This study explores the impact of reclassification on social-emotional learning skills (SEL) of English learners (ELs) in grades 4 to 8. Using a regression discontinuity design, the study found that reclassification improved academic self-efficacy by 0.2 standard deviations for students near the cutoff threshold. The results suggest that reclassification can positively influence the academic beliefs of ELs and the authors provide recommendations for districts to create practices that foster such positive beliefs.

This study explores the impact of county-level immigration arrests on the academic achievement, attendance, and perceptions of school climate and safety for Latinx and Latinx English learner students in California's CORE districts. The research found that there is a negative relationship between immigration arrests and these students' academic performance and school experiences. The study recommends policies and practices that can help schools and districts create safer, more welcoming environments for immigrant-origin students and families in the face of anti-immigrant actions.

This study used data from California CORE Districts to explore whether changes in students' self-reported social-emotional learning (SEL) predicted changes in academic outcomes and attendance. The findings revealed that within-student changes in SEL were positively associated with improvements in English language arts (ELA) and math achievement, as well as attendance, and were consistent across various student subgroups.

The CORE districts studied characteristics, outcomes, and transitions of students with disabilities (SWDs). Specific learning disability was the most common type. Males, African Americans, English learners, and foster youth were overrepresented. Chronic absence was higher for SWDs with multiple disabilities. Most SWDs entered special education in K-4 and exited in grades 8-12. These results help identify who may need targeted support.

This brief examines the consistency of the drop in academic self-efficacy during middle school across various student groups, such as demographics, achievement level, and school of attendance. The study finds that the drop is essentially universal across all groups, despite some showing lower self-efficacy than others. Additionally, schools vary in their students' level of self-efficacy, but do not differ much in this trend. The drop in academic self-efficacy is steeper for female students, resulting in lower self-efficacy for girls than boys throughout middle and high school.

This study uses value-added models to explore whether social-emotional learning (SEL) surveys can measure effective classroom-level supports for SEL. Results show that classrooms differ in their effect on students' growth in self-reported SEL, suggesting that classroom-level effects may be larger than school-level effects. However, the low explanatory power of the SEL models means it's unclear if these are causal effects. The SEL measures also capture growth not measured by academic test scores, indicating that classrooms within schools may impact measurable student growth in SEL.

This report examines the stability of school effects on social-emotional learning (SEL) over two years in California's CORE districts. The correlations among school effects in the same grades across different years are positive but lower than those for math and ELA. While these effects measure real contributions to SEL, their low stability draws into question whether including them in school performance frameworks and systems would be beneficial.

The use of social-emotional learning (SEL) and school culture/climate (CC) measures is a promising way to understand school performance. SEL and CC measures are reliable, distinguish between schools, and relate to academic and non-academic measures. They can identify areas for improvement within schools, such as subgroup gaps. Incorporating these measures into higher stakes accountability systems requires further research.