IN-DEPTH: Parents Warn That Social-Emotional Learning Is Not What It Appears

Data from SEL surveys in schools can be weaponized, they say

A school student works on a computer in Provo, Utah, on Feb. 10, 2021. (George Frey/Getty Images)

During the pandemic, millions of children in the United States had to attend virtual school on their computers at home, and parents began to witness that their children’s lessens were wrapped in critical race theory, gender ideology, and inappropriate sexual topics.

But one area of concern is more difficult to detect, and it’s catching more parents’ attention.

Parents are concerned about social-emotional learning (SEL), which is often infused within all subjects and in the culture of a school itself, which makes it more difficult to separate and detect. SEL has managed to stay below the majority of parents’ radar because it is packaged as therapeutic and promoting compassion.

Marsha Metzger is the president of a parental rights group in Georgia called Parents on the Level.

Ms. Metzger told The Epoch Times that she has been researching and exposing her school district’s use of SEL because school administrators in her district refused to answer her questions about sex education and SEL, which made her determined to find why the curriculum was not readily available.

Ms. Metzger thought it would be easy to get authorization to teach a class on abstinence or sexual risk avoidance in Tift County, Georgia, generally considered to be a conservative area. She even had grant money to teach this sex education program in public schools, but her request to the school district was met with silence, she said.

She did not take “no” for an answer and went to district administrators.

Fighting for Information

One of the school administrators along the way told Ms. Metzger the district combines sex education with SEL, and then they “follow the data,” which piqued her curiosity, and she began to research and expose SEL.

“I had to go toe-to-toe with them, and push them and threaten a lawsuit, and finally, I got an access code to this social-emotional learning platform,” Ms. Metzger said.

Ms. Metzger is not the only one who has had to confront their school district to get access to SEL curriculum.

Stephanie Lindquist-Aurora, a Virginia parent of three in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), told The Epoch Times she had to file an open records request to gain access to her child’s SEL curriculum, which the district did not fulfill, so Lindquist-Aurora was forced to find another way to get the SEL lessons.

“I’ve filed a PPRA violation complaint against FCPS for their refusal to share curricula information with me. It is currently underway,” Ms. Lindquist-Aurora said, referring to the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment.

The PPRA is meant to protect students and parents from invasive evaluations and surveys that collect sensitive information.

Despite claims of its benefits, Ms. Lindquist-Aurora, Ms. Metzger, and other parents told The Epoch Times there is more to SEL than meets the eye.

A screenshot of a middle school lesson from Second Steps SEL curriculum from the Committee for Children. (Courtesy of Marsha Metzger)

CASEL Doctrine

The most well-known and influential organization assisting school districts with the implementation of SEL is Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), which promotes the whole-of-community model of “transformative SEL.”

“When we talk about social-emotional learning, we are really talking about a process, and this is a process not just for young people, for adults too. This is a lifelong process, really, to build a set of skills and competencies,” said Karen VanAusdal, vice president of practice at CASEL, in an episode of the Fairfax County schools’ PTA podcast in 2021.

“It doesn’t just happen in schools. Families and schools and communities all can be aligned and speaking from the same language and same vocabulary,” Ms. VanAusdal said.

CASEL says among other goals, SEL helps “develop healthy identities and manage emotions.”

In 2020, CASEL infused SEL with CRT-aligned ideology, rebranding it as “transformative SEL.” The organization’s president and CEO Karen Niemi said in a June 2020 webinar that SEL must “actively contribute to antiracism” and “advance educational equity.”

Those pushing transformational SEL are trying to “fundamentally change the organization and operating principles of society. They are not merely modernizing to digital technology,” said James Lindsay, author of “The Marxification of Education,” in a 2022 presentation in Arlington, Virginia.

“The point of SEL is that it needs to be understood as part of a political economy, in which the measurements of human psychological attributes are seen as integral to economic forecasting and the political management of populations,” Mr. Lindsay said.

James Lindsay, co-founder of New Discourses, in New York on March 7, 2020. (Brendon Fallon/The Epoch Times)

CASEL divides the SEL competencies into five categories: self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills, and social awareness.

