Supporting a Strong Start for Children with Disabilities

by CI Guest | Dec 13, 2023 | Health and Development, Educators and Workforce, Federal Policy, National Research

We often talk about how investing in a child’s earliest years can set them up for long-term success. In a child’s first few years of life, more than one million new connections in the brain are formed every second, creating a foundation for the connections that form later. In order to build a strong foundation during this period of rapid brain development, it’s important to connect families with the tools needed to support their child’s development as early as possible.

New America’s newly launched blog series will examine early intervention and early childhood special education throughout the coming year.

Early intervention (EI) is a set of services available to families with young children. These range from physical therapy and occupational therapy to nutrition and speech and language services. Specifically, under Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), children from birth through age two with developmental delays or disabilities or who are at risk of having a developmental delay are entitled to EI services. In pre-kindergarten settings, these services are often referred to as early childhood special education (ECSE) and are administered under IDEA Part B Section 619 (see graphic below).

A graphic with the title Supporting Young Children with Disabilities Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Beneath the title are three boxes. The first box has the words Early intervention, birth through two years old, IDEA Part C. The next box has the words Early childhood special education, three through five years old, IDEA Part B Section 619. The third box has the words Special education, five through 21 years old, IDEA Part B. There are three images that show a crawling baby, a toddler, and an elementary-aged child. There is also a caption with the words This graphic shows the way in which we conceptualize IDEA for the purposes of this blog series. Age ranges and terminology may differ slightly in different states and circumstances.

Children’s Institute

One reason for these challenges may be the shortage of EI service providers (think speech and language pathologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists) who are trained to conduct evaluations and provide services. In a 2022 survey conducted by the IDEA Infant and Toddler Coordinators Association, all 45 state respondents reported provider shortages, with more than 80 percent experiencing shortages of speech and language pathologists and physical therapists. This theme came up in roundtable discussions we held earlier this year with 19 stakeholders* working at the intersection of disability and early childhood across the United States. The roundtable participants—which included EI providers, pediatricians, service coordinators, state Part C coordinators, and researchers—discussed how the current workforce crisis impacts families’ experiences navigating the referral and evaluation process, such as long waitlists for appointments and whether their concerns about their child’s development are taken seriously. The participants noted how addressing staffing shortages must be done in tandem with efforts to improve the cultural, linguistic, and racial diversity of the EI workforce. Participants also suggested expanding reflective supervision to support staff retention.

Funding was another theme that came up during the roundtables. Currently, funding dictates how many children receive access to EI—from the frequency, duration, and location to whether the service is available at all. Participants emphasized how the opposite should be the goal: a reality where service delivery—or the number of children eligible for and receiving services—is not constrained by the amount of funding that is invested. Participants touched on the need to fund proactively toward long-term, systems-building components, such as community health workers to support families navigating care and services for their children or ongoing training for service providers in all settings (e.g. district, state-contracted agency, private practice).

While participants were eager to discuss the challenges, there was an even stronger desire to focus on solutions. State leaders meet often with local practitioners and have gained a keen sense through the years of how these issues impact EI service providers and families in their state. Roundtable participants were largely in agreement over the major issues facing young children with disabilities and their families. However, there remains a gap between awareness and action, and participants wondered what state and federal policy levers could be valuable in meeting the mandate of IDEA Part C and ensuring equal protection under the law.

A photo of an infant with brown hair, smiling and wearing a white t-shirt under a dark vest and light colored bottoms. The infant is being held by an adult wearing a blue shirt and a necklace, whose face is outside of the frame, and being passed to a second adult who is also wearing a blue shirt. The background is blurred.

Shutterstock/New America

In our ongoing examination of meeting the educational needs of young children with disabilities and developmental delays, we are excited to launch an ongoing blog series in 2024 where we plan to tackle several questions, such as: What can states do to make EI and ECSE more equitable for children of color and children from families with low incomes? How can policymakers address challenges in meaningful ways? How can we better connect awareness to action? The series will address themes from the roundtable and include recent research.

If early childhood systems are to be designed to meet the needs of all children and families, EI and ECSE need to be recognized as key parts of that system. You can find New America’s growing body of work focused on disability policy on our disability resource page.

