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Schools play a critical role in service delivery related to students' social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) health. A foundation for effective SEB service delivery includes capacity to identify students in need of support, differentiate which supports are needed, and monitor students' responsiveness to intervention. Assessment is critical for each of these goals, providing the data needed to make effective decisions across the continuum of service delivery. This special issue provides opportunity to reflect on the past decade of research that strengthens the psychometric evidence for use of the measures in SEB assessment, as well as address several themes that characterize recent SEB assessment research. In this introductory article, we introduce a series of original articles and commentaries addressing these critical issues that are timely and relevant for the future path of SEB assessment. Taken together, the current issue seeks to bring together current evidence around multitiered problem-solving frameworks with focus on SEB domain and propose future directions for research and practice. IMPACT STATEMENTSThe paper describes key themes related to current status and future directions in social, emotional, and behavioral assessment. Those themes are organized around usability, rater effects, a balanced focus on assets and deficits, and equity considerations.

Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), this study implements two statistical analyses to investigate the effects of student and teacher characteristics on students’ mathematical achievement. First, the authors conduct an exploratory factor analysis to explore the factor structure for the various student and teacher variables of interest in this study. Second, they perform hierarchical linear modeling to analyze students’ and teachers’ multilevel structure in a school. The results suggest that student characteristics such as mathematics interest, instrument motivation, mathematics self-efficacy, mathematics anxiety, mathematics self-concept, and out-of-school study time predicted 39.9% of mathematical achievement variance. The results also suggest that mathematics self-efficacy had the largest effect on mathematical achievement. Teacher characteristics such as teacher-directed instruction, cognitive activation, teacher support, classroom management, and student–teacher relations predicted 34.9% of mathematical achievement variance. This study’s results have implications for educators in fostering a positive learning environment to increase students’ mathematics interest and self-efficacy, and focus on specific teacher characteristics to increase students’ mathematical achievement.

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Despite rapidly increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in US schools, the majority of psychoeducational evaluations will be conducted by monolingual, English-speaking school psychologists. As such, the appropriate use of interpreters has been identified as a critical skill in working with emergent bilinguals and their families. Surveys of practicing school psychologists conducting assessments with emergent bilinguals indicate a lack of knowledge and training in the use of interpreters; however, few studies have examined the extent to which school psychology graduate students are trained in the appropriate use of interpreters. Utilizing survey methodology, this study examined school psychology graduate students’ training in and preparedness to work with interpreters, as well as their knowledge of best practices in the use of interpreters. Current graduate students and interns enrolled in school psychology master’s, specialist, and doctoral programs in 36 states throughout the USA ( n = 364) responded to the survey. The majority of participants were White (61.5%), monolingual (70.3%), and seeking a master’s or specialist degree (71.2%). Survey responses suggest that graduate students and interns’ training, knowledge, and preparedness to work with interpreters is lacking. A qualitative analysis of the open-ended question revealed that first-hand experience working with interpreters was among the most beneficial types of training experiences for graduate students and interns. Implications for how program directors and graduate-level faculty can provide better training for their students in the use of interpreters are discussed.