Dear CEP Colleagues and Friends,
In the fall, I had the pleasure of meeting many of you at the National Forum in San Francisco. Now I have the honor of taking the helm of CEP from Joe Mazzola. I want to formally thank Joe for his superb leadership over the past five plus years. He and former Chairman of the Board, David Fisher, have set us up for great success. They’ve established processes, procedures, policies and programs that leave CEP poised to expand throughout our nation and beyond to help many more students become citizens of good character.
After almost 10 years as a public school leader, I’m excited to focus now on my passion—character education. To me, there’s nothing more important than helping students develop their integrity, courage, respectfulness, selflessness, and willingness to take responsibility for their own character development. But having been in the “trenches” of public education for most of the past 10 years, I know there are huge obstacles in our way.
I became the leader of the largest group of public charter schools in Colorado on June 1, 2002. At that time, I estimate that my job focused somewhat on compliance with state and federal statutes, but that it was primarily concerned with promoting effectiveness in the classroom. When I retired from leading a portfolio of schools with 10,522 students K-12 in December, I felt my job dealt mostly with compliance with law and less about effectiveness in the classroom.
High stakes testing has become all-consuming in many schools. And the large-scale movement toward tying test scores to merit and performance pay for teachers and principals has created unintended consequences. During my times in the military, we used to say “you get what you inspect not what you expect.” With so much riding on the outcome of standardized testing, I’ve seen a huge increase in “teaching to the test.” Worse yet, I see a national scandal emerging as teachers and school leaders cheat to help student test results improve. There are many school districts dealing with this epidemic.
In my new role at CEP, I’d like to lead a “national call to character” to reverse these trends. The CEP team of volunteers and staff are committed to working tirelessly to identify and share best practices, advocate for healthy school climate and culture and engage major character influencers of students—mainly teachers and parents.
My thanks to the CEP Board of Directors for the faith they’ve placed in me to lead this organization into the future. I look forward to meeting you in person, by webinar, on the phone or electronically. As a team, we can continue to take concrete steps forward to advance the noble mission of character education.
Sincerely,
Mark Hyatt, President/CEO
Character Education Partnership
