Second Step® Assessment
How to choose the right assessment tools, based on your goals and priorities.
Understanding the Options
We’re often asked by schools and districts for advice on how to assess their students’ social-emotional competencies. Assessment of social-emotional learning (SEL) can be as formal and rigorous as a multi-site, randomized control trial (RCT) or as casual as asking teachers and students for feedback. Most commonly, schools and districts choose to do something that falls between these two.
A good general approach is choosing an assessment tool that can help you gather data points that relate meaningfully to your strategic goals, which may include increasing students’ sense of belonging or improving academic engagement.
Where to Start
As with measuring academic competencies, there are many possible metrics and tools to measure social-emotional competencies and the overall impact of your SEL implementation.1 Finding the right strategy depends on your goals. To plan thoughtfully, start by asking a few guiding questions.
Is assessment a requirement?
Sometimes a grant or official mandate requires assessment of students’ social-emotional competencies. If so, be sure to read the requirements for choosing an assessment tool carefully to make sure you gather and report the requisite information. The assessment tools and guidelines included with Second Step® programs (e.g., the program evaluation guide) work well for schools that want to make sure teachers and students are benefiting from the programs and determine if additional support or training is needed.
What specific information are you hoping to learn?
If you primarily want to identify general areas for continuous improvement or gauge where students might need more instructional support, then the tools in Second Step® programs will likely suffice. If instead you want to gather specific data to help evaluate the effectiveness of your implementation or map out individual plans for social-emotional and academic growth, then it may be worth your while to invest in an assessment tool designed to capture very specific metrics.
How much time and money do you plan to allocate to the process?
Investing in assessment might improve accountability and continuous improvement, but keep in mind that the cost of the tool does not necessarily reflect its usefulness. A good general approach to selecting the right tool is to make sure you can gather data points that relate meaningfully to your strategic goals, such as decreasing bullying behaviors or building more positive student-teacher relationships.
Assessment Options by Goal and Tool
There are different kinds of assessments that fit different goals.
Needs Assessment
What are your school’s SEL needs, including students’ SEL strengths and areas for growth?
Implementation Fidelity
How effectively is the program being used? Where can improvements be made?
Included in Second Step® programs for PreK–Grade 8
Formative Assessment
How are students progressing toward SEL goals? What areas or topics need further instruction?
Included in the Second Step® Elementary and Second Step® Middle School digital programs
Summative Assessment
Best for Program Evaluation
What knowledge have students acquired about social-emotional skills and concepts taught in the program? Is the program having the intended impact on the school and students?
In the Second Step Elementary and Second Step Middle School digital programs, each unit ends with a performance task. These formative assessments are fun, engaging activities that allow students to demonstrate their learning from that unit and give educators an opportunity to monitor progress toward SEL goals.
However, if your goal is to assess students’ social-emotional competencies, consider the assessments below. These all can be used for needs, formative, and summative assessments. As you review these options, remember that SEL competency assessments are a snapshot of one point in time in a lifelong journey.
Aperture’s DESSA-SSE (Second Step Edition) is an online version of the well-known Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA). It has been customized for Second Step Elementary to score and track changes in social-emotional competencies quickly and easily.
Please note that the DESSA-SSE is intended for use with only Second Step Elementary classroom kits and not the Second Step Elementary digital program.
- Provider: Aperture
- Target: K–5
- Format: Online
- Reports: On-demand for teachers
- Time Per Student: 3–5 Minutes
- Goals: Needs Assessment, Formative Assessment, Summative Assessment
Panorama Education’s SEL measurement platform aligns well with the Second Step family of programs. Customizable reports make it easy to analyze data by subgroups—such as race or ethnicity, gender, and Title I status—at the individual, class, grade, school, and district levels. Teacher surveys can be used for PreK–Grade 8. Student self-reports are available for Grades 3–8.
