Assess social-emotional behavior with FastBridge

Most school districts don’t have the expertise to evaluate the evidence for the assessment tool they use to evaluate students. The technical (e.g., psychometric) properties of an assessment are direct predictors of whether it can provide useful information to teachers. For this reason, it is important to use research-based social-emotional behavior assessments that have undergone a third-party review process.

A strong research-based social-emotional behavior assessment should be shown to be effective in two or more research studies with different groups and settings of students. It should also have evidence that the resulting data led to meaningful and effective interventions.

Renaissance’s SEB assessment is the only universal screener that has been demonstrated to meet the psychometric criteria established by the National Center on Intensive Intervention for convincing evidence of reliability, validity, and diagnostic accuracy. Additionally, studies have shown that results from SAEBRS lead to more equitable access to critical mental health services and help reduce disproportionality—specifically when compared to office discipline referrals. Notably, SAEBRS and mySAEBRS include items related to academic effort as well as internalizing and externalizing behaviors, which are all important components of school success.

How frequently social-emotional behavior assessments should be given depends on what the overall purpose is for collecting data.

If the goal is to learn how well schoolwide behavior instruction is working, then social-emotional behavior assessments designed for universal screening should be administered three times a year. If the objective is to understand if an individual student is making progress towards goals (e.g., reducing the number of problem behavior instances), then social-emotional behavior assessments designed for progress monitoring can be used multiple times a week.

SAEBRS can be used to identify students who are at risk for social, academic, and emotional behaviors up to five times a year at the classroom, grade, school, or district level. By evaluating in which of the three specific domains a student is at risk, educators may determine what type of supports are most appropriate and which problem behaviors should be prioritized through intervention.

SAEBRS is a teacher observation rating scale that may be completed using a computer or tablet. Ratings correspond to the frequency of various behaviors in the previous month (Never, Sometimes, Often, Almost Always). Renaissance recommends that SAEBRS not be administered until students have been in school for at least six weeks. This helps ensure that the teacher chosen to complete the SAEBRS has ample time to interact extensively with each student, and it gives students the opportunity to adjust to a new routine and setting.

While there are no official qualifications required to administer most social-emotional behavior screening assessments, Renaissance has developed training to inform educators of the purpose of screening assessments, give explicit instructions on how to administer and complete the assessments, and provide guidance for using social-emotional behavior assessment data to inform interventions and program evaluation.

All rating scales—regardless of psychometric evidence—are subject to teachers’ bias, especially without high-quality training. We strongly encourage additional professional learning that will prepare teachers to use such rating scales with integrity and accuracy.