Local Opinion: SEL propels career success
"We know that SEL is effective because all freshmen and juniors take the College Career Readiness Assessment (CCRA+), a unique assessment that captures students’ analytical reasoning, problem solving and written communication skills," writes Gina Mehmert, CFSD Governing Board candidate.
Writing a guest opinion in today's Arizona Daily Star, Mehmert goes on to state: "In each of the last three years the CCRA+ was administered, CFSD students scored better than their counterparts across all CCRA+ schools. In fact, CFSD juniors consistently outperformed college freshmen at 256 institutions who took a comparable test."
The full article is included below.
Local Opinion: Social and emotional learning propels career success
The World Economic Forum projects that 85% of jobs in 2030 don’t yet exist, which means students currently in middle school, and younger, need to learn skills that can be applied to virtually every workplace scenario.
The Forum also specifies the top skills that employers prioritize: critical thinking, analysis, problem-solving, and skills in self-management such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility. According to Stanford Research Institute International, 75% of career success is driven by mastery of these “soft skills,” while only 25% is determined by technical skills.
As a marketing executive with two decades of experience at three Fortune 50 companies, I see employers — leading brands such as AWS, HP, Johnson & Johnson, and Marriott — investing in training programs to develop their employees’ soft skills. Employees who master these skills contribute more to their team and experience greater job satisfaction.
I’m also a candidate for the Catalina Foothills School District (CFSD) Governing Board. I’m finding these disparate aspects of my life are converging unexpectedly, under the heading of “Social and Emotional Learning” (SEL).
The Arizona Department of Education defines SEL as “the process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.” The Department explains these “soft skills” are not new concepts. Indeed, educators on both sides of the political aisle have long embraced the evidence-based notion that SEL instruction improves students’ academic achievement, reduces classroom behavioral issues, and helps build a positive learning environment for all students.
Why, then, has SEL fallen victim to the culture war infiltrating public schools?
The answer could be traced to Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who argued that SEL “serves as a delivery mechanism for radical pedagogies such as critical race theory and gender deconstructionism.” Regardless of its roots, there’s no doubt that SEL is on the chopping block for many school board candidates, who either due to direct political backing or fealty to a conservative agenda have politicized traditionally non-partisan school board races. This appears to be the case in CFSD, where a slate of candidates falsely labels SEL as “identity-based education” and who promise its demise.
CFSD’s SEL teaching sits within its school counseling curriculum, which is based on standards set by the American School Counselor Association, and complements our schools’ robust array of core subjects. Students receive age-appropriate lessons about managing emotions and stress, adapting to changing situations and unexpected challenges, communicating effectively, making decisions, and solving problems. I have studied CFSD’s entire K-12 counseling program and found nothing that resembles “identity-based education” or, for that matter, political or ideological indoctrination.
The war on SEL is misguided and will ultimately impair students’ ability to succeed post-graduation. We know that SEL is effective because all freshmen and juniors take the College Career Readiness Assessment (CCRA+), a unique assessment that captures students’ analytical reasoning, problem solving and written communication skills. In each of the last three years the CCRA+ was administered, CFSD students scored better than their counterparts across all CCRA+ schools. In fact, CFSD juniors consistently outperformed college freshmen at 256 institutions who took a comparable test.
Every school board member should have as their North Star the goal of providing an educational curriculum that prepares students for life beyond high school.
Doing so requires both “hard” and “soft” skills. To glibly cast aside SEL as the bogeyman of the “woke left” is uninformed and, more importantly, will deprive students of the opportunity to learn, develop and practice skills they will need throughout their adult lives.
That’s why I, along with my running mates Amy Bhola and Amy Krauss, support the inclusion of SEL in CFSD’s school counseling curriculum as a critical component of our promise to ensure that every student has an equal opportunity to thrive.