SAIL CoLab INC

The wise maxim, "one must evaluate what they teach and teach what they evaluate," is a guiding light for SAIL CoLab, a distinguished purveyor of assessment and intervention products devoted to enriching the social-emotional learning (SEL) and mental health of children and youth.

The success of SAIL CoLab lies in its state-of-the-art evidence-based approach to designing and implementing integrated assessment and intervention programs that are scientifically grounded yet conveniently accessible online for educators and parents. This approach is predicated on the concept of triple content alignment for key social emotional skills. Specifically, this alignment concept features 30 SEL behaviors and skills representing the CASEL Competency Framework that both are measured by brief multi-informant (student, teacher, and parent) assessments and systematically taught using a powerful instructional process. It sounds simple and perhaps unnecessary, but no other assessment and intervention program combination in use in U.S. schools has achieved this 100% triple content alignment standard and consequently, they are using learning time inefficiently and their assessment results are not immediately actionable.

Orchestrating this approach for SAIL CoLab is Stephen (Steve) Elliott, the founder and president of SAIL CoLab and the senior author of SSIS social emotional assessments and the social emotional intervention program. Steve has been researching children’s social skills assessment and improvement since 1983 when he started collaborating with Frank Gresham, one of the most prolific social skills researchers in the United States. Steve and Frank are the only known author team in the country who have built, researched, and published social behavior assessments that “talk to each other” and “drive” a proven time efficient and effective intervention program.

“By implementing this approach, we can ensure that students receive comprehensive instruction that addresses their identified improvement needs and we give educators an effective and fun structure to engage students in learning key SEL skills they can use for a lifetime. This scientifically sound process is a crucial aspect of our philosophy and every product,” says Elliott.

Assessment and Intervention

The Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS) SEL Brief + Mental Health Scales are offered as English & Spanish versions for teachers, parents, and students and these assessments and the intervention program resources are delivered 100% online. Using rating scale technology for assessing key social and emotional behaviors and a unique Competency Referenced Performance Framework for interpreting results, SSIS users receive actionable data that allows them to start teaching students skills in need of improvement the very next day.

With input from multiple informants -- parents, teachers, and students -- about children's behavior and abilities in various contexts, these assessments better identify areas of strength and relative weakness and determine where to concentrate instructional improvement efforts.

For children who struggle to acquire social emotional skills through observing peer and adult models, direct and explicit instruction is paramount. SAIL CoLab's pedagogical approach aims to equip them with a diverse range of social emotional skills and train them to use these skills competently in over 300 common social situations. Again, the congruence between assessment and intervention content is a unique hallmark of the SSIS family of products. Effective assessments and intervention programs, even when they are at your fingertips online and easy to access don’t happen without the talents of teachers and school mental health specialists. Thus, SAIL CoLab invests significant resources in supporting the professional growth of educators and psychologists who employ SSIS assessments and intervention products by offering an array of online training modules at SSIScolab.com.

Alignment with CASEL Competency Framework

As noted earlier, SAIL CoLab's mission and all its products resonate with the competency framework advanced by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), a prominent U.S. organization dedicated to fostering social and emotional learning. One of the seminal studies conducted by Elliott and Gresham evaluated the utility of the CASEL Competency Framework while verifying that the SSIS SEL Brief Scales successfully captured the behaviors it deemed salient for children’s social emotional health. This study was the first one published that provided strong empirical evidence supporting the CASEL model, also offering another sign of the importance of the common content between the SSIS assessments and highly valued SEL competencies.

We Prioritize The Importance Of Research -Based Practices And Strive To Understand The Unique Needs Of Educators. Our Expertise Lies In Translating Complex Information Into Actionable Tools That Are Both Accessible And User - Friendly.

