The New Mexico Character Education Partnerships will bring together the New Mexico Public Education Department, Albuquerque Public Schools and the Character Counts Cooperative in a project to build statewide leadership for sustainable character education in New Mexico schools and communities. The partnership will fund and support 60, 3-year projects to establish character education in schools and communities in the following core values: trust, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship.

Project leadership councils composed of representatives of all stakeholders–schools, community leaders and parents–will guide local projects and ensure the involvement of all members of school and community populations. Local project partners will encompass community youth organizations, such as Boys’ Clubs, Girls’ Clubs and the YMCA, chambers of commerce and organizations representing ethnic or cultural minorities.

By renewing, strengthening and expanding programs initiated in the nineties, the partnership will build statewide leadership and sustainability into character education in New Mexico. Our plan features two tiers of training, a basic tier to renew and expand programs and a second tier to create and implement a sustainability model that infuses character education into the academic curriculum, aligns it with state expectations and integrates it into competitive sports programs.

Project evaluation includes both impact and process evaluation. The plan features training and support for teacher-researchers who will work with the evaluator to assess the impact of the project on students and school communities. The evaluator will monitor implementation of project strategies through process evaluation. Together, the two components will provide performance feedback and guide the project toward meeting its goal of statewide leadership and sustainability for character education in New Mexico.

The Fresno Partnerships in Character Education Program Grant is a joint effort with the Fresno Unified School District, the Bonner Center for Character Education at California State University (Fresno), and WestEd, an evaluation and educational research entity. This grant proposes to: 1) Train adults in the school system at all levels in ethical decision-making, conduct and to create positive role models; 2) Instruct students directly in desirable character traits and resulting behaviors associated with those traits, through the Second Step character education curriculum and the creation of Language Arts lessons incorporated in the baseline core curriculum at the elementary level; 3) Support teachers in the implementation of those lessons using research-based effective teaching strategies designed to improve student achievement and classroom management; and 4) Work to improve the physical/psychological factors at school sites that research suggests influence student behavior and achievement.

Baldwin County Public Schools (BCPS), in partnership with its parent support organizations, the Circuit Court of Baldwin County, and Alabama Gulf Coast Young Life, an ecumenical faith-based organization, will conduct a four-year, district-wide implementation study of the ShowMe CHARACTER Program and evaluate its impact on school improvement and student achievement. It will demonstrate the efficacy of an evidence-based character education program that is integrated into the classroom for improving the climate in a school district–resulting in healthy schools with high levels of student achievement.

The project will use a stratified random, treatment and control group, multi-tier design; the sampling unit is the school. All 46-district schools (24,000 students) will participate. Four surveys and a behavior form will be used to collect climate and implementation data annually from parents, staff and students. The instruments were developed through other projects with established reliability and validity. Data on student discipline referrals will be obtained at the school level. Data from state assessments in math, reading and writing will be used to relate student achievement with program implementation.

Six research objectives are scientifically based–and include the following: student achievement, student discipline, school climate (students, staff, parents), and effective project implementation. Each as an applicable measure, time frame, mode of analysis and factor measured. Expected outcomes are: systemic high quality character education in all schools; school leadership teams that are skilled in data-based planning and ShowMe Character strategies; community involvement in every school; district policies and support for character education.

The Quitman County Board of Education is implementing a character education program that can be integrated into the teaching curriculum in grades K through 8 and which will prove to be culturally appropriate for a small, poor, rural predominantly African American one-school system and community. This project, Character Education for Partners in Education (CE PIE) will use the Too Good for Violence (TGFV) program that teaches students caring, cooperation, fairness, and respect. The goals are to (1) develop an implementation strategy for the use of Too Good for Violence, a prevention and character education program that will be integrated into classroom instruction, consistent with state academic content standards, and with other educational reform efforts; (2) empower parents to be better able to support the character education of their children; and (3) to teach students caring, cooperation, fairness, and respect. Expected outcomes are: (1) an approach that will be fully informed of applicable standards and local needs; (2) parents better able to support the desired character traits in their children; (3) fewer incidents of disruptive behavior at school and between home and school; and more practice of positive caring, cooperative, fair, and respectful behaviors by students.

The conceptual framework for CE PIE is based on Catalano’s and Hawkins’ Social Development Strategy, that proffers that behavior change occurs when individuals gain information about the risks and benefits of certain behaviors, form attitudes based on that information, and learn behavioral skills.