But more specifically, in transformative SEL, self-awareness encompasses “identity,” with “identity” defined through the lens of intersectionality.

Self-management encompasses “agency,” with “agency” defined through “resistance” and “transformative/justice-oriented” citizenship. Like CRT, transformative SEL also embraces “culturally responsive” pedagogy.

“They just absolutely saturate the entire school system with this information,” Ms. Metzger said.

CASEL rates different SEL programs for how transformational they are, Ms. Metzger continued, so each district keeps pushing toward universal application of SEL.

In addition, CASEL partners with progressive organizations including the 1440 Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the NoVo Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, among others.

A CASEL spokesperson told The Epoch Times that it’s a nonpartisan organization that supports schools to implement SEL at the level their community deems appropriate, and that there are hundreds of studies showing how SEL benefits students.

In one such study from the University of Chicago in 2011, researchers looked at over 200 SEL programs across the country and found improvements in behavior with an 11 percentile-point gain in academic achievement.

Groundwork for SEL

When CASEL was founded in 1994, SEL got another boost because the Clinton administration adopted federal legislation called the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

The ESEA was reauthorized in 2020 and renamed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which has provisions that encourage, and in some cases mandate, the inclusion of SEL.

Even before the federal law, public schools were infused with neo-Marxist ideas.

Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s 1971 book, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” essentially set the foundation for modern public education and for SEL to flourish, said Mr. Lindsay.

Mr. Freire promoted the idea that education and educators should be concerned with helping to free students from oppression. According to Mr. Freire, American education needed to be radically transformed, said Mr. Lindsay.

Critics of neo-Marxism argue that SEL has the potential to be used to influence or control students’ behavior in ways that prioritize conformity or compliance, while proponents argue that SEL is for character development and creates global citizens who work for a just and inclusive society.

Ms. Metzger and many others who study this subject believe that SEL has an ultimately detrimental impact on students, the family unit, and community cohesiveness. And while most school staff implementing SEL are unaware of its origins and negative impacts, funders and those in higher levels of education have a neo-Marxist worldview and nefarious intent, said Ms. Metzger.

Replacing Family Values

SEL becomes the culture of the school, permeating all subjects and interactions in order to transform the school, the community, and particularly the children’s way of thinking and seeing the world, said Ms. Metzger, adding that it promotes a worldview of social justice and inclusion, which are not academic subjects but activism.

Ms. Metzger has compiled a digital book called “The Parent Navigator“ that guides parents through various SEL and CRT websites that are potentially harmful and may conflict with a family’s fundamental religious values.

A graphic showing how SEL can be harmful to students. (Courtesy of Courage Is a Habit)

In 2019, Pioneer Institute released a report titled “Social-Emotional Learning: K–12 Education as New Age Nanny State,” written by Dr. Karen Effrem and Jane Robbins (pdf).

“Prodded by progressive activists and courts, the schools have scrubbed all Judeo-Christian principles and values and replaced them,” Dr. Effrem and Ms. Robbins wrote.

The authors argued that SEL’s five competencies give children the false sense that their own personal sense of right and wrong is adequate and can replace higher moral principles.

“SEL represents a dramatic departure from the traditional role of schools to build upon and deepen the American home’s ethical and moral training,” they wrote. “The recent success of progressive educators to replace moral and character education with social-emotional education may, indeed, turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory.”

Kelly Schenkoske, a parent who has been researching education, told The Epoch Times that SEL sounds good on the surface, but when you look closer at the broader implications, it’s a different story.

“SEL’s marketing sounds good. Who would be against phrases like responsible decision-making, kindness, or conflict resolution? These programs need optimal public buy-in. Once you closely examine the origins of SEL and the programs used in schools, there are many concerns,” Schenkoske said. “Traditionally, the family has shaped the child’s value system. But with SEL, the government now establishes their own value system and beliefs onto students, which supersede the traditional value systems at home.”

From her experience with SEL at her child’s school, Schenkoske said SEL typically has a spiritual component and is beginning to incorporate comprehensive sexuality education, in addition to instruction on sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression.

“What they were looking to do is to get all of this nonacademic information in order to divide these kids away from their parents, using intervention services,” Ms. Metzger said.

