We learn today that Fairfax (VA) schools are debating whether to issue a report showing that Latino and African-American third graders are lagging in sound moral character and ethical development. Oh, and kids in special education are pulling up the rear in these categories as well. You may ask – because I sure did – how exactly does one divine a student’s moral character and ethical developments? According to the Washington Post:
The findings on third-grade morality reflected the number of elementary students who received "good" or "outstanding" marks on report cards in such areas as "accepts responsibility," "listens to and follows directions," "respects personal and school property," "complies with established rules" and "follows through on assignments." Such categories, which draw mainly on teacher observations, are common.
There are obviously a number of critiques of this research, which only start at cultural bias. One question that jumps to mind is this: if a student’s disability involves difficulty processing and following directions, can we really be surprised that she doesn’t receive as much kudos in these areas? And is that really a moral or ethical failure? Indeed, the real problem is that somebody thinks it’s appropriate to bundle these assessments into something called "moral character". Let’s just call them ‘essential life skills’.
In any case, we would do well to avoid ranking children on their morality according to race; I think we’d also do well to avoid ranking these third graders on their morality at all.
I absolutely agree that we should not select an arbitrary collection of teacher observations and bundle them as "moral character." I also don't think that we should individually rank students on moral character. However, when children spend 8 hours a day in school, have parents who fail to instill moral character, and have friends who degrade moral integrity, schools take on the role of moral education. This makes sense to me, as I think most of my moral character was developed through education. Literature and history classes are a prime setting for development of moral character.
If you buy the argument that we should use schools to develop moral character, there needs to be some method of assessment to determine the school's success in creating responsible and thoughtful moral actors. However, I have no idea how one would assess the school's ability to instill moral character.
On another note, I have no doubt that special education teachers take the students' disabilities into mind when grading and assessing their performance. My wife teaches special education in high school, and she is impressed and calls home to tell parents that their children are doing well when they simply [em] do not throw things at one another [/em]. I'm sure that some teachers fail to do that, but it is probably the exception rather than the rule. Special ed. teachers teach special education with full knowledge of the children's needs and wanting to help with those needs.
On one more note, my wife's school requires teachers to grade the student in terms of how good of a citizen the student is, with absolutely no guidance on how to do that. Most teachers use it to reflect a student's attendance, which probably has little to do with their character toward their community.