Fresh critique of SEL

A new social post is reviving an older fight over social and emotional learning by recirculating a 2006 talk from CASEL co-founder Roger Weissberg. (x.com) Social and emotional learning is the school term for teaching skills like managing emotions, building relationships, and making decisions. CASEL, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, says it has pushed that work since its 1994 founding. (casel.org) The critique in the post centers on identity, a word CASEL elevated in its 2020 definition update. CASEL’s current definition says students and adults use social and emotional learning to “develop healthy identities,” and the group said the update was meant to pay closer attention to the experiences of marginalized children. (the74million.org) CASEL’s framework now also says schools should build “equitable learning environments,” and its public materials tie the approach to partnerships among schools, families, and communities. The organization says the framework is meant to support students’ social, emotional, and academic development together. (casel.org) That shift did not stop at CASEL. The California Department of Education says CASEL’s 2020 update put identity development and educational equity closer to the center of the model, and California describes “Transformative Social and Emotional Learning” as work that can address identity, belonging, power, prejudice, and discrimination. (cde.ca.gov) Critics have used those changes to argue that social and emotional learning moved away from classroom behavior and toward politics. RAND reported in September 2024 that legislators in nine states had proposed bills to prohibit or inhibit kindergarten through grade 12 social and emotional learning instruction. (rand.org) Supporters point to a longer research record that links well-implemented programs to student gains. A 2011 meta-analysis of 213 school-based programs involving 270,034 students found better social behavior, attitudes, and an 11-percentile-point gain in academic performance for participants compared with controls. (academic.oup.com) RAND’s 2024 report said the broader evidence base still finds academic, social, and emotional benefits when schools implement social and emotional learning well. The same report said more schools across the United States are incorporating it and that nearly all states have some policies supporting it. (rand.org) The 2006 talk now being recirculated comes from Roger Weissberg, who died in 2021 after more than 25 years as a leading voice in the field. CASEL’s memorial page lists his 2011 meta-analysis and a 2020 paper on “systemic social and emotional learning” among the works that shaped the organization’s direction. (casel.org) So the current clash is less about whether social and emotional learning exists than about what schools mean by it in 2026. CASEL is still presenting it as an evidence-based part of prekindergarten through twelfth grade education, while critics are using the movement’s own language on identity and equity to press a narrower definition. (casel.org )