Buncombe County Schools Improve Social and Emotional Skills of Students

Buncombe County Schools identified evidence-based strategies to improve social and emotional skills in students, and a reliable way to assess students skills, in an effort to close achievement gaps among their students. Their social and emotional curriculum included Second Step, Mindful Schools, and the Compassionate Schools framework. Schools used the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment to measure students' social-emotional competencies and the impact of social and emotional skills interventions. This article provides the criteria they used to select the assessment that best suited their schools.