Development and implementation of student social-emotional surveys in the CORE Districts

States and school districts across the U.S. are seeking to expand their definition of student success to include social-emotional learning. The CORE Districts, a collaborative of California districts that has developed a system of school accountability and continuous improvement that includes measures of social-emotional skills based on student self-reports, exemplify this trend. In this case study, we provide an overview of CORE's School Quality Improvement System, which was implemented in the 2015-16 school year across six districts serving roughly one million students. We describe how four social-emotional competencies-growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness-were selected for assessment; the process for curating and piloting assessments of students' social-emotional skills; and reliability and validity evidence from a 2015 field test of social-emotional measures based on self-reports from nearly 400,000 students. We conclude with lessons from the development of CORE's system for other next-generation accountability and continuous improvement efforts.