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[Family Involvement]
How can parents, educators, and local school districts begin to work together toward a common goal of promoting good citizenship and character among youth? Four states, North Carolina, Connecticut, Maryland, and Washington recently received grants totaling nearly $1 million dollars from the U.S. Department of Education to help launch a partnership between the state education department and one or more local school districts to establish character education programs for youth, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley announced June 8, 1996 at the White House Conference on Character Education.
"Clearly we can all agree about the importance of teaching our children, both as individuals and as members of society, the importance of common values such as respect, responsibility, trustworthiness, and citizenship," Riley said. "This support will help these states bring communities -- including students, parents, educators and others -- together to identify common values to help put children on the right course."
Parents, students, and community members, including private and nonprofit organizations, can participate in the design and administration of the program. The character education partnerships will help states work with school districts to develop curriculum materials, provide teacher training, gauge and build a community consensus on common values, involve parents in character education and integrate character education into the curriculum.
The projects, under the Partnerships in Character Education Pilot Project Program, will be evaluated to determine their success toward reducing discipline problems, and improving student grades, participation in extracurricular activities, and parent and community involvement. States are also asked to establish a clearinghouse for the distribution of materials and information about character education.
The four projects were selected from 27 eligible applicants, with grants totaling $996,190 for FY 1996. The Partnerships in Character Education Pilot Project is authorized under Title X, Part A, Section 10103 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as amended.
The North Carolina Partnership in Character Education includes three school districts (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Cumberland, and Wake) and the North Carolina Center for the Prevention of School Violence. The partnership plans to develop a model program that builds on the strengths and expertise of the partners, promotes the development of citizenship and character, and can be used throughout the state. The objectives are to build community wide consensus for character education; solicit, increase, and sustain community and family involvement in developing and implementing a character education program; improve the school learning climate; integrate elements of character education throughout the curriculum; and make character education materials available to schools. For more information on the North Carolina project, contact Mr. Doug R. Robertson, 919-715-1877.
The Maryland Partnership in Character Education will establish a consortium of the state and five local school districts: Baltimore City, Baltimore, Calvert, Frederick, and Prince George's counties. The goal of the partnership will be to foster a safe and orderly environment for students by providing them with skills for personal interaction based on desired character elements. The plan calls for the development of five different demonstration models at the district level; the state will concentrate on dissemination, networking, training, and curriculum development. Maryland plans to supplement their grant with funds from local sources. For more information on the Maryland project, contact Eileen Oickle, 410-767-0345.
In Connecticut, the state department of education will collaborate with the Character Counts! Connecticut Coalition and four school districts -- Clinton, New Britain, Norwalk, and Region #12 -- the first year to promote character education throughout the state. The project aims to add to the number of schools offering character education programs, with a goal of including all schools; infuse promising character education concepts and practices into interested schools; build a statewide commitment for character education through the involvement of diverse organizations and participants in coalitions and advisory councils; and increase the number of parents involved in education. Connecticut plans to supplement their grant with funds from local sources. For more information on the Connecticut project, contact Mrs. Barbara M. Westwater 860-566-5684.
The Washington consortium will include the Center for the Improvement of Student Learning, the Center for Ethical Leadership, ESD 112 in Vancouver, Puget Sound ESD, the Seattle Indian Center, the Washington State Migrant Council, the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic, and three school districts: West Valley, Seattle, and Toppenish. The goals of the project are: (1) to develop a replicable procedure for facilitating community forums that identify values and the roles of parents and schools in teaching values; (2) to develop modular units of instruction for teaching values; (3) to construct staff development units that stand alone or parallel the modular units of character education developed in the second goal; (4) to expand the number of participating character education partners into a network; and (5) to provide a central resource for dissemination and exchange of materials developed in the project. For more information on the Washington project, contact Tom R. Hulst, 360-664-2534. In FY 1997, the Department funded four additional projects from the 27 eligible applicants the 1996 competition, with grants totaling $999,524. The grantees are Missouri, Kentucky, New Jersey, and South Carolina.
The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will establish a partnership with three pilot schools in the Jennings School District, the Missouri School Boards Association, the Cooperating School Districts of Saint Louis, and the University of Missouri at Columbia. The program name will be the Show Me Character Education Partnership and will build on the Personal Responsibility Education Process (PREP) used in Saint Louis since 1988. The evaluation plan calls for three different kinds of activities: (1) documentation of data from the projects; (2) process evaluation, including planning, professional development, and dissemination; and (3) studies of outcomes, including the numbers of schools that implement PREP, student behaviors, staff morale, and community support. In addition to FY 1997 federal funding, the state plans to spend an additional $47,689 from other sources the first year and $609,201 from other sources over the life of the project. For more information on the Missouri project, contact Nancy H. Worts, 573-751-7602.
The Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) will form a partnership with eight rural schools under the management of the Ohio Valley Educational Cooperative (OVEC), a consortium of 13 school districts in north-central Kentucky. The program will be built around 10 character traits, the six elements in the legislation, caring, citizenship, justice and fairness, respect, responsibility, trustworthiness, plus courtesy, human worth, knowledge, and self discipline. Each school's program will include teaching strategies on how teachers might include the 10 character traits in the curriculum and how students, parents, and the community will be involved in the program. The KDE will contract with an outside evaluator to develop evaluation tools and procedures, collect and analyze data, and make recommendations for modifications. The program objectives have evaluation measures written into each objective. In addition to FY 1997 federal funding, the state plans to spend an additional $78,040 from other sources the first year and $276,880 from other sources over the life of the project. For more information on the Kentucky project, contact Ms. Rhonda Bailey, 502-564-3301.
