The purpose of this study was to identify the impact that schools have on the social emotional learning (SEL) of their students. As SEL has emerged as an ever-increasing focus of education, it is important to gauge schools' possible impact in this area and add insight to an under researched literature topic. To help determine the impact, this quantitative study was conducted, and it focused on two research questions: 1) Do students' social emotional skills change during the school year while school is in session? 2) What happens to social emotional skills while school is not in session? These two questions were answered using elementary teacher responses to the Student Risk Screening Scale (SRSS-IE) that focused on them rating their individual students' externalizing and internalizing behaviors over time to identify changes from when school was in session and in the absence of school in the summer. After the conclusion of the study, school was found to have a very limited impact on the entire student population defined by mean SRSS scores, yet when comparing students according to student demographics, significant discrepancies were found. Male, low socioeconomic status, and special education students were found to show significant negative changes to their social emotion skills, while white students were found to have a significant positive change from school being in session. Implications were discovered for both policy makers and practitioners, while insights were also suggested for future researchers to improve upon this study. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]