in the SEL community. In some instances, companies have become cautious about using the acronym when they’re dealing with districts.
“You kind of need to go into the conversation knowing the region really well, knowing kind of what hot-button issues are,” she said. “ You could actually say ‘social-emotional learning,’ and that seems to be more acceptable than saying SEL. And you’ll see some vendors are starting to talk more about things like social, emotional, and academic behavior, but really avoiding the acronym for sure.”
For Treadwell, the executive director of social emotional learning at Chicago Public Schools, leveraging other terms to talk about SEL seems like a no-brainer.
When she started in the education field nearly 25 years ago, the same traits used to identify SEL were called “character ed,” she recalled. Using alternate identifiers to refer to SEL, she said, doesn’t hinder the practice, and can actually make them more palatable to critics.
“It can be a bridge,” she said, “and a conversation starter.”
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