For the past six years, the National Center for Scaling Up Effective Schools has led the design, development, and implementation of Personalization for Academic and Social Emotional Learning (PASL) into eight BCPS high schools. PASL is a school-wide approach in which administrators, guidance counselors and teachers intentionally and deliberately attend to students’ academic, social emotional, and behavioral needs. Through five interrelated practices, PASL aims to improve students’ academic success, sense of belonging and trust in schools, as well as their attitudes and daily actions. In those eight schools, students, teachers and administrators are reporting greater connections and sense of belonging to their schools as well as higher attendance, fewer disciplinary referrals and higher student GPAs.

While initial work has been successful, additional development work is needed to improve the school implementation supports, particularly the tools and processes used to introduce new schools to the PASL initiative and help them adapt PASL practices into their context. With a new, $2.5 million Investing in Innovation grant from the federal Department of Education, Florida State University and Vanderbilt University will continue to partner with BCPS through professional development activities to assist fifteen schools and their school leaders and teachers to implement PASL. The project will include the development of: 1) a toolkit that would be a comprehensive resource on PASL; and 2) a set of professional development resources that can be used to introduce and implement PASL in high schools. RTI International will conduct a rigorous and independent evaluation of PASL’s impact on student social emotional outcomes, behavior, attendance, and achievement.