The Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education: A Brief History Free

Character education, by that name and at times by other names, has a long history in the United States. The first author has assembled a library of books on character development and character education in the United States prior to World War II, and it includes nearly 75 volumes dating back to the 1830s, and that is far from complete. Nevertheless, character education has not been a steady focus of scholarly and practical interest, and in fact WWII represented a diminishment of interest that did not resurface significantly for about half a century (cf., McClellan, 1999).

The year 1992 was a watershed year for character education in the United States, which at that point was one of very few places in the world using that specific term. Two relatively independent but seminal events marked a reinvigoration of character education in the United States. A meeting was convened in Racine, Wisconsin at the Wingspread Center to discuss a renewed focus on character education. A separate meeting with a similar focus was convened in Aspen Colorado by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, founded and directed by Michael Josephson. Together these two events signaled the beginning of a renaissance for character education, a term that had been used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but had been relatively uncommon in the middle third of the 20th century. A few noted scholars, such as Kevin Ryan, Tom Lickona, Jack Benninga, and Ed Wynne, had continued to work under the rubric of “character” during this period. Ryan was the founding director of Boston University’s Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character (CAEC). In 1996, the CAEC published its Character Education Manifesto (Ryan et al, 1996) and eventually played a central role in applying the 11 principles to school evaluation and recognition.

The 1992 Aspen conference, and its resulting Aspen Declaration, spawned Character Counts! The Racine conference spawned the Character Education Partnership (CEP) which was formally established in 1993 and rebranded in 2014 as Character.org. We will use Character.org throughout the rest of this article since that is the current name of usage although legally it remains the Character Education Partnership, with the understanding that the organization was called the Character Education Partnership when most of what we describe here actually transpired.

Character.org’s first goal was to support the growth of character education in the United States through a “bringing together” of diverse interested parties, hence the use of the term “partnership” in its name. The idea was to be a convening or “big-tent” or “umbrella” organization; in essence, an organization of organizations. Individual memberships were also encouraged. Character.org intended to treat character education as an inclusive, nonpartisan and ecumenical movement where all with legitimate interest and/or expertise were welcome. Hence the initial board of directors was quite diverse in its members’ perspectives on character education.

A year later, in 1994, Amitai Etzioni, a Character.org board member and founder of the centrist public policy group known as the Communitarian Network, furthered this big-tent approach by persuading the Clinton administration to sponsor a series of annual nonpartisan White House conferences on “Character-Building for a Democratic and Civil Society” that brought together a wide variety of stakeholders sharing an interest in fostering character development. In the summer of 1995, the U.S. Department of Education added momentum by announcing it would begin awarding grants to the states to promote character education aimed at teaching “the many common values our children should learn.” This funding initiative, eventually called “Partnerships in Character Education,” brought visibility and prominence to character education. It continued throughout the Clinton administration and was adopted and expanded during the subsequent Bush administration.

Success in bringing these diverse groups together—including the federal government—in the common cause of addressing how to foster the character needed for a morally good life and a good society was no small achievement. For several decades, “values education” had been a hot potato that created division rather than consensus. For many schools, the question “Whose values should we teach?” had created educational paralysis and avoidance of coming to grips with this challenge. Other schools dealt with the “whose values?” dilemma by opting for the philosophically problematic value-neutral approach known as “values clarification,” letting students clarify their own values. The emergence of organizations like Character.org and Character Counts!, character education centers like Boston University’s, the White House conferences, and the Department of Education’s grants for character education, taken together, marked a cultural shift. Character education was becoming a national movement; schools were returning to what has been called their oldest mission: educating for virtue and moral development as well as literacy and numeracy.

