I was happy to see that McLean High School (where I taught before retiring from teaching and coming to work for CEP) was ranked 13^th on the list of schools in the Washington, DC area. It was the highest ranked school in Fairfax County Public School District, a fact that I’m sure made the folks on the McLean faculty proud—especially since they were also ranked high in the national list of the top 200 high schools.  I’m sure there is lots of celebrating going on in schools all over who consider themselves to be among the best high schools in America because they made the list.

But is that legitimate? I agree with Mathews on the need to offer challenging courses to anyone who wants to try. As a former Advanced Placement English teacher, I’ve seen kids who had never taken an advanced class before rise to the challenge in my class. Even if they didn’t pass the test, the introduction to the advanced curriculum and the struggle to learn pays dividends in college, which is what Mathews has found through his research. But being a good school requires so much more than that.

CEP recently released its own list of outstanding schools, the 2011 National Schools of Character. Here are 44 schools that are giving their best efforts to develop caring learning communities where students are engaged, motivated, and succeeding. Each and every one of these schools is a beacon of light showing what good things happen when schools move past the test and embrace all aspects of child development. But the process to evaluate these schools is based on much more than test scores and requires an in-depth analysis of each school’s individual culture, rather than a comparison against other schools. Each of these schools has documented its success in meeting the guidelines of CEP’s 11 Principles of Effective Character Education.

I’d like these schools to get even a fraction of the coverage Mathew’s Challenge Index gets, and I’d like to see more schools want to achieve school of character status rather than worry about a numbered ranking. It’s the overall focus on the student’s well being and not just test rankings that will make a difference.

By the fall of 2008, Greenfield Elementary School was well on its way to integrating its core values of respect, responsibility and kindness into our school culture.  This is when we began the serious task of taking a critical look at our school-wide discipline system, through the eyes of the Character Education Partnership’s 11 Principles and our own core values.

What Discipline Looked Like Then
Our school operated with a “ticket” system for severe infractions (from a list of disrespectful and unsafe behaviors) and “card turns” in the classroom (green to yellow to red and beyond).  Students who earned a ticket also earned the consequence of after-school detention.  Students who “got to red” on the color chart missed a recess or lost a similar privilege.  Chronic card turns also resulted, ultimately, in the student receiving a ticket as well.  On the reward side, we offered “Caught Being Good” slips for children who “did the right thing” when they thought no one was looking.  These slips were pulled from a jar in the office once a week for prizes at the school store.

At that time, our school was a well-organized and safe environment where students had consistent, clear and well-defined limits (rules) and consequences.  In the classroom, there was order and predictability.  Our school had an overall feeling of calm – due primarily to this consistency, coupled with the high level of warmth and kindness emanating from our staff.  On the surface, our discipline system worked.  Yet, there were several underlying problems it was unable to address or mitigate.  For example, students with chronic behavior problems never seemed to improve and often times got worse.  Teachers commented that, although efficient and expedient, the use of card turns often created anger, resentment and discouragement in students that seemed to last all day.  Our fifth grade teachers finally decided to do away with card turns for this very reason.  We also began to realize that our “Caught Being Good” slips had little or no effect on disruptive students, nor did they give our more compliant students any framework for understanding their own moral choices and why they were good or bad.

The Change Process
Using the 11 Principles rubric and the recommendations from our NSOC site visitors (we had been named a NSOC Finalist in May 2008), we began the change process.  Our Character Education Committee developed a sub-committee on school wide discipline.  It was co-chaired by second grade teacher and lower team leader, Lynn Cronin and school social worker, Katie Ehmann.  They researched best practice and character-based discipline in school.  We then met as an entire committee with representation from every grade level, special classes, support services and community-based services.  We used the Professional Learning Community model to begin working together to formulate a new, character-based system of discipline.  We started by reading selected research, discussed our current practices in light of this research, and made lists of what we do well and what isn’t working.  We created new school rules based on our core values and began to think deeply about how children learn.  We began to model and practice more and more when our students didn’t display the behaviors we were asking them to demonstrate. These discussions guided us in the formulation of a logical and natural consequence approach to discipline.  We also embraced three compelling strategies we learned from the Responsive Classroom model: loss of privilege, “you break it you fix it” and apology of action.   In March, 2009, we launched our new plan by totally eliminating card turns, tickets and “Caught Being Good” slips.

