By Lisa Greeves
Manager, Promising Practices
The quiet summer months are a great time to examine your school’s assessment processes and plan new ways to integrate assessment into your character education initiatives to gauge strengths and weaknesses. The 2011 and the newly-announced 2012 Promising Practices winners boast some innovative ways of integrating assessment into both school-level and district-level character education. Read on to discover some new ideas that will inspire you to try new ways to assess your character methods next year!
At the district level, Imagine Schools, based in Arlington, Virginia, utilize a Year-End Character Self Evaluation on all 73 Imagine Schools campuses and were a 2011 Promising Practice winner. All 73 schools set goals and track progress for students’ positive character development using qualitative and quantitative data gathering and analysis, then complete a narrative summary to review their progress toward meeting their goals at the end of the year.
Also at the district level, Caddo Parish School District in Shreveport, Louisiana uses assessment creatively in its K-Rock practice and a 2012 Promising Practice winner. K-Rock works with kindergartners and analyzes their character education program and helps create a solid foundation of responsibility. Read more about their winning use of assessment in character education here.
Imagine Charter School at Weston in Weston, Florida, was a 2011 Promising Practice winner for their Character Development Progress Report. In this practice, students learn how to reflect on their character and assess their own growth using the Progress Report every quarter. Read more about how this practice encourages student-use of assessment here.
Finally, West Patent Elementary School in Bedford Hills, New York, was a 2012 Promising Practice winner for their practice titled Omode Character Education Writing Contest. In this practice, students assessed the relevance and success of their grade level’s portion of the character education song and wrote about their conclusions in individual essays. Read more here about this winning practice that combines student assessment of character activities as well as student-writing.
You can also search the Promising Practices database for more assessment-related practices that have been recognized for the past several years. Select Advanced Search in order to search by the topic of assessment.