Despite this new consensus, however, challenges remained. As always, the devil was in the details. Character.org saw its role as advocating for character education but also giving schools good guidance. But how to do that? Then, as now, Character.org’s Board of Directors, by design, included persons of diverse backgrounds and philosophical perspectives. As a result of that diversity, there were debates, for example, about issues such as the role of incentives in character education. Should schools focus exclusively on fostering “intrinsic motivation” (doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do), or was there also a role for rewards and awards in motivating students to form good habits that eventually do not need external incentives? Directors brought diverse perspectives to this and other issues from different theoretical perspectives (for example behaviorism and constructivism).

There was even more debate about mission and strategy; what specific role should Character.org play in advising schools? Should it try to be a clearinghouse for character education materials and somehow rate them? Or should it attempt to formulate standards of excellence for “effective character education”—standards specific enough to provide useful guidance but broad enough to encompass and encourage creativity and diversity in how schools went about implementing the standards? Ultimately, Character.org wisely shied away from being a Good Housekeeping-style organization that would decide who or what would get its “stamp of approval.” Rather they decided to be purveyors of criteria for excellence.

The Character.org Board of Directors therefore, in early 1995, less than 2 years after its formation, heeded Tom Lickona’s suggestion for a set of “principles.” Tom Lickona was asked to draft such a set of principles for excellent character education. The Board’s intention was to consider them for formal organizational adoption.

Lickona relied on two main sources: (1) research for his 1991 book Educating for Character and (2) a white paper written by Eric Schaps and Catherine Lewis for the Developmental Studies Center (now rebranded as the Center for Collaborative Learning). Lickona drafted the Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education. His draft was reviewed by Schaps and Lewis as well as Character.org leadership including Diane Berreth, then an executive with the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Their edits led to the first version of this document, authored by Lickona, Schaps, and Lewis (Lickona et al., 1995) a document that included a short preamble, an articulation of each of the 11 principles, and two to three paragraphs explicating each. A comparison between the original 1995 principles and those now in use (2018) can be found in Table 1. The initial version was officially adopted by the Character.org Board of Directors in April 1995. Soon thereafter, in 1996, Lickona also published a scholarly article on the 11 principles in the Journal of Moral Education (Lickona, 1996).

The 11P, as the Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education later came to be known (and as it was eventually trademarked by Character.org), remained simply 11 big ideas about excellent and comprehensive character education until 1997.

The primary focus of this paper is the history of the 11P. However, the 11P were expanded in a variety of ways as well as being integrated with other initiatives developed during the course of nearly the past quarter century. The latest, fully articulated version, 2018, can be found in the next article by Tamra Nast (see Nast, this issue). Hence, in order to fully document and understand the history of the 11P, it is necessary to look at the Schools of Character initiative of Character.org, as well as other central developments and initiatives that are linked to the 11P in varied ways. In 1997 and 1998 there were three significant ways that this happened. These included a professional development video, a recognition program, and an evaluation instrument.

In 1997, National Professional Resources created and published a video entitled “Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education” featuring Tom Lickona and Catherine Lewis, two of the authors of the 11P document, explicating each of the 11 principles, and including perspectives from other leaders and champions of character education, such as Sanford McDonnell, a founder and long-time board chair of Character.org. It also highlighted a set of schools that exemplified best practices in character education. This use of exemplary schools was a harbinger of a very important parallel development, namely a school excellence recognition program grounded in the 11P.

Kevin Ryan, then CAEC executive director and Character.org board member, argued for a school character education excellence recognition program. He was supported in this proposal by Character.org Board Chair Sandy McDonnell. The reasoning was that a national award recognition and competition of this kind would inspire schools to use the 11P, be an incentive for more schools to get involved in character education, spur schools already involved to strive for greater excellence, and attract media attention to the schools chosen as the top “schools of character” for that year.

In 1997, Character.org hired Esther Schaeffer as its second executive director. Schaeffer came from directing a nonprofit that worked to interest the business sector in supporting K-12 education. She leveraged her business connections, and contacted Business Week to encourage them to focus on character education. When Business Week (represented by Charlotte Frank then vice president for research and development at McGraw-Hill Educational and Professional Publishing Group) agreed to publish an article, Character.org secured corporate funding with the help of Sandy McDonnell. The result was a corporate-sponsored special section entitled “Schools of Character: Reclaiming America’s Values for Tomorrow’s Workforce.”