The New Jersey Department of Education will work with the Newark School District and the Newark Do Something Fund, a community development agency, to develop an urban pilot project in character education. Through the state's Core Curriculum Content Standards, the program intends to infuse character education into the curriculum renewal process in the 62 Newark schools that have any combination of grades K-8. The Department of Education also plans to establish the New Jersey Character Education Network that will provide public and private schools a range of character education strategies, procedures, and program designs. The state will hire an outside evaluator to design and carry out all evaluation activities. The evaluation will be built around the five project goals: infusion of character education into the curriculum renewal process; development of a school-community partnership; adaptation of the Newark model by Jersey City and Paterson; adoption by local school district partners; and facilitating and promoting adoption. For more information on the New Jersey project, contact Philip Brown, 609-292-0321.
The South Carolina State Department of Education will form a partnership with four school districts to serve as pilot sites for the statewide transformation of South Carolina's schools. These four represent urban, small rural, and large rural districts. The districts plan to provide extensive professional development opportunities for teachers, use published character education materials innovatively, and have technology play a major role in facilitating the exchange of information among the districts. The state plans an external evaluation of the partnerships through the Center for Child and Family Studies at the University of South Carolina. The evaluation will focus on traditional variables, such as, attendance, numbers of suspensions, numbers of violent incidents, and school climate. For more information on the South Carolina project, contact Dr. W. Ben Nesbit, 803-734-8574. In 1995, the U.S. Department of Education also funded four projects that were selected from 17 eligible applicants, with grants totaling $860,997 for FY 1995. For FY 1996, the amount for the original four grants totaled $805,157. The grantees are California, Iowa, New Mexico, and Utah.
The California Department of Education is in partnership with the Sacramento County Office of Education, five elementary schools in five different districts that are members of the California Alliance for Elementary Education, and the Center for Civic Education. The goals of the Character Education Project focus on student achievement in the following areas: caring, civic virtue and citizenship, justice and fairness, respect, responsibility, and trustworthiness. The objectives for the four-year project are: (1) create a data base on character education; (2) give technical assistance to the pilot schools for planning; (3) ensure diversity in staff, students, and geographic locations of the pilot schools; (4) expand the focus of the programs to include 30 schools; (5) provide opportunities for other public and private schools to utilize the resources developed; (6) disseminate information; (7) establish a clearinghouse on character education; and (8) evaluate the program. The evaluation plan calls for the SEA to contract with its Research, Evaluation, and Technology Division to conduct an ongoing process and outcome evaluation of the project. A comprehensive evaluation report will be provided at the midterm and at the end of the project. In terms of outcomes, multiple measures will be used throughout the project to assure the reliability of findings. Among other variables, the evaluation will look at student scores, attendance, extracurricular activities, discipline, parental and community involvement, faculty and administration involvement, morale, and student, staff, and parent perceptions of the impact of character education on daily activities and behavior. For more information on the California project, contact Dr. Diane L. Brooks, 916-657-3711.
The Iowa Character Education program includes twenty-six school districts in north-central Iowa that are served by the Northern Trails Area Education Agency (NTAEA). Three major outcomes are proposed: (1) to incorporate positive character qualities into all levels of the existing education program in all pilot schools, (2) develop and implement a community wide process to seek input on the character traits listed in the act and additional traits as identified by local stakeholders, and (3) to work with and train a wide variety of community groups and organizations to ensure that the character traits taught in schools are also modeled in local communities. The evaluation plan presumes that the twenty-six districts are committed to infusing the character traits identified by each local district. The districts will conduct surveys to determine the current attitudes, conduct and perceptions of students, parents, teachers, support staff, administrators, and community members. They will also assess a wide variety of activities traditionally associated with school climate, such as, discipline problems, parent and community involvement, participation in extracurricular activities, and morale. The results of these assessments will serve as a baseline. They will conduct these same assessments at least annually and compare the results with all previous evaluations. For more information on the Iowa project, contact Pat Conn, 515-357-6125
The New Mexico State Department of Education has established the Partnerships in Character Education Pilot Projects with the Albuquerque Character Counts Coalition of five public school districts, including rural, urban, and suburban districts. The goals of the partnership are: (1) raise awareness for character education in New Mexico; (2) involve youth in the promotion of character; (3) utilize the "Character Counts" program as a means of supporting students as they strive to meet the challenging state content standards. A comprehensive three-year plan is outlined in the proposal. The evaluation plan calls for formative evaluation to shape and modify the plan over the duration of the project. It also calls for a comprehensive summative evaluation by an external evaluator. The evaluator will use a three tiered approach that will examine the system, the program, and the participants' levels of understanding within each component of the plan. Further the evaluation will look at training, the degree of program implementation at school sites, development of materials and products, and the number of new participants, including Native American schools and communities. For more information on the New Mexico project, contact Patricia Concannon, 505-827-6525.
The Utah Community Partnership for Character Development program includes seven school districts, Utah State University, and the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation. They plan to involve additional rural districts. The six major objectives of the program are: (1) have the community articulate a common philosophy; (2) empower school-community teams to adapt the philosophy; (3) through the SEA, implement staff development; (4) create character development instructional methodologies, learning strategies, and curriculum; (5) provide for statewide expansion of partnerships; (6) develop and implement a comprehensive evaluation plan. The evaluation plan calls for an outside evaluator who will work in cooperation with the stakeholders. This plan has two objectives: (1) to assess the model as an application to foster the desired elements of character in students; and (2) to understand the factors and conditions related to ongoing development and implementation of the model so that decision makers can refine and encourage others to replicate the model. For more information about the Utah project, contact Kristin Fink, 801-538-7948.
For more information about Partnerships in Character Education Pilot Projects under the Department's Fund for the Improvement of Education, please go to the program's homepage at http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSDFS/fie.html.
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