The impact of character education programs on student discipline referrals in Texas public schools

The purpose of the study was to determine whether character education programs influence student discipline. The study was completed utilizing quantitative data analysis to discern causal-comparative relationships between school districts that have implemented a character education program and the percent of discipline incident referrals reported to the Texas Education Agency through the Public Education Information Management System for a three year period: 2002-2003, 2003-2004, and 2004-2005. A causal-comparative analysis was also conducted on school districts that responded to the Texas Education Agency Character Education Program Survey that allowed for three types of program identification: character education program, character "plus" program, and no character program.;The population for the study was approximately 1,200 public school districts and charter schools. Specific to the target population was 171 districts and charter schools that responded to the TEA Character Education Program Survey for the three consecutive years of the study. Data for the target population were obtained from the Texas Education Agency Curriculum Division and the Texas Education Agency PEIMS department.;Descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation, and confidence levels about the mean were used to study the demographic information. Inferential statistics used in the study involved a general linear model repeated-measures and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Post-hoc comparisons were conducted to compare the means of the groups in pairwise comparisons for ANOVAs found to be significant.;Results for three hypotheses tested utilizing the one-way analysis of variance did not reflect statistical significance. The three hypotheses which examined the significance of mean differences between the three identified groups for each year of the study failed to meet the established alpha level of .05. The findings were counter to the expectation that districts with character education programs would have a lower number of discipline incident referrals than those districts with no character education program. The hypothesis that was supported by the study relates to the time effect and its impact on the percentage of discipline referrals for those districts that implemented a character education program over the three year period of study. The effect of time, however, was not favorable. Districts that implemented a character education program over the three years of the study increased in the average percent of discipline referrals reported rather than decreased.;Knowledge gained from the study provides insightful information on whether character education programs implemented in Texas public schools impact student discipline. Utilizing the TEA PEIMS data on student discipline referrals, a statistical analysis was completed to provide a means to quantitatively assess whether character education programs are having an impact on student behavior in Texas public schools. The study serves as a conceptual framework for future studies evaluating character education programs and their impact on other components of public education such as academics and attendance.