Dakota Character Education Project

“Character education is integral to a well-rounded education. Positive, respectful students help create and maintain healthy school environments. Lessons in responsibility and respect are just as important as lessons in reading, math and science.” - U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings

Funding: Dakota Character is a four-year project funded by a grant from the US Department of Education, Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools.

Dakota Character Program Description: Dakota Character is a collaborative effort by Technology and Innovation in Education, Midwest Alliance for Professional Learning and Leadership, Three Rivers Cooperative, Northwest Area Schools, International Learning Services, Inc., and Marshall Consulting.

The project will serve twenty-five K-12 school districts in ESA 5, 6, & 7. Districts were placed, by random draw, into two implementation groups. All participating school districts will receive services. Group A schools will begin training in 2008. Group B schools will begin training in 2010.

Dakota Character is modeled on CHARACTERplus, Caring School Community, and the Ten Essentials, which are evidence-based programs for developing effective character education. The project provides school districts with a framework for making data-driven decisions using student, staff and parent data to establish student outcome goals and organizational, student, staff and community support goals.

Dakota Character will support schools and communities as they teach and demonstrate core ethical concepts, such as civics; citizenship; justice; responsibility; and respect themselves and others.

Goals and Objectives

• To increase student achievement in reading, writing and math
• To demonstrate statistically significant positive change in character education-related constructs
• To significantly decrease student office referrals

Evaluation Design

Dakota Character will use an experimental research design with random selection to identify the participant districts and random placement to assign districts to treatment and control groups. Data collection will include student behavior and academic achievement records; and student, parent, and staff surveys.