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This study assesses the effects of two text-messaging programs for parents that aim to support the development of math skills in prekindergarten students. One program focuses purely on math, while the other takes an identical approach but focuses on a combination of math, literacy, and social-emotional skills. We find no evidence that the math-only program benefits children's development. However, the combination program shows greater promise, particularly for girls. Quantile regressions indicate that the effects are concentrated in the lower half of the outcome distribution. Results imply that girls may have started the year behind boys in math and caught up to and even surpassed boys when their parents have access to the program that combines topics. Our results also provide evidence that the structure of behavioral interventions can affect who benefits from the program, sometimes in unexpected ways, to produce meaningful differences in outcomes. We discuss and provide evidence for various hypotheses that could explain these differences.

Prior work has shown that students' reports of their levels of social-emotional skills predict achievement levels and gains, but we have little evidence on whether within-student changes in student reports of social-emotional skills are predictive of changes in theoretically related academic and behavioral outcomes. We use large-scale data from the California CORE districts to examine whether changes in individual students' reports of their social-emotional skills from one school year to the next predict changes in state math and English language arts (ELA) test scores and attendance. The CORE districts provide the largest yearly measurement of social-emotional learning (SEL), achievement, and attendance data in the U.S. We show that changes in self-reported social-emotional skills predict changes in both achievement and attendance. These results are robust across model specifications. Moreover, the relationships between SEL and achievement and attendance outcomes are consistent across student subgroups.

Prior work has shown that levels of self-reported student social-emotional learning (SEL) predict student achievement levels--as well as student achievement gains--but little has been done to understand if within-student changes in student reports of SEL are predictive of changes in theoretically related academic and behavioral outcomes. We use data from the California CORE Districts to examine whether changes in individual students' reports of their social-emotional skills from one school year to the next predict changes in state math and English language arts (ELA) test scores and attendance. We find that within-student changes in self-reported SEL predict changes in ELA achievement, math achievement, and attendance. These results are robust across model specifications and are stable across a wide variety of student subgroups.

Math education has been in the forefront of education policy discussions for over two decades. Interest in math by politicians, policymakers, researchers, and practitioners stems, in part, from the understanding that the economy will depend on jobs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (Clements, 2004). While math is increasingly taught in formal early childhood education settings, young children's exposure to math is less prevalent at home. The authors analyze the effects of 32-week, parent-facing text-message curricula on pre-kindergarten math achievement. The text-messaging program provides parents with small, easy-to-implement activities that leverage everyday routines and household materials. The program is designed to combat common barriers to behavior change identified in behavioral economics. This study demonstrates that a text-messaging program for parents based on behavioral economics principals can improve the mathematics development of pre-kindergarteners, with a combination program more effective than a pure math program. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]

Teachers play a critical role in establishing classroom and school environments that contribute to students' social and emotional development. This paper explores whether we can estimate a classroom-level measure of student growth in SEL by applying value-added models to students' [social-emotional learning] SEL. We analyze data from the 2016 and 2017 administrations of student self-report surveys, which contain responses from roughly 40,000 students in Grade 5 within five of California's CORE Districts. We estimate separate value-added models for each of the four SEL constructs assessed--growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness--and for math and [English language arts] ELA academic growth. We find across-classroom-within-school variance of students' SEL outcomes, even after accounting for school-level variance. The magnitude of classroom-level impacts on students' growth in SEL appears similar to impacts on students' growth in ELA and math, although the growth models of SEL do not perform as well as growth models of academic outcomes. Results suggest that across-classroom-within-school impacts may be larger in magnitude than across-school impacts on students' SEL growth. Finally, we show that there are generally low correlations between classroom-level growth in SEL and classroom-level growth in ELA or math; however, growth mindset stands apart from the other three SEL constructs in that there is a moderately strong relationship. By assessing whether we can develop a sound approach for measuring classroom-level impacts on students' SEL, we aim to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about appropriate and innovative uses of data on students' non-cognitive and social-emotional learning. [For the policy brief, "Can We Measure Classroom Supports for Social-Emotional Learning?," see ED600449.]

