Character education includes and complements a broad range of educational approaches such as whole child education, service learning, social-emotional learning, and civic education. All share a commitment to helping young people become responsible, caring, and contributing citizens.

Because students spend so much time in school, our schools offer a critically important opportunity to ensure that all students get the support and help they need to reach their full potential. Schools that embrace character education become places people want to be because they bring out the best in everyone.

While not a “quick fix,” character education provides effective solutions to ethical and academic issues such as bullying, cheating, truancy, and dropout rates that are of great concern in many schools. In addition, as our National Schools of Character demonstrate, character education can be done effectively in any school setting. Educators from a diverse array of schools have successfully used character education to transform their school cultures, reduce discipline referrals, increase academic achievement for all learners, develop global citizens, and improve job satisfaction and retention among teachers. Learn more about the criteria CEP uses to determine its National Schools of Character by downloading our 11 Principles of Effective Character Education. 

To be effective in schools, character education must involve everyone—school staff, parents, students, and community members—and be part of every school day. It must be integrated into the curriculum as well as school culture. When this happens and school communities unite around developing character, schools see amazing results.

Character education is not new—and it is something we can all agree on. It was an important objective for the first U.S. public schools and today it is mandated or encouraged in most states. The current movement is simply a reminder of education’s long history of stressing shared values and character.

“Throughout history, and in cultures all over the world, education rightly conceived has had two great goals: to help students become smart and to help them become good.”

–Thomas Lickona & Matthew Davidson, Smart & Good High Schools

Check out these additional resources to learn more about character education:

• Understanding Effective Character Education by Marvin Berkowitz, PhD.
• “What is Values Education?” published in the International Journal of Educational Research.
• What Works in Character Education – A Report for Policy Makers & Opinion Leaders
• What Works in Character Education – A Research-driven Guide for Educators