ECPN poster contestant: Assessing the Relevance and Meaning of Social Emotional Learning and School Climate Across Racial Groups

Background: School districts are increasingly taking a “whole child” approach to public school, and incorporating programs to improve social emotional learning (SEL) and school climate in an effort to prevent behavioral health problems and improve academic achievement. These initiatives are being implemented in diverse school environments that serve children from a wide range of racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. Little is known about the role of SEL in reducing academic and behavioral health disparities, or whether measures of SEL and school climate are constructs that are related to student outcomes across racial and ethnic groups. The current study uses data from a district-wide survey of students enrolled in the Seattle Public Schools (SPS), a highly diverse, urban district.

Methods: Data are from the SPS annual student survey, which includes all students (N=29,593) from 94 schools in grades 3-12 (44.4% male, 45.8% female, 6.5% prefer not to state; 59.2% English speaking). Students self-reported their race: 15.1% Asian, 10.7% African American, 6.7% Latino or Hispanic, 14.9% Multiracial, 1.5% Native American, 1.7% Pacific Islander, and 44.9% White. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to make initial refinements of the measures. Multiple group CFA models were then used to assess configural, metric, and scalar invariance across racial groups.

Results: Initial CFA resulted in a three factor model had adequate fit (RMSEA= .04; CFI=.92; TLI=0.91), and showed high correlations amongst factors (0.60-0.83). Multiple group invariance testing supported configural and metric invariance, the metric invariance model had adequate fit (RMSEA=.04; CFI=.92; TLI=.92). Fit was substantially worse however, for the scalar invariance model (RMSEA=.04, CFI=.91; TLI=.91; Cheung & Rensvold, 2002), suggesting that relative means for item scores varied substantially across racial groups, and that scale scores based on these items may be problematic when trying to compare mean aggregate school scores for schools that differ in the racial composition. Next, the predictive validity of SEL and school climate on behavioral health (e.g., suspensions) and academics (e.g. GPA, test scores) will be tested.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that school districts implementing SEL and school climate focused initiatives should take additional care to attend to differences in how students perceive these constructs and the potential for differential impact. SEL practice can be improved by understanding how the meaning and relevance of constructs vary for students across racial groups, especially for efforts to reduce disparities for students of color.