Schaeffer agreed with Ryan and McDonnell that a school recognition initiative would be desirable for Character.org. Once the Business Week partnership had begun, she discovered that they had a history of award programs for schools. So Schaeffer and Character.org arranged a follow-up collaboration. This then led, in 1998, to Character.org and Business Week plus another of The McGraw-Hill Companies, the Educational and Professional Publishing Group, to create and publish a document with the same name as the 1997 special section of Business Week (Schools of Character: Reclaiming America’s Values for Tomorrow’s Workforce).

Schaeffer enlisted the support of Boston University’s CAEC to help design and manage this school-recognition focus of the 1998 publication. The additional support of the John Templeton Foundation made this partnership possible. This free-standing document highlighted 10 schools from 10 states for excellence in character education (and eight more “honorable mention” schools). This document was in fact part of an annual series entitled “The Annual Business Week Awards for Instructional Innovation” (the 1998 character education document was the ninth edition in this series).

This partnership was deemed so successful, and not surprisingly aligned so closely with Schaeffer’s vision for this relatively young organization, that Character.org decided to formalize what became known as the National Schools of Character program. At this point there was no clear intention for this program to continue for a long time. Additionally, the issue of how long the imprimatur of being a National School of Character would last was not addressed. In fact, it was implicitly assumed to be a 1-year designation, and Character.org discouraged repeat annual submissions.

The central relevance here is that the 11P were used for the first time as standards of excellence in judging schools. At first, this was an informal application of the 11P with little structure. Boston University’s Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character, under the leadership of Kevin Ryan, became another Character.org partner, specifically to provide support in the design and administration of the process for selecting National Schools of Character. Karen Bohlin was enlisted by the CAEC to lead this new initiative, in collaboration with Esther Schaeffer. According to the document, “CEP invited about 100 individuals and organizations concerned with character education to nominate schools they believed deserved recognition.” There were approximately 100 schools nominated, and Schaeffer and Bohlin and their respective staffs used the 11P to screen the applications and reduce that number to about 25, which were then interviewed. Ten schools were selected and eight more were identified for honorable mention. Bohlin and CAEC staff writer Deborah Farmer wrote up the profiles for the 1998 publication.

As well, Schaeffer developed deeper partnerships with experts in the field and their organizations (e.g., Tom Lickona and his Center for the 4th and 5th Rs at the State University of NY College at Cortland, Kevin Ryan and the CAEC at Boston University, and Eric Schaps and the Developmental Studies Center), with philanthropists (such as Sandy McDonnell and the John Templeton Foundation), and with other individuals and organizations that supported character education and the Character.org mission (such as McGraw-Hill). A side benefit of this particular multi-institutional endeavor was a long and fruitful partnership between Character.org and the John Templeton Foundation (with Arthur Schwartz serving as the lead John Templeton Foundation representative in this relationship), mostly to support the 11P and its extension into school recognition. We will return to school recognition below.

The third of the 1997-98 initiatives focused on assessment. While the 11P by themselves were used by Character.org and the CAEC to evaluate the nominated schools, no formal way yet existed to evaluate character education quality. Recognizing this need, Tom Lickona and his staff at the Center for the 4th and 5th Rs developed the “Eleven Principles Survey” and it was piloted at that center’s 1998 Summer Institute in Character Education. The survey included 3-4 subprinciples under each of the 11 principles in order to operationalize each one for assessment purposes.

As Schaeffer and Bohlin grappled with how systematically and consistently to apply the 11P to evaluating schools for recognition for excellence in character education implementation, they realized the need for such a set of 11P-item indicators. The basic structure and much of the content of Lickona’s “Eleven Principles Survey” measure served as the basis for the later development by the CAEC and Character.org of a set of “quality standards” (e.g, Character Education Partnership, 2000).

