Selling Social-Emotional Learning by Ben Williamson (2017).It is hard to question the idea that education should be more focused on some of the social and emotional aspects of learning than just academic attainment and test scores. However, the SEL movement is not innocent, politically neutral or purely philanthropic.  https://clalliance.org/blog/selling-social-emotional-learning/

Education, privacy, and big data algorithms: Taking the persons out of personalized learning by Professor Priscilla M. Regan & Professor Valerie Steeves (2019).
 ...Indeed, there appears to be an interesting side-step in the way that foundations discuss evidence — rather than relying on evidence for their innovations, they discuss the importance of gathering evidence for their innovations. Gates, for example, talks about ‘advancing research and development in support of new innovations,’ ‘invest[ing] in building the evidence for social and emotional learning,’ and ‘expand[ing] the evidence base and validat[ing] exemplars of interventions.’ Hewlett is interested in learning ‘what it takes to turn schools into places that empower and equip students’ and in ‘studying these efforts to share what is learned.’ In this side-step, the foundations reveal that not only are students learning — but foundations are learning as well, and students in this scenario are not only learners but research subjects beta-testing foundation-supported innovations. The recent CZ/Gates Initiative underscores this in the following: ‘The goal is to gain a better understanding of breakthrough work happening in these fields so that we, and many others across the field, can figure out how best to direct energies and resources to accelerate progress for students.’ ... Perhaps most interesting in our review of foundations’ Web sites was the almost universal absence of any mention of privacy or the implications of collecting all this data on students’ learning and personal characteristics that would be a necessary component to implement personalized learning, as well as an outcome of that implementation. The only foundation to mention privacy is Dell, which states at the end of its overview: ‘While we believe data is a powerful tool in the classroom, we also believe it should be used in a safe and secure manner. Therefore, we work with leading organizations to improve data privacy policies and practices of education technology vendors, districts, and educators.’ The other foundation overviews mention neither privacy nor security — in effect, erasing this as a concern or implication of the vast amount of data that the kind of innovations they discuss would entail. The absence of this topic from their overviews is startling given the attention companies like Google and Facebook have been forced to pay to both privacy and security. It cannot plausibly be argued that they are unaware of privacy and security in the context of personalized learning, although it can be argued that they would prefer not to have attention drawn to these concerns.  Added emphasis.  https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/10094/8152