- Provider: Panorama Education
- Target: PreK–8 (teachers); Grades 3–5 (students)
- Format: Online
- Reports: On-demand for teachers and students
- Time Per Student: Varies; typically 15–30 minutes
- Goals: Needs Assessment, Formative Assessment, Summative Assessment
Developed by psychiatrist Robert N. Goodman, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a behavioral screening questionnaire that can be completed by teachers or parents for younger children and by self-report for students 11 years and older. Several versions are available, of different lengths and for different ages, to meet the needs of researchers, clinicians, and educators.
- Provider: Youth in Mind
- Target: Ages 2–17
- Format: Paper
- Reports: For teachers and students
- Time Per Student: 3–10 minutes
- Goals: Needs Assessment, Formative Assessment, Summative Assessment
Devereux Center for Resilient Children develops a variety of strength-based assessments and resources. Its Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA) Preschool Program, Second Edition, used in conjunction with Second Step® Early Learning, is a highly effective way to assess, build, and strengthen social-emotional skills, protective factors, and resilience in children ages 3–5.
- Provider: Devereux
- Target: PreK
- Format: Online and paper
- Reports: On-demand for teachers
- Time Per Student: 5–10 minutes
- Goals: Needs Assessment, Formative Assessment, Summative Assessment
Developed by xSEL Labs, SELweb is a web-based system designed to assess key social-emotional skills that are associated with success in school and life and that are the targets of evidence-based social-emotional learning programs. SELweb directly assesses children’s understanding of others’ emotions and perspectives, their social problem-solving skills, and their self-control.
- Provider: xSEL Labs
- Target: K–6
- Format: Online
- Reports: On-demand for students
- Time Per Student: 20–30 minutes total (can be done in multiple sessions)
- Goals: Needs Assessment, Formative Assessment, Summative Assessment
The Social, Academic, and Emotional Behavior Risk Screener (SAEBRS) is a brief and efficient tool for universal screening of Grades K–12 students’ risk for social-emotional and behavioral problems. Additionally, mySAEBRS is a 20-item self-report measure for students in Grades 2–12 that corresponds with SAEBRS items. SAEBRS may be used to evaluate students’ overall behavior, as well as determine if programs and practices in schools are effectively meeting student needs.
- Provider: Illuminate Education
- Target: SAEBRS: Grades K–12; mySAEBRS: Grades 2–12
- Format: Online
- Reports: On-demand for teachers and school districts
- Time Per Student: SAEBRS: 5 minutes; mySAEBRS: 10 minutes
- Goals: Needs Assessment, Formative Assessment, Summative Assessment
Addressing Common Challenges with SEL Assessment
Findings from a 2011 broadly publicized study of universal SEL programs found that SEL works best when it’s part of a larger, coordinated effort to create a positive learning environment.2 Regardless of how rigorous your chosen assessment strategy is, it can be tricky to isolate and assess the factors contributing to or detracting from student success. We know from years of working with top-performing schools and from numerous studies that there are some key features to successful SEL implementation, including: whole-school adoption, well-trained staff, sequenced lessons that explicitly teach skills in age-appropriate ways, varied instructional strategies to engage diverse learning styles, and a focus on culturally relevant SEL, with tiered levels of intervention and support.
Learn more on our blog about common assessment challenges and practical tips for creating a positive impact.
Explore More Resources
Second Step® Assessment Guides
The guides below provide more detailed information about the different ways evaluations can be designed, how to match evaluation strategies to program goals, how to implement Second Step programs with fidelity, and how to use findings to improve outcomes.
SEL Assessments Aligned to Second Step® Programs
To learn how the skills taught in Second Step programs link to assessments and strategies in other programs, use the alignment charts below.
1 Schools and districts are investing significantly in SEL programs because research shows that social-emotional competencies, such as critical thinking and problem-solving, contribute to academic and career success. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) led a multidisciplinary work group to better understand best practices for choosing and implementing SEL assessments. To learn more, visit: https://measuringsel.casel.org/
2 Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., & Schellinger, K. (2011). The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82(1), 405–432. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01564.x