The students are ready to take their place in the moving-up procession at Centerville Middle School. Pat and the other 6th grade teachers join the ceremony to celebrate the accomplishments of students, faculty, and parents who made this event possible. As Pat watches the ceremonies unfold, she recognizes how using the guiding principles has transformed her own practices, her students, and even this moving-up ceremony. She observes how students, family members, and the rest of the audience demonstrate respect for the occasion and one another. Remembering previous moving-up ceremonies, including those of her own children, she recalls how students and members of the audience would talk during the ceremony, take photographs during times when they were asked to wait, and call out at inappropriate times. During this ceremony, the audience and the students conduct themselves with a sense of shared purpose and dignity.

After the festivities, Pat and her colleague Allen discuss the moving-up ceremonies as they walk to the parking lot. Pat observes, “Everyone's conduct was so much better this year.” Allen laughs and says, “I have to admit that this year was different. Let's see what everyone else says at the professional development workshop next week.”

A week later, Pat and Allen join the rest of their middle school team at the districtwide workshop. The agenda includes three discussion items regarding the character and conduct approach:

• Evaluating results in relation to goals
• Continuing to integrate technology into the instructional, counseling, discipline, and safety initiatives
• Using data to plan professional development activities

The teams agreed to divide patterns of student conduct and school practices into two domains: small stuff and big stuff. Examples of small stuff for student conduct and school practices included noise levels; hallway routines and cleanliness; punctuality; homework patterns; classroom climate; maintenance and repair routines; conduct on buses; and evidence of respect, impulse control, compassion, and equity. Examples of big stuff included patterns of cutting classes and bullying; dropout rates; attendance; in-school and out-of-school suspensions; fights; assaults; drug- or alcohol-related incidents; weapons; theft; vandalism; bombs; arson; any kind of bias incidents; harassment; and all other kinds of threatening behaviors.

The members of the Centerville school community posed the hypothesis: “If the Centerville school community uses RICE to address small, everyday acts in school, then the normative structure of the school will improve.” As a result, they believed, the “big stuff” will reflect the shared purpose of the school, which is to help all students learn well and stay safe. Pat and Allen helped formulate this statement during the workshops a year ago and were motivated to work with their colleagues to examine any data that might support or challenge the hypothesis.

The Centerville school community integrated guiding principles into all its practices. In the process, students were taught how to make connections between what they learn in class and what they do on a day-to-day basis. The teaching, counseling, and discipline programs were designed to help students use RICE to consciously make the right decisions for the right reasons. Administrators, teachers, pupil personnel, support staff, and parents can build a strong sense of shared purpose that fosters cooperation, communication, and positive outcomes for students at Centerville.

All members of the Centerville school community—teachers and counselors, administrators and parents, other staff and students—make their schools learning communities. Through their shared and individual voices, Centerville shows how a school community can adapt the aspects of character appropriate for their school to promote and how it can use character education activities to achieve learning and safety goals.

Through the everyday experiences of the Centerville school community, these educators have demonstrated how they use a basic principle of teaching and learning that has sustained public education for generations: Schools teach and measure what is important to the school and to the community. This is as true for reading and math as it is for character and conduct. For example, every reading program includes instructional and evaluation components. The same is true for every other area, from mathematics to music. Educators can experience the same levels of success when they use a character and conduct approach that includes instructional and evaluation components.

We leave the Centerville staff as they begin to evaluate how consistently and correctly their practices reflect their intended approach to character and conduct. We devote the final parts of this chapter to recommending how educators can evaluate the success of the character and conduct approach in schools or in districts. Our recommendations focus on evaluating results in relation to learning and safety goals and using data to plan professional development activities. We chose these areas of concentration because the majority of districts, schools, and other organizations we have worked with have expressed interest in these areas.

It is our experience that schools and districts benefit from using qualitative (testimony from parents, teachers, students, and others in the school community) and quantitative data to plan and evaluate their own character and conduct approach to achieving learning and safety goals and to plan for professional development. Although many sources and strategies for collecting, interpreting, and reporting data are available, we have included several examples that schools and districts may complete easily as part of their existing evaluation routines.

Evaluating Learning and Safety Goals

Most educators already use both qualitative and quantitative data to plan, implement, and evaluate practices and programs. We recommend that educators incorporate a hypothesis into the planning process and test that hypothesis on the basis of evidence that all parties value, such as academic success and safety. We suggest that districts implementing guiding principles consider the following two hypotheses:

• If student conduct and school safety improve, then student learning will improve.
• If teaching, discipline, and counseling practices are aligned on the basis of the character and conduct approach, then student learning will improve.

In Figure 7.1, we list some of the data that schools may choose to collect. Depending on fiscal conditions or proximity to a cooperating university, some schools will have fairly modest ways to collect data; other schools will be more ambitious. We recommend that schools collect some baseline data related to that school's goals, and at six-month intervals, collect data to see if they are on track. In the process of achieving learning and safety goals, results can occur incrementally. In our experience, a school or district can take from one to three years to transform its normative structure across all grade levels.

Figure 7.1—Collecting and Measuring Data

By using the categories of data described in Figure 7.1, schools and districts can track and achieve progress toward performance indicators through meaningful professional development activities. Although much of the data is quantifiable (rate of cutting classes, attendance, grades, test scores), do not underestimate the value of teacher, parent, and student surveys and testimony. Use that information in creating a professional development program to improve student learning and safety.

Professional Development

Educators report the most significant gains in student learning and school safety when the professional development program includes the characteristics described in Figure 7.2. Because guiding principles are designed to transform the normative structure of the school, participants in all the professional development programs use RICE to engage in their own learning and to align their curriculum, instruction, assessment, counseling, and discipline activities.

Figure 7.2—Characteristics of Effective Professional Development

The form and variety of professional development activities can vary, depending on the goals, school or district culture, and financial resources. On-site workshops, action research, mentoring, online learning, and distance learning can work, although some on-site workshops and collegial sharing are required.

Professional development initiatives are likely to succeed when educators use data to evaluate programs, assess student needs, and plan professional development on the basis of student performance. Data-driven practices are particularly valuable when a school or district integrates the character and conduct approach into the teaching, discipline, and counseling practices. Data help all participants measure the progress they are making toward their goals.

Through tragic lessons that continue to grab headlines, our children have taught us that safety, learning, character, and conduct are inextricably connected. We do not have to stand at the edge of the grave of a child or adult cut down by school violence to know we must do what we do best right now: teach our children that we belong to each other, that we respect each other, that we connect with each other. Metal detectors and surveillance equipment will not keep us safe. The most important safety feature in a school is the welcoming, inclusive approach it takes to help all children learn what they need to know and do in our academic program, our hallways, and throughout our schools to achieve, to participate, to respect each other, to get help when they need it, and to feel secure.

We cannot protect our children from facing difficult questions. We can help them develop the character and conduct they need to answer those questions, so they make the right decisions for the right reasons. They depend on us to help them learn and stay safe. Their future—and ours—depends on how well we succeed.