*For the roundtables, we were intentional about having representation across states, political contexts, and communities, but we acknowledge that these participants’ perspectives represent only a subset of those working to improve access and outcomes for young children with disabilities.

This work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0). It is attributed to Carrie Gillispie and Nicole Hsu. The original version can be found here.

Setting the Record Straight on Social-Emotional Learning: A Teacher’s Perspective

by CI Guest | Nov 30, 2022 | Health and Development, Brain Development, Educators and Workforce

Social-emotional learning (SEL) has been in the news a lot lately, and this recent surge of news about SEL has come with a good deal of misinformation. In this blog series, we’ll attempt to set the record straight on SEL by exploring the benefits and importance of SEL for young children, highlighting its recent politicization, and understanding what polling tells us about the best way to communicate with parents about the topic.

The term “social-emotional learning” does not necessarily lend itself to a clear picture of what takes place inside the classroom, especially when compared to a reading or math lesson. Some parent groups have taken advantage of the general lack of understanding about what social-emotional learning (SEL) actually looks like to accuse teachers of acting as “unlicensed therapists” in the classroom or using SEL to indoctrinate students. Others are drawing comparisons between SEL and critical race theory, stating that SEL is somehow related to an agenda that encourages students to “dismantle our country.”

This simply isn’t true. For this blog post, we attempt to clear up the picture of SEL by going straight to the source to learn more about how SEL is taught, the goals of teaching SEL, and what sort of topics SEL lessons cover. Far from attempting to indoctrinate students into any sort of ideology, we find that, when done well, SEL helps equip students with the skills needed to be happy and successful members of the classroom.

We interviewed Nury, a veteran teacher with over twenty years of experience who teaches three, four, and five-year-olds in a public charter school in Washington, DC.

Nury emphasized the importance of teaching social-emotional skills throughout the school year, but noted that these lessons are especially important at the beginning of the year: “Some children come to school with limited vocabulary or limited opportunities to interact with peers. That can challenge them to express their needs, ideas, and emotions. However, with this daily focus on social skills and practice, our children show progress in healthy social interactions and vocabulary.”

SEL lessons at the beginning of the school year often focus on things like paying attention to teachers and classmates, helping students ask for what they need or want, and calming down when upset (see chart to the left). For example, students are guided on what to do when faced with common classroom scenarios, such as needing help tying their shoes or putting on their coat. SEL lessons often focus on understanding different facial expressions to help children in identifying feelings such as happy, sad, surprised, and angry.

“When children don’t know how to take turns, resolve social conflicts or ask for help, we guide those students to gradually develop the strategies and vocabulary to be focused and collaborate,” said Nury.

Over the course of the year, these lessons build on each other as students become more confident in their ability to problem solve in social situations. For example, students learn to use their words to apologize to classmates when they accidentally did something, such as knocking over building blocks, that upset a peer (“I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. Are you okay?”). Students also learn about the benefits of using positive as opposed to negative self-talk (“I can do it if I work hard!” as opposed to “I’m no good at math.”).

We asked Nury how she knows that her students are making progress in their social-emotional skills throughout the year: “We see progress when students become more independent in daily routines and are more willing to do things for themselves. We also see by the end of the year that the students start to develop a sense of community and teamwork by showing respect, empathy, and kindness for others.”

We asked Nury if she was able to think of a specific student who showed a lot of growth in their social-emotional skills over the course of the year and she immediately shared the story of Bill* with us:

He was a child with difficulties in making friends, regulating his own emotions, waiting his turn, and sharing. Bill also came to the school with a limited vocabulary. He did not have a positive concept about himself because he said that other children were not interested in playing with him. So he played alone most of the time. When he wanted to get closer to a group of children who were playing, he just watched them with interest for several minutes…observing the way they were playing.

We started working with Bill one-on-one and also with the whole class in different activities to promote social-emotional skills so he can learn how to identify and manage emotions, make friends, share, wait for a turn, and learn and use strategies that will help him feel better when he experiences strong emotions. Gradually, Bill began to show greater interest in playing with other children, initially by asking for a teacher to help. And then, little by little, he began to approach other children, smiling, and then putting out his hand as a sign of interest in playing with them.

