For children and adolescents, developing key social-emotional skills is beneficial to how they grow and learn in their environment. The objective of this study was to evaluate the overall social-emotional skills of African American students in a general education setting using a social-emotional learning program, Strong Kids. This study investigated whether participating in a SEL program, Strong Kids-Grades 3-5, will be effective at increasing students' knowledge of social-emotional concepts and coping strategies, decreasing students' number of symptoms of negative affect and internalizing problems, increasing students' social-emotional skills, and decreasing students' levels of risk factors. The research design of this study was a pretest-posttest comparison design and consisted of two third-grade classrooms. The classrooms were randomized to assign one classroom to the experimental group (n = 12) and the other classroom to the control group (n = 9). There were 21 African American third grade students who participated in the study and attended an urban elementary charter school in the Midwest. This was a quantitative study with two independent variables and four dependent variables. The independent variables were the two types of intervention (Strong Kids and control) and time (pretest and posttest). The dependent variables were the Strong Kids Knowledge scale, Strong Kids Symptoms scale, Devereux Student Strengths Assessment-mini, and Student Risk Screening scale. The overall results of the study were not significant and there was not a significant change from pretest to posttest when measuring students' knowledge of social-emotional concepts and coping strategies, symptoms of negative affect and internalizing problems, and social-emotional skills. However, when measuring students' levels of risk of externalizing and internalizing behaviors there was a significant change from pretest to posttest, but in the opposite direction that was hypothesized for the 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://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]