Sharing the Load: Ownership of School Reform

The Pressure Cooker Versus Caring Communities

This is a hard sell in this day of high stakes testing and No Child Left Behind. Schools are being pressured to focus myopically on raising state test scores, especially for the lowest scoring student groups. There is nothing wrong with trying to improve the learning of those who are not achieving academically. There is, however, something very wrong with doing so by creating outcome-obsessed pressure-cooker environments.

One excellent principal confided in me that she was considering leaving the profession, even though she had just earned her first job as principal in a fine elementary school. She found that schools had become something she didn't believe in—institutions of oppression. The U.S. Department of Education was pressuring state departments of education who were pressuring school boards, who were pressuring superintendents, who were pressuring principals like her, who then were forced to pressure teachers into pressuring students. She reported that her students were no longer going to their teachers for personal help, since they now saw their teachers as their oppressors.

Maybe I am a genius (although I doubt it), but it seems pretty obvious to me that creating oppressive, noxious atmospheres in schools will not benefit anyone in the long run. Surely, there may be a short-term increase in test scores, but if students and educators dislike being in school, learning will taper off and diminish.

Caring Communities Increase Learning

On the other hand, when schools become caring, inclusive communities and students and teachers alike want to be in school, then learning will increase, and so will scores on any meaningful measure of academic achievement. And we have data to support this. Jack Benninga, a professor of education and director of the Bonner Center at California State University at Fresno, and I and our colleagues recently did a study in 120 California elementary schools showing that deeper character education predicts higher state test scores for at least three years.

True School Reform Is About Shared Ownership

So how do you go about such school reform? First, you need a principal who understands what I am talking about here and who cares deeply about creating such a culture in his or her school (which is precisely why I run a yearlong Leadership Academy in Character Education for principals).

Second, that principal needs to be that culture. The principal needs to walk the talk by empowering staff and fostering the kind of adult community in the school that is experienced by staff as a democratic, caring community of professional educators.

Third, the staff needs to invite other stakeholder groups to join them (for example, support staff, parents, and relevant community members).

Fourth, the school needs to figure out ways to create such a community collaboratively in each classroom and throughout the school. Students need to be empowered, cared about and for, and partnered with in the crafting of the kind of school where students can and will achieve and develop and where staff want to work and can do their best job of caring for and educating students.

That is character education.

By Dr. Marvin W. Berkowitz
Professor of Character Education
University of Missouri, St. Louis

Dr. Berkowitz, a developmental psychologist, is the inaugural Sanford N. McDonnell Professor of Character Education at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. Among his many publications are his recent book Parenting for Good and his research review for the Character Education Partnership, What Works in Character Education.