Character Education: What Is It, How Does It Work, and How Effective Is It? The Character Education Partnership

In an era of “high stakes testing, ” policy-makers face a daunting task: exactly which educational practices should they embrace in order to produce the desired results. Adding to this dilemma is that even the concept of “desired results ” becomes a debatable issue. On one side, federal legislation demands that improved student performance become the criterion for instructional success: on the other, advocates for “social and emotional intelligence ” point out that our schools truly have a responsibility to develop the character of our students. At a time when our nation is recoiling from the excesses of Enron, the question arises: do schools have a responsibility to develop the ethical character of their students, and is such training at odds with the march toward measurable academic success? A growing body of research on character education is suggesting that this relatively recent renewal of the practice of teaching ethics and morality is showing a range of positive social and academic outcomes in schools. What is interesting is that three recent studies show that effective character education programs go hand-in-hand with academic success