In Illinois, students and educators experienced severe disruptions in schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic that negatively affected mental health and well-being, shining a light on the importance of social-emotional learning (SEL).
To support schools, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) invested in Learning Renewal–SEL programs to address these student and educator well-being challenges. As part of our research-practice partnership, the American Institutes for Research (AIR®) has been collaborating with ISBE to evaluate its Learning Renewal–SEL initiative, which offered regionally-prioritized programming for schools to support student and educator well-being through professional learning and capacity building across the state.
AIR conducted interviews with 60 Illinois regional education leaders in spring 2023, 2024, and 2025 to understand how Learning Renewal—SEL programming was being implemented across the state. These interviews brought to the forefront three key considerations for scaling a recovery initiative that may be useful to future educational disruptions.
Consideration 1: Regional SEL Hubs were key to promoting SEL activities and cultivating cross-regional collaboration.
There are 35 regional offices of education (ROEs) in Illinois that serve as an intermediary between ISBE and local school districts. Beginning in July 2021, Illinois identified one ROE in each of its seven state service areas to act as an “SEL Hub.” Each SEL Hub was charged with building relationships with its ROEs, districts, and schools to promote SEL, school mental health, trauma-responsive educational approaches, and equity. A key function of the SEL Hubs was communicating the purpose of the Learning Renewal—SEL initiative and its offerings through website content, newsletters, and sent emails, among other forms of communication. ROE staff then tailored this messaging even further and made local decisions to participate in Learning Renewal—SEL opportunities that matched their region’s needs. Perhaps most importantly, the SEL Hubs provided a structured way for ROEs to communicate with one another by convening regular cross-region meetings and carving out new formal and informal channels of communication through trainings and events. This allowed ROE staff to come together, share resources, and brainstorm ideas related to SEL implementation. In our interviews, we learned that this SEL Hub infrastructure spurred an unanticipated increase in cross-agency collaboration to implement SEL programming. Several participants shared that having one point person from the Hub to ask questions was helpful for pooling resources and strategizing implementation. Many others described how their SEL Hub helped them identify ROEs that had an area of expertise or experience with a particular SEL strategy that they could then adapt for their own region’s needs. One participant stated, “Sometimes it feels like it’s every other day that they’re collaborating, which is something that I didn’t expect. That’s a very positive thing of this Learning Renewal: how it’s brought agencies across the state together.” In spring 2025, we heard from numerous participants that they planned to continue the cross-regional conversations and relationships built during the Learning Renewal—SEL initiative. Investing time and money into this regional infrastructure built a cross-regional network of actors that bolstered implementation by ensuring no one was reinventing the wheel. This could support education systems through future disruptions by providing a structured, collaborative means to troubleshoot problems, generate new ideas, and pool resources.
Consideration 2: Strong regional relationships with districts and schools were key to implementing and scaling the work.
To implement the Learning Renewal—SEL initiative, ROE staff were often tasked with communicating, coordinating, and delivering SEL supports locally. Positioning these regional staff as an implementation lever was strategic because it centered their local knowledge of districts and schools, giving them flexibility to adapt their communication and promotion of SEL supports. As reported by several participants, one clear way this advantaged implementation was by allowing ROEs/ISCs to modify language to be responsive to local priorities and contexts. The strategy also leaned on the ROEs and their longstanding relationships with districts and schools to motivate participation:
Our school districts know our people and they trust them, and they know that they’re working hard to help them…We don’t want to be the dog catcher, we want to be the partner... And if we’re doing that well, I think people see us as an organization that they want to be around, that they want to exist. They see value in us. And it’s all about [face-to-face] relationships and the work that we do.
Local knowledge also influenced the types of SEL opportunities ROE staff communicated back to their schools. For example, participants described how the educator staffing shortage affected rural counties, with a lack of substitutes to fill in for teachers to attend professional learning. Because of staffing challenges in schools and long driving distances to training facilities or the costs associated with travel, some ROEs in rural areas opted to provide PL virtually or asynchronously. Other ROEs in suburban areas chose in-person PL sessions due to low engagement for virtual sessions. Some ROE leaders shared that district size and capacity were primary considerations for implementation. The flexibility in choosing what to communicate and promote, as well as how to deliver SEL programming locally, may have reinforced district and school trust in ROEs, strengthening their relationships and bolstering their influence as a key implementation lever.
Consideration 3: Allowing schools and districts to “opt in” to SEL was key to building local buy-in.
An important feature of the Learning Renewal—SEL initiative was that it allowed districts and schools to “opt-in” to any type of SEL, mental health, or trauma-related programming, rather than enforcing a certain level of participation in a given activity. This opt-in approach framed the SEL supports as optional, individualized support to districts and schools rather than a policy being imposed upon them. One participant claimed that the flexibility created a feeling that it was “open and available to everybody, [schools] are all fully supported and welcome into this work, rather than picking a particular school based off of a certain criteria.” This strategy honored the history and culture of local control in Illinois by showing deference to distinct regional needs, circumventing the tensions and pushback that can arise with a centrally mandated policy or reform. In future disruptions, this opt-in approach may be the most locally responsive way to support education policy efforts focused on recovery.
How can these findings help schools during future disruptions?
We learned through our research-practice partnership that beginning with a strong, regional infrastructure to communicate a clear, consistent purpose and expectations—such as the SEL Hubs did for the Learning Renewal—SEL initiative—was a powerful tool in scaling the initiative across the state. This infrastructure created new pathways for cross-region collaboration that did not exist prior to the initiative and supported the spread of SEL program adoption and PL participation. Leveraging the historical relationships between regional education entities and districts and schools strengthened statewide implementation by building upon pre-established trust. Additionally, deference to local knowledge about SEL needs allowed for flexibility in communication and delivery of SEL programming that may have created stronger buy-in than a centralized approach could have done. Finally, we learned that centering local knowledge about needs motivated participation and helped build good will and circumvented the pushback that policymakers often face with centrally mandated or enforced initiatives. These three considerations supported statewide recovery efforts by leaning into infrastructure and programming centered on relationship-building and trust, rather than compliance or accountability. In the case of a future pandemic or other major disruption, states should consider these human-centered elements to support effective implementation of recovery solutions.
Photo by Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages