Roger Weissberg passed away four years ago on Sept. 5, 2021. August, however, is the month that I am reminded of his contributions. August is the transition month when summer ends and young people go back to school. Most years, I would find time to chat with him about how to acknowledge the impact of the summer and afterschool programs that are available for some, but not all, young people. And most years, our conversation shifted quickly from access to quality as we talked about the tensions involved in trying to achieve both goals simultaneously.
Many Youth Today readers are familiar with Weissberg’s pioneering research on the effectiveness of social and emotional learning on student well-being and academic success. Many more, however, are familiar with CASEL, the Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning, or, more specifically, with the CASEL wheel.
Our most rewarding conversations, however, centered on his research on the effectiveness of afterschool programs. In 2007, Weissberg and Joseph Durlak published the results of a meta-analysis of the evaluations of 73 afterschool programs that compared outcomes for youth enrolled in afterschool programs to similar youth not enrolled across eight categories related to school performance, social behaviors, and attitudes and beliefs. They found weak but significant differences in every category except school attendance. Better news than no effects, but not the home run advocates were looking for. That came from the second stage of their research when they classified the studies into two clusters based on programs’ alignment to SAFE features, or programs that:
- Used Sequenced sets of activities to achieve their goals,
- Used Active learning techniques to help participants acquire the skills that
- Were Focused, at least in part, on personal or social development, and
- Had Explicit (named) objectives for the personal and/or social skills.
On average, the SAFE programs had significant effects in every outcome area except for school attendance and the cluster of programs without these features showed no effect for any outcome. Program quality matters. And, equally important, it delivers across outcomes. The SAFE program group showed positive effects for 70% of the outcomes they assessed. The non-SAFE group accounted for only 25%.
Durlak and Weissberg summed up the importance of their research in a brief written for Expanding Minds and Opportunities: The Expanded Learning and Afterschool Project published in 2013:
“ … the outcomes for SAFE programs are comparable to those obtained by many other successful youth programs that have been carefully evaluated. For example, in terms of increasing positive social behaviors, reducing problem behaviors and promoting academic achievement, the outcomes for SAFE programs are similar to those achieved by many effective school-based programs designed to improve student academic performance or social adjustment … In other words, afterschool programs that follow evidence-based skill training practices are part of the array of worthwhile interventions for youth. Our findings also suggest the possibility of aligning effective interventions during the school day with those occurring after school to maximize the benefits for participating youth.”
Many of my conversations with Weissberg focused on our shared interest in finding ways to advance definitions and assessments of youth outcomes and program quality across the time/place boundaries that separate school and afterschool.
This is why I believe that, were Weissberg still with us, he would be pleased but not surprised that the work to define skills, develop assessments and improve the quality of learning experiences has advanced in no small part because of a push from youth, parents and the business community to ensure that students, certainly by high school, have real-world, interest-based opportunities to build what parents call life skills and employers, galvanized by the work of America Succeeds, now call durable skills.
In their Aug. 16 blog, The Durable Skills Revolution: What 16 Months of Research Reveals About Transforming Education, the America Succeeds team asserts:
“ … these are not ‘soft skills’ or ‘nice-to-haves’ — they are the capabilities that power academic success, career mobility and personal fulfillment. In a labor market where 87% of employers say they struggle to find qualified talent, the gap isn’t just in technical know-how — it’s in these human, durable skills that make technical knowledge valuable.”
The 10 Durable Skills categories the organization identified through an exhaustive review of job postings on Idealist are variations on the skills groups named in the CASEL wheel, the XQ Competencies Framework and the categories identified in the Forum for Youth Investment’s From Soft Skills to Hard Data: Measuring Youth Program Outcomes. We are rapidly approaching the point where we can abandon the desire to rein in the development of new outcomes frameworks and rely instead on crosswalks of outcomes frameworks produced by AI. We can now lean in to the much more productive goal of defining and supporting the institutionalization of common definitions of quality learning environments.
[Related: The healing power of camp — Trauma-informed adventures for kids in foster care]
America Succeeds spent 18 months visiting 12 high schools and profession-based programs across the country. They concluded that what separates these schools from traditional models “isn’t just the content they teach — it’s how they structure learning.” They identified three common elements across the sites that clearly align with the SAFE model:
- Explicit Focus: Durable skills are clearly identified, defined and integrated into the learning goals. Students know exactly which skills they’re developing and why they matter.
- Authentic, Interest-Driven Work: Students engage in projects and experiences that are personally meaningful and connected to real-world needs, giving them a reason to develop and apply these skills.
- Full Integration: The skills aren’t add-ons; they’re embedded into the school’s culture, structures and assessments, making them as essential as any academic requirement.
But the take-away that would make Weissberg most excited is the recognition that powerful learning examples can be found everywhere. Beginning in October, America Succeeds is inviting educators from across the country to pilot test draft resources for the forthcoming K-12 Durable Skills Framework. The language in their outreach announcement suggests a sight line to the alignment opportunities Weissberg and I chatted about a decade ago:
“Whether you’re a classroom teacher, instructional coach, counselor or youth program staff member, this is your chance to shape tools that will help learners build durable skills— the real-world skills they need to thrive in life, learning and work. This is a low-lift opportunity with high impact — and your voice will help shape what comes next.”
I’ll end with one more quote from the August 16 blog that reinforces Durlak and Weissberg’s findings about the generous impact quality environments have on the development of competencies and confidence.
“When these three elements align, the effect isn’t just additive; it’s exponential. Students stop seeing school as something that happens to them and start seeing it as something they own. They gain what one educator called a “learning GPS” — the ability to navigate any challenge by understanding their own capabilities and how to build new ones.”
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In her columns, Karen Pittman is exploring the research behind the statement, “When Youth Thrive, We All Thrive.”
