Missouri Studies Connect Character Education & Student Achievement
$4 million in projects, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, show improvement through character education
Two recently released four-year studies, involving over 100 Missouri schools and more than 45,000 students, show a positive correlation between using character education and improved student achievement.
The two Missouri projects were among 39 Partnerships in Character Education Program (PCEP) grants awarded by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools in 2002. Each $2 million research project was managed by CHARACTERplus®, the character education unit of Cooperating School Districts of Greater St. Louis, Inc. (CSD). CSD is a non-profit consortium providing educational and business services to 62 public school districts in Missouri and Illinois.
Each project demonstrated statistically significant positive changes in students and schools, which used a prescribed character education program. The first project implemented CSD's CHARACTERplus process -- a 10-step approach that integrates character education into a school community -- in 64 randomly selected schools throughout Missouri. The second project implemented the teaching techniques of the California-based Caring School Community™ program in 40 randomly selected St. Louis-area schools that already used the CHARACTERplus process.
“The results of these two studies are truly significant,” said Liz Gibbons, director of CHARACTERplus (www.characterplus.org). “In order for character education to work effectively in schools, it has to be much more that just a “word of the month” or a ten minute, stand-alone lesson. These studies prove that when schools integrate character education into the entire school community, the rewards will include increased student achievement, improved student discipline, and better school-parent relations.”
Gibbons added, “We now have valid data that supports what character education does in the classroom every day. We are very proud that CHARACTERplus and Cooperating School Districts in Missouri played the key role in proving the positive effects of character education in the classroom.”
Overviews of each of the two research studies and their results follow:
Missouri Show Me
CHARACTERplus® Implementation Study
Through this study, the CHARACTERplus® program was implemented in
64 randomly selected schools in Missouri, which had not previously
used the CHARACTERplus process. Schools participated in a phased
approach, with a group serving as control schools for comparison
purposes in an experimental research designed to assess the impact
of CHARACTERplus. The project was designed to demonstrate the
efficacy of character education as embodied in the CHARACTERplus
process, an approach that integrates character education into the
school community through CHARACTERplus' “Ten Essentials”: community
participation, character education policy, identified and defined
character traits, integrated curriculum, experiential learning,
evaluation, adult role models, staff development, student
leadership and sustaining the program. The project involved more
than 2,000 teachers serving nearly 25,000 students in 64 Missouri
K-12 schools. Funding for the study was provided by Federal
grant R215V020032 from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of
Safe and Drug Free Schools.
Result Highlights:
Student achievement in communication arts increased as much as 17%
for schools in the program for at last one year. Student office
referrals decreased 41%, with an overall difference between
“treatment” and “control” schools of 63%.
Web Resources for this Study
o View a summary of the results and evaluation: http://www.characterplus.org/page.asp?page=1686
o View an overview of the project at the U.S. Department of
Education:
http://www.cetac.org//pageTemplate.cfm?centerTemplate=Resources/current_abstracts/mo1.cfm
St. Louis Caring School
Community™ Implementation Study
This study, which sought to improve student achievement and reduce
discipline problems by enhancing school culture, involved a sample
of 40 randomly selected St. Louis-area public schools that
currently implement the CHARACTERplus process. Ten schools began
implementation each of the four years, with the last group of 10
serving as control schools. The experimental research design was
developed to assess the impact on student achievement, school
climate and school behavior. This study focused on enhancing
teaching procedures through implementation the California-based
Caring School Community™ project, which involves class meetings,
buddies (cross-grade student pairings), school-home activities and
school-wide activities. More than 20,000 students and 1,600
staff members, grades K-6, in the St. Louis (Mo.) metropolitan area
were involved in the study. Funding for the study was provided
by Federal grant R215S020232 from the U.S. Department of Education,
Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools.
Result Highlights:
Student achievement increased as much as 47% in communication arts
and as much as 54% in math for schools in the program for three
years. Also, student office referrals decreased 19%, with an
overall difference between “treatment” schools (those involved in
the study for at least one year) and “control” schools of 31%.
Web Resources for this Study:
o View a summary of the results and evaluation: http://www.characterplus.org/page.asp?page=1686
o View an overview of the project at the U.S. Department of
Education:
http://www.cetac.org//pageTemplate.cfm?centerTemplate=Resources/current_abstracts/mo2.cfm
