The United States Department of Education supports the Common Core State Standards and new state accountability assessments. Improving student engagement, school climate, and staff and student relationships is vitally important to these national school reform efforts. This quantitative research reviews the perceptions of 187 students from four southern California middle schools to help determine if social emotional deficits in engagement, climate and relationships exist that contribute to negative civility and academic behaviors. The findings indicate the existence of social emotional shortcomings for the middle school students. There was also a relationship between student positive and negative perceptions and the demographic categories of grade, ethnicity and gender. Research consistently finds to support student civility and academic shortcomings, the implementation of Social Emotional Learning such as Civility and Ethics Instruction is beneficial. Therefore, multiple recommendations are offered to support the participant and similar middle school staff in including the social emotional intervention of Civility and Ethics Instruction within national school reform.