Alice Huguet

In this report, RAND researchers describe the Partnerships for Social and Emotional Learning Initiative-which is an effort to explore whether and how children benefit when schools and out-of-school time programs partner to improve and align social and emotional learning-as well as what it takes to do this work. The researchers report findings and early lessons from the first two years of implementation in the six participating communities.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with researchers from RAND and the American Institutes for Research, speculated that there were lessons to be learned from variation among schools within the Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative sites because some schools had improved more than others. They conducted a qualitative study and a survey study to investigate factors that might be associated with positive student outcomes.

Media literacy (ML) education has emerged as a promising approach to slow Truth Decay, described as the diminishing role of facts, data, and analysis in political and civil discourse. However, teachers report a lack of guidance about implementing ML education, and rigorous research about what kinds of ML education work best remains limited. To address these gaps, this report presents a framework for implementing and evaluating ML educational efforts.