After some months, he was able to use his words independently in different social situations. Bill also developed the skill of being able to label his emotions and express himself properly when he felt angry or happy or sad or frustrated or upset. After seeing this amazing progress with Bill, one day he went up to an adult who was having a hard moment and said to her, “Maybe you are feeling frustrated today. I think you need to take a big breath to feel better.”

Nury’s story about Bill’s progress throughout the year highlights how, when done well, SEL builds skills that help young children become happier, more confident students. Far from being a “child-indoctrination scheme,” SEL is focused on building children up so they have the skills necessary to live confidently in the world. Nury perhaps said it best about the ultimate goal of SEL: “We need to build self-worth in our children so they can face the challenges that life will bring to them in a more resilient way.”

* ”Bill” is a pseudonym used to protect student privacy.

This work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0). It is attributed to Aaron Loewenberg and Nicole Hsu. The original version can be found here.

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Setting the Record Straight on Social-Emotional Learning: The Business Case for SEL

by CI Guest | Nov 30, 2022 | Health and Development, Educators and Workforce, Successful Students

Social-emotional learning (SEL) has been in the news a lot lately, and this recent surge of news about SEL has come with a good deal of misinformation. In this blog series, we’ll attempt to set the record straight on SEL by exploring the benefits and importance of SEL for young children, highlighting its recent politicization, and understanding what polling tells us about the best way to communicate with parents about the topic.

Manny Fernandez, Managing Partner at KPMG Dallas, put it succinctly: “Step into any high-quality early learning setting and you’ll find educators focusing intently on the very same social-emotional skills [as those needed in the workplace]. They’re exactly what I’ve looked for as a mentor to hundreds of people on our team at KPMG. I’ll be the first to admit that you can’t succeed here without those skills.”

Companies continue to face unprecedented challenges in hiring workers in various industries and the resulting labor shortage has reduced overall sales revenue across the country by over $700 billion. Part of the challenge is likely related to what’s been called a “soft skills” gap in which employers have a hard time finding qualified applicants who have essential workplace skills such as teamwork, collaboration, conflict resolution, and interpersonal communication.

A 2017 poll makes clear that business leaders are paying growing attention to the importance of hiring employees with adequate social-emotional skills. Zogby Analytics was commissioned by Council for a Strong America – ReadyNation to survey approximately 300 business leaders with over 100 employees. The largest percentage of respondents (42 percent) were leading businesses that employed over 1,000 workers. The survey findings reveal just how important strong social skills are for succeeding in the modern workplace.

Consider the fact that 62 percent of business leaders experience more difficulty finding job candidates with adequate social-emotional skills than candidates with the right technical skills (only ten percent of leaders found it more difficult to find candidates with the right technical skills while 28 percent said they had an equal amount of difficulty in hiring for technical skills and social-emotional skills). Additionally, 88 percent of leaders agreed that there will be a growing need for strong social-emotional skills among employees in the future. Ninety percent of business leaders surveyed believe (rightly) that it’s more difficult to develop those skills in adults entering the workforce than it is to develop them in childhood. Given these stats, it’s no big surprise that almost 90 percent of business leaders signaled their support for public investment in early education as a way to help young children acquire strong social-emotional skills.

In the first blog post of this series, we pointed out a few reasons why, when done right, teaching social-emotional skills to young children can be beneficial. To recap, we know that children who learn to understand and manage their emotions, develop healthy interpersonal relationships, and practice social problem solving have increased success in school and life. We also know that these sorts of skills tend to remain malleable for longer periods of time than cognitive skills, such as a child’s academic ability in math and literacy. And a study published in 2015 shows just how important it is to develop strong social-emotional skills in young children to ensure that they’re eventually able to successfully enter the workforce. Specifically, the researchers found that every one-point increase in a child’s social competence score in kindergarten was associated with the child being twice as likely to attain a college degree in early adulthood and almost 50 percent more likely to have a full-time job by the age of 25. Every one-point decrease in the child’s kindergarten social competence score was associated with a 67 percent higher chance of being arrested by early adulthood and a 64 percent higher chance of spending time in juvenile detention.

