Secretary's corner.

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U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings joined singer Melinda Doolittle (pictured above) and Dave Barger, CEO of JetBlue Airways and chair of The League, a nonprofit organization that focuses on educating youths on the importance of philanthropy, for a panel discussion

"... Schools offer a stable, safe environment to learn not only the lessons of math and reading but also principles such as self-respect, integrity, and responsibility. As one teacher put it, 'You build a community in your classroom. You build a community around the school by getting parents involved ... and you teach children to go out in the world and make a contribution to the world.'...

"But just like with No Child Left Behind, the most meaningful contribution [of these character education programs] has been a sharpened focus on what is most effective: making sure these programs are evaluated based on evidence, not opinion....

"Five years ago, we required our character education programs to evaluate their success based on evidence. At the time, this had never been done before, and those in the field had a lot of questions. Like, how do you measure success when student and teacher populations are so mobile? And how do you integrate character education with other subjects? How do you know if character education contributed to academic achievement?

"My Department worked to answer these and other questions. And the results of those efforts can be found in the new guide we're releasing today.

"It provides a road map to help educators do what works best. We've also started to get our first round of evaluations from our grantees, and the results confirm that students performed better in schools where character education programs were well implemented.... I hope it will prove a useful resource ... as you continue this important work."

For a free copy of the guide, Mobilizing for Evidence-Based Character Education, visit http://www.ed.gov /programs/charactered/resources.html, or call 1-877-4ED-PUBS with identification number ED003813P, while supplies last.