Fostering School Success with Standards for Nonacademic Skills

Growing evidence highlights the importance of teaching social and emotional skills alongside academic skills for students’ success throughout their education and beyond. Although social and emotional skills are frequently tied to early education standards, they are often left out of the standards for elementary, middle, and high school. As a result, many states have encountered roadblocks in aligning early learning standards with those for K–12. This report shares how several states have incorporated social and emotional skills into their education standards, and describes how other states can use these practices as guidelines for aligning early learning standards with those for K–12 to support academic and social-emotional skills for all children.