Report: 60% of teachers, principals report setting SEL goals

About 60% of teachers and principals report setting goals for students' social-emotional learning (SEL), according to new survey data from the RAND Corp.'s American Educator Panels.Based on the results, urban school and district leaders are perceived as much more likely to set SEL goals than their nonurban counterparts. Half of urban teachers said their school leadership creates these objectives, compared to 41% of nonurban teachers. And at a district level, 58% of urban principals say these goals exist, compared to 37% of nonurban principals.The responses demonstrate that school SEL goals are by no means universal, and even when they do exist, principals may not be communicating them effectively to their staff. One potential barrier to setting these benchmarks, the report says, may be a lack of schoolwide assessment resources, which are necessary to set and achieve data-driven SEL targets.