So in 1998-1999, Character.org expanded the 11P into a more detailed and measurable set of quality standards for character education implementation. CAEC received a second 1-year contract from Character.org to take the lead on this initiative. Kevin Ryan retired from the CAEC in 1998 and Karen Bohlin succeeded him as executive director. She enlisted Moira Walsh, a postdoctoral fellow at the CAEC, to work with her in leading the initiative to develop a more robust evaluation instrument. The CAEC and Character.org convened an ad hoc Assessment Committee which included Tom Lickona, Marvin Berkowitz, Jim Leming, Madonna Murphy, and Nel Noddings among others. This group took the 11p and, as Lickona had done in the Eleven Principles Survey, identified 2-4 subprinciples (originally labeled as “items”) for each principle. Also following Lickona’s Eleven Principles Survey, each item was scored on a 5-point scale from 0 (not evident or visible; poor) to 4 (exemplary implementation). The item scores were then combined to create a score for each principle. (Note: for this report, the earliest version of the quality standards that we could find had no date. We believe it was issued in 1999 and that it was the first version). These standards were then used for evaluating applicants for recognition.

The recognition program became known as National Schools of Character (NSOC), but also soon included National Districts of Character. While the 11P did not explicitly address the quality or implementation of character education beyond the school level, the Quality Standards did. In the early years, assessing districts was found to be a challenge, and Schaeffer personally took on the task of all on-site visits to assess NDOC district applications.

The 11P and quality standards continued to be published separately, although they were highly parallel. Each was repeatedly updated and edited, although most of the changes were not overly significant. We were able to identify versions of the 11P published in 1995, 1996, 2003 and 2007 and versions of the quality standards published in 2001, 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2008. Beginning in 2010 under the leadership of Janice Stoodley, the two documents were strategically merged, entitled 11 Principles of Effective Character Education: Framework for School Success (Character Education Partnership, 2010). Academic integrity was added as an explicit focus at this point. This document was revised in 2015 and then again in 2018. It is clear these documents were part of a continuous improvement process, revealing their centrality to the identity, mission, and work of Character.org, as well as to Character.org’s commitment to excellence.

Beginning with the 1999 National Schools of Character recognition program, and with support from the John Templeton Foundation, the 11P were used as the criteria for evaluation of applicants for National Schools of Character recognition. They were used in four distinct but related ways. First, schools used the 11P as they engaged in self-evaluation, a required part of the application process. Second, the staff at Character.org applied the 11P criteria to the applications in order to winnow down the set to the most highly rated “finalists.” Third, Character.org staff, along with Bohlin from the CAEC (and later other external experts and Character.org staff), visited each of the finalist schools using the 11P as a framework for their assessments. Finally, a blue ribbon panel of experts reviewed the finalist school applications and the evaluator reports, again using the 11P as criteria. Once the quality standards were available, they became the rubric for assessment of applications and site visits.

It is important to note that both the application and review processes themselves evolved over the past two decades. In the first year of this process (1999), the blue ribbon panel that was charged with selecting the 10 or 11 schools to be recognized as National Schools of Character was comprised of Tom Lickona, Diane Berreth, Marvin Berkowitz, Eric Schaps, Madonna Murphy, Mary Aranha, and Ed Wynne. In that year, 11 schools and one district were so recognized. Another set of 11 schools and three districts were recognized as NSOC Semifinalists The designation “semifinalist” was changed to “finalist” in 2005. This general pattern continued until 2010, with minor fluctuations in the number of schools recognized, and with changing membership on the Blue Ribbon Panel and external evaluators.