Drawing inspiration from the burgeoning SEL and child well-being movements and CASEL's work, Elliott and colleagues continue to conduct research that demonstrated that the social skills appraised by the SSIS SEL Brief + Mental Health Scales and taught by the SSIS Classwide Intervention Program (CIP) were congruent with the SEL competency domains espoused by the CASEL Framework. Today, the SEL CIP is recognized as one of the very few programs that is both a CASEL SELect and USDE What Works Clearinghouse recognized Tier 1 Strong program. In the spirit of continuous improvement, however, this program was further expanded in late 2022 to encompass a series of lessons called Healthy Behavior Foundations. These new lessons are, of course, aligned with the CASEL framework and directly address vital aspects of student mental and emotional health, such as, awareness and self-management of stress, asking for help and seeking emotional support, and setting a personal improvement goal.

Building on the work with the SSIS CIP universal program, the SAIL author team of Elliott, Christine Malecki and Michelle Demaray, both school psychologists and professors at Northern Illinois University, created the SSIS Social Emotional Health (she) CIP-T2, a Tier 2 intervention program for students who require additional support beyond a Tier 1 or universal SEL program.

The CIP-T2 is an example of how Elliott and colleagues innovate and work with educators. Specifically, this work started as a response to educators in the Ohio School Wellness Initiative who were concerned about students who were experiencing emotional behavior concerns. As a result, Elliott, Malecki, and Demaray used their knowledge of stress management, social support, and social skills training to draft the first version of CIP-T2. Next, they field tested this intervention program in Arizona with another project designed to address mental health and social support needs of a diverse sample of post-pandemic students. This multi-year field trial is still ongoing, but with early positive uptake by school mental health professionals and the ongoing substantial need in the market for Tier 2 student mental health support, SAIL CoLab launched CIP-T2 online in late 2022 and paired with the SSIS CIP. The result is a series of social emotional skill building and application lessons to support the improvement needs of all students in Tiers 1, 2, and 3.

As this article was going to press, Demaray and Malecki, co-authors of CIP-T2 received a U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences award to evaluate the effectiveness of this intervention in an Illinois school district. So, like all previous SAIL CoLab products, the research to practice beat goes on to drive refinements and likely more innovation!

The Pearson Collaboration

Elliott recognizes the important role that Pearson Assessment has played in the development of SAIL CoLab. Specifically, the SSIS product line started with Pearson in 2008, but the evolution of the intervention program required expansion outside of this premier assessment enterprise. So, with Pearson’s support, Elliott the research professor and his son Dustin, a talented web-designer and businessman, established SAIL CoLab in 2019. This two-person company soon become a three-person company with the addition of an IP lawyer/partner, Michael Lang, VP of Business Relations.

SAIL CoLab functions largely as an innovation hub for the development and delivery of online social emotional interventions, but also recognized the need for universal screening assessments to drive and evaluate these interventions. Pearson did not offer SEL screening assessments, so out of necessity, Elliott formed a small team of assessment experts and within a year offered the omnipresent SSIS SEL Brief + Mental Health Scales. This assessment is now also part of Review360, Pearson’s highly effective award-winning behavior management platform called Review360. Thus, the ongoing relationship and informal partnership with Pearson have been a win-win! SAIL CoLab's commitment to research-based practices and understanding the unique needs of educators has enabled it to become a trailblazer in the field of SEL and the related and evolving area of social emotional health (SEH). Elliott clearly has transformed and refined the established manualized intervention program into a digital product with accessible and user-friendly PowerPoint presentations for teachers and students alike. This shift has facilitated the expansion of the assessment and intervention programs’ reach, gaining traction in Australia, where there is a national curriculum for children's social and emotional skill development, and in several European countries, where universal screening of children’s mental health is a growing priority.

By continuously refining and expanding its offerings, SAIL CoLab aims to improve outcomes for children worldwide. An emphasis on assessment and alignment with the intervention program has created actionable and accessible tools, enabling the company to bridge the gap between assessment and intervention in the realm of SEL and SEH. SAIL CoLab's mission to foster well-being and mental health through highly aligned social emotional assessments and intervention programs is shaping SEL education today and stimulating the evolution of the broader field of SEH.