This brief applies value-added models to student surveys in the CORE Districts to explore whether social-emotional learning (SEL) surveys can be used to measure effective classroom-level supports for SEL. The authors find that classrooms differ in their effect on students' growth in self-reported SEL--even after accounting for school-level effects. Results suggest that classroom-level effects within schools may be larger than school-level effects. However, the low explanatory power of the SEL models means it is unclear that these are causal effects that have appropriately controlled for student-level characteristics. Finally, there are generally low correlations between classroom-level growth in SEL and classroom-level growth in English language arts (ELA) or math, suggesting the SEL measures may capture growth not measured by academic test scores. Although results are preliminary, they indicate there might be measurable student growth in SEL impacted by the environment of classrooms within schools. [For the full working paper, see "Can We Measure Classroom Supports for Social-Emotional Learning? Applying Value-Added Models to Student Surveys in the CORE Districts. Working Paper" (ED600451).]

Mounting evidence demonstrates that social-emotional skills are important for students' academic and life success, yet we have limited evidence on how these skills develop over time and how this development varies across student subgroups. In this study, we use the first large-scale panel survey of social-emotional learning (SEL) to describe how four SEL constructs--growth-mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness--develop from Grade 4 to Grade 12, and how these trends vary by gender, socioeconomic status, and race/ethnicity. Our results are based on self-report student surveys administered in the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years to roughly 400,000 students within the CORE districts, a network of urban school districts in California. We simulate cohort trends for students continuously enrolled in six districts within CORE by adding the mean change at each grade level observed among students surveyed in both years to the mean scores of Grade 8 students in 2015-16. We find that, with the exception of growth mindset, social-emotional skills do not increase monotonically as students move through school. Self-efficacy, social awareness, and to a lesser degree self-management decrease after Grade 6. Trends in SEL also vary by subgroup. Female students report higher self-management and social awareness than boys, but their self-efficacy drops sharply relative to boys in middle and high school. Economically disadvantaged students report lower levels of each social-emotional construct, but gaps in self-management, growth mindset, and self-efficacy narrow in high school. White students report higher levels of social-emotional skills than African American and Latinx students; Asian students report levels of self-management similar to White students but exhibit declining self-efficacy over time. While our findings cannot be generalized beyond the California districts we study, the scope and scale of our data far exceeds anything in the extant literature. [For a related report, see ED591084.]

Amid growing interest from educators and policymakers in supporting students' social and emotional learning (SEL), this brief describes the development of key social-emotional skills within the CORE districts, a network of urban California school districts that collectively serve more than one million students. Specifically, we use CORE's unique SEL survey, administered in 2015 and 2016 to nearly 400,000 students in Grades 4-12, to document trends in four SEL constructs: growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness. We find that, with the exception of growth mindset, these social-emotional skills do not increase steadily as students progress through school. Self-efficacy and social awareness in particular exhibit large declines in middle and high school. These overall patterns conceal important differences across student subgroups. Girls consistently report higher self-management and social awareness than boys, but their self-efficacy drops sharply relative to boys over time. Economically disadvantaged students report lower social-emotional skills across the board, but the gaps in self-management, growth mindset, and self-efficacy narrow in high school. White students report higher levels of social-emotional learning than African American and Latinx students; Asian students report similar levels of self-management as White students but exhibit declining self-efficacy over time. While these findings are based on self-reports and cannot be generalized beyond the six districts participating in the CORE SEL survey, the scope and scale of the data far exceed anything in the extant literature. [For the related working paper, see ED591085.]

What is the role of physical activity in the process of human capital accumulation? Brain research provides growing evidence of the importance of physical activity for various aspects of cognitive functions. An increasingly sedentary lifestyle could thus be not only harmful to population health, but also disrupt human capital accumulation. This paper analyzes the effects of on-campus recreational sports and exercise on educational outcomes of university students. To identify causal effects, we randomize financial incentives to encourage students' participation in on-campus sports and exercise. The incentives increased participation frequency by 0.26 times per week (47%) and improved grades by 0.14 standard deviations. This effect is primarily driven by male students and students at higher quantiles of the grade distribution. Results from survey data suggest that students substitute off-campus with on-campus physical activities during the day but do not significantly increase the overall frequency. Our findings suggest that students spend more time on campus and are better able to integrate studying and exercising, which may enhance the effectiveness of studying and thus improve student performance. [Migros provided financial support for this study.]