State Educational Agency FY 1997-2000 | State Educational Agency FY 2002-2005

Show Me CHARACTERplus FY 1997-2000

Contact: Rusty Rosenkoetter
P.O. Box 480
Jefferson City, MO 65102
(573) 526-6656
rrosenko@mail.dese.state.mo.us

Show-Me CHARACTER plus

Application Number: R215V970001
Project Period: 3/1/97–6/30/01
FY 1997 Award: $249,524
FY 1998 Award: $249,622
FY 1999 Award: $249,254
FY 2000 Award: $249,558

During the first phase of the Missouri Character Education Pilot Project, the grantee was able to:

• implement PREP in three Jennings School District schools (one elementary, one middle school, and one high school) and document the replication process;
• develop an evaluation system and the tools to assess the success of character education using student data on behavior, academic performance, and attitudes;

1. establish a character education Web site, and test and evaluate technology training resources;
2. collaborate with the University of Missouri at Columbia, College of Education to implement character education training for preservice teachers; and
3. expand community involvement in character education.

Additionally, the following documents were published and disseminated: Evaluation Resource Guide, Replication Handbook for School and Community Decision Makers, and the Show-Me Character Idea Book (in partnership with Missouri 4–H). The Web site (http://info.csd.org/staffdev/chared/prep.html) is active. Participation in a cooperative venture with the National Conference for Community and Justice resulted in a series of interactive TV dialogues with high school students on racism.

Goals for the second phase of the project (1999–01) include replicating PREP in at least one school community in each state region. The state’s Regional Professional Development Centers will field test the replication process and evaluation tools.

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Show Me CHARACTERplus FY 2002-2005

Contact: Rusty Rosenkoetter
P.O. Box 480
Jefferson City, MO 65102
(573) 526-6656
rrosenko@mail.dese.state.mo.us

Show-Me CHARACTER plus

Application Number: R215V020032
Project Period: 10/1/02 - 9/30/06
FY 2002 Award: $524,949
FY 2003 Award: $508,527
FY 2004 Award: $532,352
FY 2005 Award: $550,749

Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), in partnership with Cooperating School Districts of Greater St. Louis (CSD), proposes to conduct a four-year, statewide Implementation Study of the Missouri CHARACTERplus Project.

This project is designed to demonstrate the efficacy of character education as embodied in the widely used CHARACTERplus process, a project developed by CSD. The proposed study will build on and expand the evaluation component of the recently completed Pilot Project that developed and tested the CHARACTERplus replication process. This is a data-based implementation process.

A quasi-experimental design will be used to assess the effectiveness of the character education implementation. Sixteen schools per year will be phased in over the project period for a total of 64 schools. The control group of sixteen schools will receive treatment only after the final data collection period for the control group. This design allows for the study of first, second, and third year implementation as compared to a control. In addition, it enables analysis at the elementary, middle school, high school, and combined (middle/high) school levels. A rich qualitative base for thick description of program implementation undergirds the quasi-experimental quantitative data. This optimizes the opportunity for demonstrating the effectiveness of high quality character education programming.

The operation plan for the project takes advantage of the ongoing CHARACTERplus staff and organization at CSD, where the project began in 1988. After expanding to more than 400 schools in the St. Louis area, CHARACTERplus was taken statewide during the Pilot Project. A three-year evaluation of that project documented that the process was effective and that schools showed "significant positive growth" for many of the key concepts in character education. The proposed study is designed to evaluate true effectiveness of the project by adding a control group of schools, and it will interrelate the character education data to the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) annual test data.

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