Using Your Plan to Track Progress and Make Changes for Continuous Improvement
Assessment is the key word at Guidepost #7. Remember your first steps in the journey when you assessed what the school was doing right and what you wanted to change. Now is the reality check to see what has changed.
How can you do it? If it was discipline or attendance or bullying or suspensions that were your goals, assessing progress is easy-just look at the records, using the "pre-character education year" as the baseline. Most of us want to change school culture, a more ambitious dream. Again, disciplinary statistics are important, but brief school climate surveys of students, faculty, and parents will provide invaluable insight. Focus groups also are amazing sources in finding out what is working and not working. Collect performance data (standardized test scores, report card grades, number of students volunteering, percentage attaining the high honor roll). This data shows how character education, by improving the conditions for student learning, has actually enhanced it.
Perhaps you want to be more ambitious and work with a program evaluation consultant so that you will be ready to apply for local, state or federal grants that require some evidence of success. See the evaluation section of this website for resources here. Whatever your specific choice of evaluation strategy, make assessment an annual responsibility of your core committee; once you have the results, go back to Guidepost #6 and let the world know how well you are doing.
A Closer Look at Guidepost #7 Within Schools
Radix Elementary School
Zane North Elementary School
Carl W. Goetz Middle School
Memorial Middle School
Pequannock Valley School
School: Radix Elementary School, Williamstown NJ
Grade Levels: PreK – 4
CONTACT
Raymond C. Dinovi, Jr.
Principal
(856) 728-8650
E-mail: rdinovi@monroetwp.k12.nj.us
Website: http://www.monroetwp.k12.nj.us/es/radix/radix.htm
Guidepost #7 Using Your Plan to Track Progress and Make Changes for Continuous Improvement
The State Grant provided Radix a support system. Another common desire that surfaced from the initial focus group meetings was the need to develop a tool to assess children’s comprehension of character education. Faculty worked cooperatively to develop an assessment rubric and writing prompts for children to complete that mirrored the tasks on the NJASK test. The character education advisor worked with Rutgers University, through the Grant, to conduct a pre and post longitudinal study. Every year, for four years, Rutgers University students came to Radix and surveyed/interviewed students, parents and teachers. This data was analyzed by the Rutgers students and shared each year with the school. There was also a lickerd scale survey administered to faculty during the initial focus group meetings that would be given five years later to see how their perceptions of character education at Radix had changed.
A team of teachers at Radix uses the CEP 11 Principles to continually reflect upon their ideology. The initiative has a snowball effect where good behavior becomes great behavior. Students mentor new students with the Radix Code of Conduct and how they are a family that treats each other with caring and respect; each individual is responsible for their actions. As stated previously, this process is cyclical with reflection and growth. The journey has only just begun.
School: Zane North Elementary School, Collingswood NJ
Grade Levels: PreK – 6
CONTACT
Thomas Santo
Principal
(856) 962-5710
E-mail: santo@collingswood.k12.nj.us
Website: http://zane.collingswood.k12.nj.us/index.jsp
Guidepost #7 Using Your Plan to Track Progress and Make Changes for Continuous Improvement
Presently, Zane North is participating in the DSACS (Developing Safe and Civil Schools) project. Through informal discussions, research based data, professional development, and administrative support Zane North’s strengths and enrich shortcomings will be assessed. As per the DSACS manual, “Training, technical assistance supportive services and other resources are provided or coordinated by project staff at Rutgers University through this initiative. They are intended to assist school staff in organizing various resources, programs and services to create strong SECD conditions designed to result in reduced at-risk student behavior, the development of positive learning climates and improved academic performance among students in participating schools. Further, the DSACS initiative is aligned with and can assist districts in meeting the requirements of N.J.A.C. 6A-16-7 (the regulations for the Code of Student Conduct), QSAC, and those of the HIB initiative and safe and drug free schools.” It is our hope that Zane North’s participation in this program will help move toward a new tier of education and a renewed vision for our the Zane North community.
