I don't disagree with that received wisdom, but I would argue that a second novel
deserves equal billing: Robert Lipsyte's The Contender, since it was published the same year and — to my mind — is the more authentic work of contemporary realism, since The Outsiders comes dangerously close to being a romance.
Decades of research — including Grossman et al.'s 1997 study of violence prevention among elementary schoolchildren and a cost - benefit analysis of SEL in 2015 — document how SEL supports academic achievement,
deserving, in fact,
equal billing with academic outcomes (Vega, 2015).