Children from varied socioeconomic backgrounds often enter school with substantial differences in social-emotional skills, including the ability to regulate emotions, resolve conflicts, and build relation­ships. These differences can widen persistent achievement gaps that resist conventional academic interventions. Social-emotional learning (SEL) programs target these foundational competencies, and extensive evidence highlights the short-term value of such programs: A large review of 213 school-based SEL programs found that, on average, participants showed improvements in academic performance, social-emotional skills, and attitudes toward school and self.

These encouraging findings have spurred policy action. Federal policy­makers have directed more funding toward whole-child initiatives that include SEL programs, and have done so with a height­ened urgency following the disproportionate impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on students from disadvantaged backgrounds. State and local education agencies have also highlighted SEL programs as preven­tive interventions to reduce educational inequities, particularly in under­funded schools.

Despite this enthusiasm, most SEL research focuses on immediate or short-term outcomes, with limited evidence about whether benefits persist as chil­dren grow and move to new schools. One review found that 61 percent of SEL studies examined effects for less than one year, and few studies tracked par­ticipants through major developmental transitions. This gap matters because initial impacts often diminish over time in a phenomenon known as “fadeout.”

The transition to middle school is a particularly critical test of intervention durability. As students enter adolescence, they experience profound physical, cognitive, and social changes while encountering new school environments with different expectations and support systems. Research consistently documents declines in academic motivation, school engagement, and achievement during this transition, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Understanding whether early SEL interventions provide protective benefits as students enter middle school has important implications for both developmen­tal theory and educational policy.

This brief summarizes new intermediate findings from a long-term, follow-up study of INSIGHTS into Children’s Temperament, a two-year, SEL program deliv­ered in kindergarten and first grade in 11 schools from 2008 through 2012. Using administrative records, researchers tracked 1,329 students from the original INSIGHTS study through eighth grade and examined impacts on academic achievement, school engagement (attendance), grade retention (the prac­tice of having a student repeat a grade), and special education placement nine years after random assignment.