School: Carl W. Goetz Middle School, Jackson, NJ
Grade Levels: 6 - 8
CONTACT
Carol Lawrence
7th grade Literacy Teacher
(732) 833-4610
E-mail: calawrence@jacksonsd.org
Website: http://goetz.jacksonsd.org/home.aspx
Guidepost #7 Using Your Plan to Track Progress and Make Changes for Continuous Improvement
The Character Education/Service-Learning Committee meets monthly in either small focus groups or large general meetings as needed. Several sub-committees have formed to work on individual projects. Everyone involved is asked to document experiences both in the form of student and teacher written reflection and reports, as well as with photo documentation. The staff is invited to comment on observable changes in school climate, and point out weaknesses. The committee maintains an open door policy and is known to be very approachable. Classroom and school wide data is collected via discussions, tangible products, and surveys. This data has been shared with the Jackson Board of Education, the parents, the local businesses, the local government and law enforcement agencies, and the media. The Carl W. Goetz School is confidently tracking progress and endeavoring to make changes for continuous improvement.
School: Memorial Middle School, Fair Lawn, NJ
Grade Levels: 6 - 8
CONTACT
Laurianne Brunetti
Character Education Coordinator/7th-8th LAL
(201) 401-2351
E-mail: lbrunetti@fairlawnschools.org
Website: https://www.edline.net/GroupHome.page
Guidepost #7 Using Your Plan to Track Progress and Make Changes for Continuous Improvement
“Celebrate Character” has been part of out school fabric for eleven years and it continue to grow and evolve. While we maintain our existing programs and practices, we continue to incorporate new ideas and activities. For example, our school’s “Helping Hands” initiative has reached record numbers each year with dozens of students donating their hair to organizations such as “Locks of Love,” serving as peer tutors and helpers, participating in community and school-wide clean-up projects, volunteering at senior centers, child-care centers, camps for children with special needs and hospitals, contributing to their local places and communities of worship, participating in a variety of after-school programs and local or national charitable endeavors. Students have also begun to develop and plan their own independent service initiatives and take on a leadership role in encouraging and leading others to join them as they reach out. These statistics help us to track progress and to establish a service network of opportunities where students begin to see how they can us their hands and hearts to help others. Tracking this progress also helps us to reflect upon how we are making stronger connections to our “pillar character principles” and philosophies and to determine which areas we need to focus upon more specifically.
The process of review and reflection allows us to analyze the impact that our character education program has had and continues to have on students, staff, families and the community. We have found that as the program has grown and changed and evolved so has our students’ view of their role in their school, their families, their community and their world. They have begun to see that service is a form of responsibility and we have begun to see that they now choose more often to do the right thing not just because they have to but because they want to. What started within two classrooms, has now reached beyond our walls to students, parents and staff choosing to lend a hand to others and to find ways to help. Students have begun to see that figuring out how to make things better is what’s most important.
School: Pequannock Valley School, Pompton Plains, NJ
Grade Levels: 6 - 8
CONTACT
Dr. William H. Trusheim
Principal
(973) 616-6050
E-mail: william.trusheim@pequannock.org
Website: http://pvms.pequannock.org/index.cfm?sid=39
Guidepost #7 Using Your Plan to Track Progress and Make Changes for Continuous Improvement
As mentioned in Guidepost #5, our district hired a new superintendent whose district goals lowered the priority of Character Education. Fortunately, Pequannock Valley School, as a community, still believes in the importance of Character Education in the social and emotional development of our students. Our Character Education committee continues to look for ways to progress in this area. Our goal is to make some major change and updates, and work on various Character Education projects that take Pequannock Valley School to the next level.
Our first commitment this year was on taking part in the peer coaching process with Oxford School. Our school leadership team met regularly to discuss and prepare for the various requirements involved in this coaching process. It is through this peer coaching process that our committee realized that it would be important to reprise some of the fundamental activities that would be new to faculty and staff members who joined us in the past five or six years. It also become evident to us that we needed to dedicate some time and effort to finding our way back to a focus on Character Education.
Approximately once a quarter, our students meet at their grade level for a 20-minute “meeting” and various topics are discussed with the whole group. During the early winter, a student opinion survey which was written by building administration was given to all students in our school. . Through this survey, the school’s administration was able to take a good read on the school climate. This data was shared in detail at the school’s team leader meetings, and the team leader brought this data to their respective PLC meetings for further discussion.
Through the PLC discussions and interviews, various strengths and weaknesses were assessed both from the view of the students and the teachers, and these were then charted at a school-wide faculty meeting. Results of this activity were shared with our school community and this data will be used to continue our quest toward building strong character in our students. Our goal to reapply for National School of Character remains strong and we are planning activities in our school and in our district to help us achieve that goal. We are hopeful that we can make significant progress toward this goal in the coming school year and to ultimately reapply in 2009-2010. In the meantime, we will continue to work with staff and students in promoting social and emotional learning through Character Education activities.
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