There’s sometimes some understandable discomfort around making a business or economic case for teaching certain skills to young children. After all, most people, including myself, don’t decide to teach early childhood education because they’re passionate about helping to produce individuals who will make effective and efficient employees many years down the road. But my recent interview with Adam Tyner of the Fordham Institute helped convince me that the specific language we use around SEL matters, especially when attempting to appeal to a more conservative audience.

Just as early childhood advocates frequently cite the economic case for early learning, proponents of SEL shouldn’t shy away from making the case that teaching social-emotional skills to young children makes good business sense. There are a lot of important reasons for teaching these skills starting at a young age and the fact that these skills will make it easier down the road for students to succeed in the workplace is a fact worth highlighting.

In the next blog post in this series, we’ll get a teacher’s perspective on the importance of teaching social-emotional skills to young children and how developing these skills throughout the school year can make a profound difference in children’s school experiences.

This work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0). It is attributed to Aaron Loewenberg. The original version can be found here.

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Setting the Record Straight on Social-Emotional Learning: What Do Parents Think?

by CI Guest | Nov 21, 2022 | Parents and Families, Brain Development, Health and Development

Social-emotional learning (SEL) has been in the news a lot lately, and this recent surge of news about SEL has come with a good deal of misinformation. In this blog series, we’ll attempt to set the record straight on SEL by exploring the benefits and importance of SEL for young children, highlighting its recent politicization, and understanding what polling tells us about the best way to communicate with parents about the topic. While trying to gain a better understanding of parents’ perceptions around SEL, I found a 2021 survey of K-12 parents commissioned by the Fordham Institute to be particularly helpful. To learn more about the survey’s findings and in an effort to better understand some of the concerns about SEL that have been expressed by conservatives, I interviewed Fordham’s Adam Tyner via email. Adam is national research director at Fordham and managed the survey project.

Let’s start with the basics. What made you decide to poll parents about their views on social and emotional learning (SEL)?

As your readers surely know, SEL has become a big buzzword and a big industry in recent years. The term has been around for a couple of decades, but around 2015 it really took off. What wasn’t clear to us is what parents thought of this new fad in education, so we worked with the global polling firm YouGov to conduct this survey.

How many parents were surveyed in the poll and when was the poll conducted? What were the key findings from the poll?

We surveyed 2,000 parents of students in grades K through 12 in the spring of 2021, but we also conducted some mini-surveys in the months before and after that to see if parent views were fluctuating substantially in response to the pandemic or the 2020 election. Parent views were relatively steady during that time, but after the controversies around critical race theory and school reopenings emerged in the summer of 2021, it’s quite possible that parent views on SEL have also shifted somewhat since our study concluded.

We wrote a whole report that is available at sel.fordham institute.org with five key findings and four policy recommendations — along with selections from parent free responses and other background and context. A couple of things stood out to me about parent views of SEL.

First, parents strongly support schools teaching all of the specific SEL-related competencies we asked about. These include stuff like setting goals, navigating social situations, and controlling their emotions. On the other hand, parents aren’t nearly as excited about the term “social-emotional learning” itself. (They far prefer the term “life skills,” however cringy that is to education experts.)

Second, when forced to make tradeoffs, parents want schools teaching analytic and practical education above all: the top valued skills were reasoning, math, vocational education, English, and taking responsibility for one’s actions. This may be because the survey also found that parents overwhelmingly see the family, not the school, as the most important venue for cultivating SEL.

Something I’m not sure about is whether the average parent who is busy with their job and raising a family really knows what is meant by the term “social and emotional learning.” What did the poll find in terms of describing these life skills in ways that parents understand and support?

Consider the fact that when we asked parents a bunch of agree/disagree questions related to SEL in schools, there was over 90 percent agreement with the statements, “I want my child’s school to give them honest feedback on their academic progress and performance even if it may hurt their feelings,” and “Working hard helps students develop strong character.” Of all the SEL-related skills we asked about, “reasoning” and taking “responsibility for actions” were the top two most important. But I’m not sure this kind of stuff is what most SEL advocates are promoting.

