CONTACT:
Carolyn Phenicie, cphenicie@edtrust.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Education leaders need high-quality, equity-focused assessments to ensure adequate support for students’ well-being

WASHINGTON – Students’ social and emotional needs must be met before they can learn, and that support must continue during their learning experiences. It’s vital that educators have reliable information on students’ social, emotional, and academic development (SEAD) to determine how initiatives are working and where additional supports are needed, but these assessments must be rooted in equity, valid and reliable, and thoughtfully designed to support continuous improvement.

Today, EdTrust released “Social, Emotional, and Academic Development (SEAD) Assessments: A Framework for State and District Leaders,” the first comprehensive evaluation tool for education leaders to evaluate SEAD assessments.

SEAD assessments may include surveys of teachers, students, and parents to measure school climate, learning conditions, or students’ social-emotional learning skills. Unlike academic assessments, which are subject to high standards of technical quality and significant scrutiny from experts, SEAD assessments are newer and typically not subject to the same level of oversight. Many developers do not readily provide basic information about the validity and reliability of SEAD assessments, and more is needed in the field of SEAD assessments to set high standards for validity and reliability. The tool EdTrust is publishing is one step towards setting expectations that district and state leaders can lean into for identifying high quality SEAD assessments.

“It’s important that state, district, and school leaders select high-quality, research-based, and equity-focused SEAD assessments, as part of a deliberate system of assessments that can allow for continuous improvement of holistic supports for students. We hope this tool will help education leaders select assessments that promote equity and drive greater SEAD supports to all students,” said Nancy Duchesneau, senior P-12 research manager at EdTrust and one of the co-authors of the report.

The digital report offers 12 questions that education leaders at all levels can use to evaluate SEAD assessments, focused on equity-centered design, the purpose and context in which an assessment should be used, validation and technical quality, and connecting results to policy and practice decisions. Researchers also used the framework to review 11 commonly used assessments.

This report is the latest in an extensive body of research by EdTrust on social, emotional, and academic development, including how states used federal COVID-19 aid to support SEAD, how states are using education policies to support SEAD, and the importance of undertaking SEAD efforts through an equity lens.

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About EdTrust

EdTrust is committed to advancing policies and practices to dismantle the racial and economic barriers embedded in the American education system. Through our research and advocacy, EdTrust improves equity in education from preschool through college, engages diverse communities dedicated to education equity and justice, and increases political and public will to build an education system where students will thrive.