Character Education Program Evaluation & Assessment
Regardless of the scale of your character education initiative, it’s a good idea to establish some means of evaluating it so you know whether you are achieving your goals. Such an assessment may be as rigorous as a full blown longitudinal study, or it can be as informal as counting disciplinary referrals or gathering anecdotal teacher impressions.
Assessments are usually designed to measure one or more of the following:
• changes in the students
• changes in the school climate
• how well the staff is implementing the program
The Character Education Partnership (CEP) has three very helpful publications on assessment and evaluation available as downloads on their website. Here are direct links to those files.
A Primer for Evaluating A Character Education Initiative
The Primer is intended primarily for those with limited expertise in program evaluation; that is, for practitioners who are committed to character education and would now like to find out if their efforts are effective. The Primer will help you understand the nature of the evaluation, the range of alternatives that are available to you, and the critical decisions that are necessary for an evaluation.
Character Education Quality Standards
This publication outlines key components of effective character education and allows schools and districts to evaluate their efforts in relation to these criteria. This instrument provides a means for educators, administrators, and community members to reflect on current practices, identify short and long-term objectives, and develop or improve a strategic plan.
Character Education Evaluation Toolkit
The Evaluation Toolkit provides beginning evaluators with background information and step-by-step instructions for implementing a useful, accurate, and cost-efficient program evaluation. Addresses common needs and concerns of school-based and classroom evaluators by offering a range of practical and user-friendly evaluation methods.
If you really want to dig into what's available in the way of assessment instruments, visit CEP's Assessment Instrument Index page. And while you're at it, you may as well explore their whole website. It has a lot of good stuff in it.
