Michael Rodriguez, Campbell Leadership Chair in Education and Human Development and professor in the Department of Educational Psychology’s quantitative methods in education program, recently blogged for Measuring SEL about his work with the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) to support social-emotional learning (SEL). In his post, “A psychometric perspective on SEL assessment,” Rodriguez shares key learnings from this work.
According to Rodriguez, MDE “adopted the CASEL Five Core Competencies—self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skill, and responsible decision-making—to define grade-level benchmarks for early elementary, late elementary, middle, and high school students.” Rodriguez worked alongside Minnesota educators, youth development specialists, and other higher education faculty to help MDE “support the appropriate interpretation and use of [these] social-emotional learning assessment results.”
He writes, “The Minnesota assessment guidance is comprehensive and grounded in the Testing Standards [developed and approved by the American Educational Research Association] to support appropriate interpretation and use of SEL assessment results. But they also bring to bear a set of principles that will support the broad goals of making SEL instruction and practice imbedded, intentional, and school wide.”