This is all to say that there may be a big gap between the world of practices that support students’ social and emotional learning and new programs serving up trademark SEL. Since ours was a survey of parent views, it asked a relatively broad set of questions related to SEL and its implementation. Some of the survey questions were aligned to SEL domains in the Harvard EASEL Lab, and the survey defined the term as “the process of developing self-awareness, self-control, interpersonal skills, responsible or ethical decision making, and civic awareness.” Hopefully parents understood that, but I think it’s doubtful that the average parent has much of a sense of the nuances of the jargon-laden conversations around SEL.

A recent Washington Post article quoted a conservative parent group that referred to SEL as, “the latest child indoctrination scheme.” Why do you think SEL has become more controversial to some activists on the right recently?

I think there’s a few things going on. One is that there’s always been a “three Rs” contingent among parents that is skeptical that schools can do anything besides basic academics well (and maybe not even that). That means that when you start talking about the “fluffier” stuff in education, it automatically turns some people off. Then you have some people who are skeptical of the education establishment more generally and may feel like public schools are in some ways promoting values at odds with their own. When these folks hear about the fluffier stuff, they may perceive ulterior motives. SEL is more related to values than is, say, how you teach the periodic table, so it is natural that the topic will stir up more passion than more mundane school policies.

Another issue is that many conservative parents probably aren’t very interested in using the education system to equalize outcomes at an individual or social level, and tying SEL to equity as the CASEL organization and others have done, raises red flags for them. Many conservatives will get on board with the idea of “leveling the playing field” — and many strongly support their local public schools — but equity implies equalizing outcomes, which many conservatives do not think is ideal or practical. That means that connecting SEL to equity will naturally raise red flags for some conservative parents, especially those who are skeptical about what is going on in schools in the first place.

The jargon is also part of the problem. Along with terms like critical race theory, you’ve seen SEL pop up on lists of education terms that conservatives are concerned about in part because of what I was alluding to earlier about how ill-defined the term SEL is. The jargon excludes people from the conversation, and an understandable reaction to being excluded through jargon is to wonder what is being hidden.

Considering the recent controversy around teaching SEL in some communities, what should educators and policymakers who are looking to productively engage their communities in SEL efforts take away from the poll’s findings?

Our survey showed that parents — whether Democrat or Republican, Black, Hispanic, or White — believe that the family is the most important venue for cultivating SEL. That means that engaging the community is more important on this issue than it would be for an issue that is more squarely in the school’s wheelhouse.

Diverse communities are going to include some skeptics, and some of these skeptics are going to connect SEL to other controversies. That makes it very important for educators to speak plainly and concretely about whatever SEL-related plans they’re making. If you’re arguing about the abstract idea of an SEL program, not only does that term not resonate with parents the way “life skills” does, but also vague and abstract ideas are more likely to get people’s preconceived ideas projected onto them. So some parents might imagine it is helpful, while others suspect SEL might be related to outrageous examples of school policies or teacher misbehavior that they’ve seen on the internet. Instead, speaking about a very specific new practice that the school is implementing — adding a box to math worksheets to remind students of the importance of their effort, etc. — allows parents to engage that on its own terms rather than just projecting something, good or bad.

As I alluded to earlier, it’s not always clear what SEL programs are supposed to be doing or why all this new jargon is necessary in the first place. Putting up a wall of jargon around an issue on which the public has a strong stake and significant knowledge is elitist, and no one should be surprised by the pushback. Recall that parents strongly supported schools teaching all of the specific SEL-related competencies our survey asked about. But whether they support it or not, saying it in plain English will allow parents to engage, and since parents know a lot about their own children, getting their input will probably lead to better policy.

This work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0). It is attributed to Aaron Loewenberg.The original version can be found here.

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Setting the Record Straight on Social-Emotional Learning: An Introduction

by CI Guest | Nov 21, 2022 | Health and Development, Brain Development, Educators and Workforce

A few weeks into my first school year as a pre-K teacher* I had an important realization: While much of class time was spent engaging in center-based activities that helped grow students’ early skills in math and literacy, perhaps the most important lessons I would teach all year were focused on things like learning how to share and take turns, how to make friends when surrounded by unfamiliar people, and how to resolve conflict peacefully. I distinctly remember observing a three-year-old boy push the student in front of him while they lined up to go outside. When I asked the boy why he had pushed another student, he calmly explained his logic: “I wanted to go outside and he wasn’t moving fast enough.”