Character.org staff had reported many difficult conversations with representatives of schools and districts that did not make the NSOC cut. It was felt that the use of a quota system for winners, limiting them to approximately 10 each year, was both unproductive and not aligned with character education philosophy. After several years of internal debates among staff and board members, it was decided to shift from the quota system to a criterion system. At that point it was decided that, rather than selecting the 10 top scoring schools, a threshold score on the Quality Standards would be the criterion for recognition as a National School of Character. In 2010, the number of NSOCs grew to 15, and then to 44 in 2011. There were subsequently 28 in 2012, 29 in 2013, 44 in 2014, 57 in 2015, 73 in 2016 (including a new initiative to include schools in Mexico), 87 in 2017, and 78 in 2018

In addition, a significant innovation was added in 2007, when for the first time state-level recognition was added. Such a move had long been a plan for NSOC expansion, beginning in the early 2000s as one of then Executive Director Esther Schaeffer’s plans. This state-to-nation model of recognition for schools is parallel to the national academic achievement recognition program (Blue Ribbon Schools), which has a state level identification (Gold Star Schools) that feeds into the national recognition program. Character.org decided to partner with varied state entities to identify excellence at the state level that would feed into the national recognition program. The number of states participating in State Schools of Character has fluctuated over time and is currently in place in almost half of the states in the United States (23 in 2019).

One other change to honor specific character education practices that exemplified each of the principles in a noteworthy way started in 2003. Character.org had come to appreciate the fact that many schools that had not managed to implement all 11 of the principles in an exemplary manner nevertheless did particular things very well. Beginning in 2008, these schools and their lauded practices were included in the annual publication highlighting National Schools of Character. This program, called “Promising Practices,” proved to be very popular and has shown remarkable growth over the years. In 2008 there were already over 150 such recognitions. By 2016, that number had more than doubled (327) and expanded to include 11 international recognitions from four countries (Canada, China, Colombia, Mexico), an international emphasis that has continued over time.

A related change was to revisit the original practice that made designation as a School of Character a “life-time” designation. This was problematic in two ways. First, given the changing nature of schools, and in particular changes in school leadership and focus, it was inappropriate to merely assume that a school, by virtue of having once achieved the level of a National School of Character, would necessarily keep either its focus on character education or its level of excellence in character education. Second, having a permanent status as a National School of Character provided such schools with no future targets for increased or even sustained success in character education. Hence, Character.org gradually implemented a new policy and process for recertification. It was decided that designation as a National School or District of Character would be for 5 years and then, if they so chose, schools could apply for recertification. Furthermore, different standards and a different application process were designed for this recertification process. It is also worth noting that at about the same time, Character.org shifted its rhetoric from the language of competition (“winning,” “award”) to the language of quality. Going forward, the process therefore became known as one of certification.

Beyond the quality standards, the 11P experienced another expansion when Kathy Beland, one of the architects of Second Step (a published, evidence-based socioemotional skills program used in more than 20 countries), joined the Character.org staff around 1999. She suggested the development of an extensive written resource (a sourcebook) focused on the 11P. The idea was to provide a much more detailed, and thus more helpful set of information about each of the principles, to assist schools in their journeys to understand and implement effective practices, thereby increasing their possibility of achieving excellence. She served as lead author and editor.

An 81/2 by 11 inch magazine-style publication on each of the principles was crafted, sometimes authored by Beland, and sometimes by or in collaboration with other authors. All of these were extensively edited by experts such as Tom Lickona and Marvin Berkowitz. The sourcebook included elaborations of the principles, case studies from NSOCs, best practices, and references to supportive resources, among other practical features. The Eleven Principles Sourcebook was published in 2003 (Beland, 2003). In addition, Character.org began offering training on the 11P tied to the Sourcebook. Character.org staff members Merle Schwartz and Kathy Beland were the early trainers, with Schwartz eventually taking the role of lead trainer and professional development coordinator, although many others eventually also offered this and related training (e.g., Amy Johnston, Russ Sojourner, Barbara Luther, Dave Keller, Tamra Nast).

