It is a commonly held belief among educational practitioners that students in classrooms practicing Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) principles have greater academic growth throughout the school year. This study examined 174 unique classroom settings and correlated the results of 4146 third grade students' responses from a survey about the classroom environment with students' reading skill growth. The study used five domains of SEL from Panorama Education's student survey: Classroom Engagement, Classroom Climate, Classroom Rigorous Expectations, Pedagogical Effectiveness, and Classroom Teacher-Student Relationships. Each domain was compared to reading growth as measured by Achieve3000. This study shows lower than expected correlations between all five domains and reading skill growth. The Classroom Rigorous Expectations domain had the highest correlation of the five at a moderate level r = 0.371 (p < 0.001). The classroom environment may yet be a key indicator of learning success in the classroom setting. Finding what domains within the SEL classroom environment may be highly correlated with increased academic growth would be valuable to researchers and educators to make the classroom environment more conducive to learning, particularly with reading. [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.]