Well-Funded Effort

Nationally, school districts’ spending for SEL grew 45 percent between the 2019–2020 and the 2020–2021 school years, according to a report by Tyton Partners (pdf).

School districts can choose from a whole host of SEL online curricula and programs from companies like Second Step, PATHS, Responsive Classroom, and Sanford Harmony, as well as technology companies that provide assessment and data analysis tools to collect student SEL data.

The major data analytic companies are Panorama Education, Aperture Education, Kickboard, and Branching Minds, among others. These companies provide schools with the tools to collect and track student, staff, and parent SEL data.

In late 2021, Forbes reported that Panorama Education—co-founded by the son-in-law of U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland—had contracted with 23,000 public schools and raised $76 million from investors.

Broad Criteria

Provisions in ESSA encourage schools to include more students in the “at risk” category by using broad criteria for special education and support programs, to get around parental consent for mental health evaluations and surveys.

These programs are often targeted toward “at risk” youth, but “at risk” is not defined, write Dr. Effrem and Ms. Robbins.

A nonprofit organization called Courage Is a Habit provides resources to parents who want to protect their children from the influence of SEL in schools.

A list of some SEL surveys that are given to students. (Courtesy of Courage Is a Habit)

Courage Is a Habit says the surveys given to students are used to further indoctrinate them with leftist ideology.

“Collected data from in-class surveys are interpreted through an ‘equity lens’ of the ’oppressed and oppressor model' producing biased results that continues to indoctrinate students,” the organization says.

Schenkoske questions what gives classroom teachers and support staff the right to implement SEL widely. These teachers and support staff are not trained mental health professionals, and yet they are asking sensitive questions and doing therapeutic activities that parents are not aware of, she said.

“Normally if you see a psychiatrist or a psychologist and they’re going to do some form of activity, they’re going to have their expertise, but then they’re also going to tell you,” said Schenkoske.

Dr. Effrem and Ms. Robbins also mentioned this aspect of SEL in their report.

“By what right does [the government] deputize minimally trained personnel to measure children’s adoption of those mindsets and memorialize their ‘progress’ in an eternal, loosely secured data system?” they wrote.

A pamphlet from the parental rights activism group Courage Is a Habit charts the radicalization of the American School Counselor Association. (Courtesy of Courage Is a Habit)

SEL Scores

Whistleblower and California parent Lisa Logan told The Epoch Times that besides the SEL online curriculum that school districts implement, they also use a variety of online SEL applications to gather and track student data.

Ms. Logan has found evidence that this data can be used to give students an SEL credit score, which can affect students’ future opportunities.

“That’s what companies like Panorama actually provide students, and they quantify these kinds of skills like empathy and self-awareness with a score,” she said. “A lot of this information is even tied to college and career readiness standards.”

Ms. Logan is skeptical of the amount of time, effort, and money going into SEL, especially considering that many children can’t read or write at grade-level standards.

“You have to ask the question, who’s deciding what values, attitudes. or beliefs are valuable? And do they align with children’s familial and cultural beliefs?” Ms. Logan said.

Her research has led her to the conclusion that SEL goes hand-in-hand with environmental social governance (ESG) standards, with both aimed at meeting the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The goal is to have children care about and want to become advocates for ESG and SDG, said Ms. Logan.

Mr. Lindsay said SEL is one of two key tools the “elites” use to “achieve an agenda to install a completely new system in the world from top-down, bottom-up, and inside out all at once.”

The top-down portion includes corporations requiring their companies to use the ESG model, while the bottom-up portion involves indoctrinating school-age children to embrace that model.

Mr. Lindsay believes SEL is potentially useful in specific small groups if it’s well-targeted, but not when it is universally applied, as it is currently.

Parents need to understand the dangers of transformational SEL, one of which is to mine the data from their children and build out a social credit score for each, he said. Schools can do this because they integrate SEL into the whole of curriculum and collect all kinds of data points about the child.

“You don’t have to just go along with this. You do not have to go along with the indoctrination or programming of your children,” he said.

Parents must demand that schools educate their children instead of hijacking education to push social and emotional literacy above all else, Mr. Lindsay said.