Social-emotional learning (SEL) has been in the news a lot lately, and this recent surge of news about SEL has come with a good deal of misinformation. In this blog series, we’ll attempt to set the record straight on SEL by exploring the benefits and importance of SEL for young children, highlighting its recent politicization, and understanding what polling tells us about the best way to communicate with parents about the topic.

What is SEL?

If you had to put a technical label on it, that lesson about not pushing other students and subsequent lessons about getting along with peers, managing strong emotions, and developing friendships are all a part of what is called “social-emotional learning (SEL).” According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, SEL “refers to a wide range of skills, attitudes, and behaviors that can affect student success in school and life,” such as critical thinking, emotion management, conflict resolution, decision making, and teamwork.

Social-emotional learning (also known as life skills, whole child development, soft skills, character education, self-regulation, and a myriad of other terms) is a fundamental component of healthy development for young children. While not as well known as the core education topics of literacy and math, social-emotional skills are also skills that must be taught. It is especially important in early learning settings, as pre-K or kindergarten are many children’s first encounters with formal education settings.

Early childhood is an important developmental period where developing these skills can have an impact in multiple areas across the child’s academic and life trajectory. Young children who learn to understand and manage their emotions, develop healthy interpersonal relationships, and practice social problem solving have increased success in school and life. These skills enhance children’s learning by facilitating adjustment to new environments and reducing negative social behaviors like bullying. Strong social-emotional skills in early childhood also predict long-term outcomes in the areas of mental health, financial stability, civic engagement, substance use, and interactions with the carceral system. Social-emotional skills are malleable and teachable, meaning they shift and change as children are exposed to new experiences and environments, such as classrooms.

The current controversy over SEL

While the topic of social-emotional learning is relatively commonplace in America’s schools, recently it has generated considerable controversy among some conservative parent groups. For example, Minnesota’s Child Protection League has deemed SEL “the latest child-indoctrination scheme” and linked SEL to critical race theory. Parents Defending Education, a prominent conservative parent group, has gone so far as to include several SEL examples in their “IndoctriNation Map” which purports to illustrate places where activists are imposing a harmful agenda onto children. Conservative media is chock full of articles linking SEL to more controversial topics, such as critical race theory. Recently, education leaders in Louisiana looking to adopt new early learning standards were met with opposition due to the inclusion of social-emotional topics in the standards. And a bill introduced in the Oklahoma Legislature would bar public schools from using state, federal, or private funds to purchase or implement any sort of SEL curriculum.

How widespread is SEL?

According to a report from CASEL, 81 percent of principals and 60 percent of teachers in elementary schools across the country reported that their schools implemented an SEL program during the 2021-22 school year. Some schools might pay for a specific social-emotional curriculum to use in their classrooms, such as the Second Step curriculum I used when teaching pre-K and kindergarten. Other schools might teach social-emotional concepts in an informal manner that is embedded in lessons throughout the day.

What’s clear is that schools seem to be increasingly realizing the importance of SEL, in large part due to impacts from the pandemic. Total district and school spending on SEL grew by about 45 percent between November 2019 and April 2021, rising from a total of $530 million to $765 million. And, according to a report from FutureEd, about a third of districts plan to spend some of their federal COVID relief funds on SEL for things like curricula, classroom materials, and training.

The recent backlash to SEL comes as a surprise to many teachers and other education professionals who view the core principles behind SEL as central to helping students succeed both in school and life. After all, it would seem that if there’s one thing both political parties could agree on it’s that students, especially young students, need to learn basic lessons about managing their emotions, feeling empathy for others, and making responsible decisions.

So what do parents think about their children developing these skills in the classroom? In the next post in this blog series, we’ll talk with Adam Tyner of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute to learn more about a recent nationally representative poll of 2,000 parents that helps to illuminate parental views on SEL and how to more effectively communicate about SEL topics.

* Author Aaron Loewenberg was a pre-K teacher in Washington, D.C.

This work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0). It is attributed to Aaron Loewenberg and Nicole Hsu. The original version can be found here.

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