What Discipline Looks Like Now
In order to provide a visual tool for teachers to refer to when making critical decisions about student discipline and to provide a consistent framework for such decision-making, we created a pyramid of interventions in graphic form.  On the base of the pyramid were all the school wide practices that support character development, teach children the “whys” of good behavior and build the social-emotional culture of the school.  These practices include Morning Meeting, “Solve-It-Spot,” class and grade level (team) meetings, peer mediation and leadership group.  On the next level are mild levels of intervention such as “Refocus” (tool to allow students to refocus and rejoin the group without the disruption of teaching or learning); logical/natural consequences; modeling and practice and discussion.  Moderate interventions include those mentioned above:  loss of privilege, “you break it you fix it” and apology of action.  For serious discipline matters, we now us a Reflection Sheet that has guided, character-based questions that help students understand how their behavior hurt others: including classmates, teacher, parents/family and themselves.  Before they tell us their plan for solving this behavior problem, students meet with 2-3 adults in a “character” conference to go over the reflection sheet and talk about it in depth.  Our goal is to create students who are intrinsically motivated to “do the right thing, even when no one is looking.”  At the very top of the pyramid are those interventions that are part of a comprehensive behavior support plan that is individualized for those students who need this type of support.  We are in the process of studying Ross Greene’s Collaborative Problem Solving model for use with individual students in the future.

A Work in Progress
We just finished creating a discipline folder with forms and suggestions for all staff members to use.  We are still discussing what works well and what needs revision.  We feel that we are on the right track toward creating a school culture where students really learn about the whys of good behavior, grow in conscience, develop morally and socially and understand at a deep level our core values of respect, responsibility and kindness.

In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, S.R. Covey suggests that when planning a program one should start with the end in mind.  At Long School, before planning new initiatives, the character leadership team analyzes data from the CHARACTERplus® School Report, completed each spring, to get a basic picture of the current state of our school.

The CHARACTERplus® School Report is a survey of staff, students, and parents designed to assess individuals’ opinions, feelings, and beliefs about the school.  That data provides useful information, from which the character education team identifies specific areas of need (e.g. Students’ Feelings of Belonging, School Expectations, etc.) that correlate with principles from Character Education Partnership’s Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education.  At Long School, assessment plays the role of bridge between what has been and what should be.  It is the end and the beginning of an endless cycle of school improvement.

The likelihood that character initiatives will survive and thrive over the years, regardless of changes in student population, personnel, and community is also carefully considered when planning new initiatives.

Sustainable Initiatives In-Place:  Long School participates in the Caring School Community initiative.  There are four basis CSC components imbedded at Long School. These practices/strategies are class meetings, buddy activities, home-side activities, and school-wide activities (buddy block).  Note: Long specialists (art, music, and PE teachers) have taken the buddies and school-wide practices and combined them into an effective and sustainable component called “Buddy Block” (CEP Promising Practices Award Winner, 2006).

Teachers conduct class meetings routinely at Long School.  Teachers employ the meetings to build student autonomy (empowerment), classroom community (sense of belonging), and problem solving and conflict resolution skills.  In the first two years of CSC, teachers were asked to conduct class meetings for observation by CSC coaches and administration.  Now, unscheduled observations and walk-through visits confirm that class meetings are conducted often and effectively and have become an imbedded, sustainable practice at Long School.

Buddy activities at Long School are as natural and as imbedded in the curriculum as are reading and mathematics lessons.  Often, buddy activities are reading and mathematics lessons.  It is simply understood by teachers and students that each class will have a buddy class and each student will have a buddy.  Teachers, students, and parents have come to value greatly this opportunity for cross-age social development.  Teachers are provided planning time during numerous early-release dates to plan buddy activities together.  This time provision has been identified by the team as vital to the sustainability of this program.  Planning time should be protected by the character education team.

School-wide and buddy activities have been transformed by Long School specialists into a cross-strategy called “Buddy Block”.  During a buddy block activity, the specialists take entire grade-levels of buddies (two grade-levels at one time) and work together on a school-wide service learning project.   Again, teachers, students, and families have come to expect and value these activities.  A special schedule is implemented on the days in which a buddy block takes place.   Once again, time provisions for planning and implementation, as well as scheduling considerations are critical to success and sustainability.

There are many resources to help schools assess initiatives and plan for sustainability.  I would advise educators to seek out these resources.  When an effective system of assessment and renewal is implemented, the school will grow in leaps and bounds toward the common vision shared by students, educators, and community members.