What is ‘social and emotional learning’ and why has it become a political flashpoint?

First it was Common Core. Then Critical Race Theory. Now, social and emotional learning.

That’s the latest education jargon term to leave academic circles and fuel a culture-war controversy over what students are taught in class. Such debate has stalled the Anoka-Hennepin school board, which must soon determine the fate of social and emotional lessons in the state’s largest school district.

“I’ll never vote for any of these programs aside from one we create here because then we can keep an eye on it,” Board Member Matt Audette said at a May 5 meeting, calling such programming “poison for our kids.”

Board Co-chair Kacy Deschene pushed back, citing research supporting the academic benefits of such lessons and overall parent and teacher support for the district’s current programming.

“I feel like we’re finding a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist,” Deschene said. “There’s not a problem except for perception.”

None of the board members responded to the Minnesota Star Tribune’s requests for comment this week.

Social and emotional learning concepts have been in classrooms for decades, said Faith Miller, an associate professor of school psychology at the University of Minnesota. But in recent years, the term has attracted pushback from conservatives concerned about ideologies in teaching.

“Topics in education are becoming more political and polarized,” Miller said. “Social and emotional learning is about helping students build really practical skills. That shouldn’t be a political issue.”

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which students “build awareness and skills in managing emotions, setting goals, establishing relationships and making responsible decisions,” according to the Minnesota Department of Education’s website.

The concept isn’t new. Some of the ideas gave rise to character education programs that were popular in the 1980s and ’90s, Miller said. Those programs focused on teaching traits and values such as honesty, integrity and responsibility. Social and emotional learning goes broader and aims to develop skills and attitudes to help with relationships and self-awareness.

More states began adopting social and emotional learning guidance for schools after the Columbine school shooting in 1999, Miller said.

In Minnesota, a 2014 law aimed at improving student safety called on the state’s schools to use evidence-based social and emotional learning to prevent and reduce bullying.

The curriculum has gained more attention in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated student mental health needs. Some federal pandemic relief aid even required states to put some of the money toward tending to students’ social and emotional needs.

The district uses two curricula at the elementary and middle school levels that were both implemented over the last five years.

Three elementary schools use a program called Leader in Me, which is based on habits outlined in the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.”

Other elementary and middle schools have a curriculum called CharacterStrong, which has sample lessons on its website. At the elementary level, lessons focus on character traits related to themes of kindness, wellness and strength.

Those lessons are typically about 30 minutes and are broken up over a few days a week during a morning gathering time with students, said Britt Olean, who works in student services in the district.

Lessons start with a question prompt such as, “When you hear the word ‘gratitude,’ what do you think of?”

Teachers may then lead an activity designed to foster relationships and build social skills such as listening or following directions. At the end of the lesson, teachers can choose ways to have students reflect on or apply their learning.

Having a set curriculum to teach such skills establishes a “common language” for teachers and students so the lessons can carry out throughout the day, said Tom Shaw, Anoka-Hennepin’s director of student services. But many of the lessons are nothing groundbreaking, he added.

“If you walked into classrooms and saw these CharacterStrong and Leader in Me lessons, you’d smile and be pretty underwhelmed,” he said. “It’s just a caring adult saying, ‘Hey, I’d like your friendships to be stronger. How can I help with that?’”

Social and emotional learning largely had bipartisan support until the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial reckoning of 2020, when education and equity policies were thrust into the spotlight.

Amid growing fears in conservative circles about liberal ideologies in classrooms, SEL got roped into debates over critical race theory.

In 2020, the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, a national nonprofit dedicated to advancing SEL in schools, updated its definition of SEL to include a focus on student identity and addressing inequity. The group’s “transformative SEL” strategies aim to help close longstanding gaps in academic outcomes among students based on factors such as socioeconomic status and race.

That fueled concern from right-leaning parents’ rights groups that SEL was a guise for teaching “woke” ideas about race and social justice.

According to the website, “transformative SEL is not the form of SEL used in Anoka-Hennepin schools.”

The vast majority of parents support the ideas of social and emotional learning but balk at the term, especially if they are Republican, according to a 2021 national survey of parents commissioned by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education policy think tank.

“SEL terminology itself is nebulous, jargony, and off-putting to parents who want schools to focus on the three R’s or who worry that it might be code for liberal indoctrination,” read the report, which also found that parents overall had concerns about whether schools had enough time to teach academics and SEL.

An Anoka-Hennepin survey of more than 1,400 parents found broad support for the instruction. A teacher survey found similar support, though about half of the teachers who responded said they don’t always have enough time to finish the lessons.

Research has shown that focusing on those skills can boost student achievement.

According to a 2011 analysis of more than 200 studies involving more than 270,000 students, those who participated in evidence-based SEL programs showed an 11 percentile-point gain in academic achievement over students who did not have the programming.

More than 60% of public schools in the U.S. had a formal SEL curriculum in the 2023-2024 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Among those schools, more than a quarter said it has been “very effective” or “extremely effective” at improving student outcomes, but 72% said time limitations were a barrier to implementing the curriculum.

The Anoka-Hennepin school board has delayed making a decision on the district’s social and emotional learning curriculum but could decide what to do as soon as May 19.

At previous meetings, board members expressed interest in scrapping the current programs and hiring district staff or an independent contractor to create lessons based on district values.

At the May 5 meeting, Superintendent Cory McIntyre encouraged the board not to further stall on a decision.

“We’ve debated this for more than a year and there’s just a difference of opinion,” he said. “But these are important skills. If you want to increase achievement, this is an important piece of the puzzle.”