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Dr. Schaps noted that a solid prevention program is always a work in progress. “A program is never fully or permanently established. It must continually be championed, monitored, nurtured, assessed, and budgeted,” he said. But, with complete faculty involvement, the principal’s and school district's support, good training, and high quality implementation materials, programs have a better chance of becoming fully integrated into the life
of the school.

Why Do Some SEL Programs Succeed and Others Fail?

The factors identified by Dr. Schaps are similar to those found by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), a group of scientists and practitioners who are devoted to enhancing children’s social and emotional learning (SEL).

Dr. Maurice Elias and his colleagues at CASEL conducted a study of why some schools succeed or fail to “scale up” or expand and sustain their SEL efforts. Based on both their own project experience and reviews of literature, the CASEL team found several challenges that often prevent programs that are successful at one place from taking hold at another. These include:

• Structural features in school settings. Problems such as high staff turnover can affect whether a prevention effort succeeds. Unless a school has good systems for collecting and sharing information, staff turnover can impair the ability to transfer knowledge about how a program operates.
• A narrow “programs and packages” perspective. In a complex school environment, there can be many programs going on at a school at the same time and interacting with each other in unknown ways. If schools take a narrow “programs and packages” approach (i.e. “this prevention package can be opened up from the box and plunked down here with success”) without understanding how different programs fit together with one another and with the rest of the school day, they might actually be unwittingly working against themselves. Schools need to do more than choose an effective prevention program; they need to link effective programs to an overall prevention strategy.
• Poor management of time and other resources. Not every site is ready for change just because a starting date is reached. Detailed planning is essential, and program organizers must be prepared to deal with inevitable changes or delays. Programs often fail if implementers have not engaged in adequate planning, or do not have the flexibility to take another path if necessary.
• Characteristics of adults who carry out the programs. School-based programs depend on human operators whose levels of commitment may vary, or do not always feel supported or motivated to go through the difficult process of implementing change.

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