Character Education Found to Fall Short in Federal Study
Character education has grown in popularity among educators and parents alike, but the largest
federal study
of schoolwide programs to date has found that, for the most part, they don’t produce any improvements in student behavior or academic performance.
The Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. Department of Education’s research arm, gauged the effects of seven typical schoolwide programs from across the country: the Academic and Behavioral Competencies Program of the Center for Children and Families at the University at Buffalo, in New York; the Competence Support Program of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Social Work; the Nashville-based Love in a Big World; the Twin Falls, Idaho-based Positive Action; Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS), run by the Channing Bete Co. of South Deerfield, Mass.; the 4Rs (Reading, Writing, Respect, and Resolution) program, operated by the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility in New York City; and Second Step, run by the Seattle-based Committee for Children.
Researchers from the department’s contractor, the Princeton, N.J.-based Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., randomly assigned 84 schools in six states to receive one of the programs or not. They studied the implementation and outcomes for the schools and more than 6,000 students from the start of 3rd grade to the end of 5th grade. At the end of each year, researchers looked at the effects of the programs, both overall and as individual programs, on 20 indicators relating to social and emotional competence, academics, behavior and perceptions of the school climate. They analyzed the results both for students overall and for four subgroups: gender; students with different initial risk levels; students who had been in the program from the beginning versus newcomers; and students in participating schools with good or poor fidelity...
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