One challenge with both the Sourcebook and the related training was the cost of the Sourcebook itself. Not only was the Sourcebook expensive to purchase, but it also markedly increased the cost of training whenever it included the complete book for each of the participants. The Sourcebook is a masterfully crafted binder with a video and 12 books. It is designed to be modular, where one can remove any of the individual books (modules) for focus on a single principle at a time. However, this led to a high price of the book and hence less distribution. Eventually Character.org did attempt to create a less expensive version of the Sourcebook. Along those lines, in 2008, McGraw Hill Higher Education published a short but thorough book, with Merle Schwartz serving as senior editor, called Effective Character Education, A Guidebook for Future Educators (Schwartz, 2008). The intent was to influence teachers-in-training so that they had an understanding of quality character education practices before starting their careers. The book was adapted from the Eleven Principles Sourcebook; eight authors contributed to the six chapters.

Another goal was to put the Sourcebook material on line. It quickly became clear to Character.org, however, that an online version would need a process for updating the content. Toward that end, Character.org created the Character Exchange, an online membership-focused resource. The Character Exchange includes an online course about the 11P that can lead to certification, through a process of online study and feedback, as well as inclusion in an online community where questions can be answered, webinars are held, and resources (including research) are available.

Over time and particularly in the past 5 years, there has been growing interest within Character.org to explore applications of the 11P beyond school settings, as a general framework for nurturing the development of character in many spheres of life, most notably families, sports and the workplace. This was largely a product of interest by families and others involved in the traditional school-based use of the 11P, and especially the Schools of Character program. As participants and observers celebrated student character growth in State and National Schools of Character, and as the schools involved families and communities in these efforts (an involvement explicitly encouraged by the 11P), families and other stakeholders began to adapt and adopt the 11P in their homes and organizations. In fact, Character.org had long toyed with the idea of expanding to more directly serve parents and other caregivers in their efforts to foster their children’s character development. Sandy McDonnell, the founding Chair of the Board of Directors, was a strong advocate for this. And, in fact, CharacterPlus, a St. Louis-based regional character education organization that McDonnell founded before Character.org, has long had the mission of serving parents and community.

This expanded interest both from the grass roots level and the Character.org organizational level, has in turn led to the notion of Communities of Character (see Karr & Cazad, this issue). Character.org’s current chief executive officer, Doug Karr, resonated with this having worked in the arenas of education, sports and the corporate sector. The Character.org Board of Directors had and still has members who share this interest in applications of character education beyond school, especially in sports and business.

Character.org has begun to explore building additional “gateways” to character, beyond schools, that would include families, sports, and other organizations to form communities of character. In 2018, the expanded vision was articulated as “inspiring and empowering ethical, engaged and compassionate citizens worldwide.” The corresponding mission is to “provide leadership, voice and resources to help individuals and groups along their character journey.” This broader mission is being aligned with the new gateways, and appears to be a direction that will continue and expand for Character.org.

A quote widely attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt is, “Character building begins in infancy and continues until death.” Everyone’s character— ours and our children’s—is a “work in progress.” Just as that is true for individuals, it is also true for organizations like Character.org and for frameworks like the Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education. Those principles were first articulated 25 years ago when a resurgent character education was becoming a national movement, but nonetheless very much needed direction that was grounded in theory, research, and best practice. The 11P have aspired to provide that. They have been refined multiple times to reflect growth in our understanding of what character is and how to foster its development. With the insightful help of many people, the principles have evolved into a set of tools that include a formative evaluation instrument (the quality standards), a national recognition program (Schools of Character), a comprehensive Sourcebook, and in-depth professional development including a web-based comprehensive resource (Character Exchange). New applications of the 11P continue.

In the Journal of Character Education, the psychologist Robert McGrath (2018) asks a provocative question: “What Is Character Education?” He points out that we cannot answer that question without a conceptual framework that specifies character education’s essential components. Happily, there are multiple such frameworks available to educators today. Arguably, the 11P have helped to pave the way, and will continue to do so.

Thanks to Diane Berreth, Mark Hyatt, Lara Maupin, and Merle Schwartz for input and editing.