Stacy Innerst, Post-Gazette Click illustration for larger image. Gary J. Niels is head of Winchester Thurston School, a coed independent school with campuses in Shadyside and Hampton.

Every major city in the United States is attempting to reform its educational system. As in Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Mark Roosevelt's plan, educational reform efforts are often dramatic, carefully planned, research-based, costly and necessary.

Yet, after decades there is minimal evidence that the American educational school system is improving. Reform efforts do not directly address the roots of the problems in education, which are deeper than most reform seems to acknowledge.

Acknowledgement of the education crisis emerged 25 years ago when The National Commission on Excellence in Education published "A Nation at Risk." Since then the reform movement has comprehensively recomposed the content of curriculum, revised the methods through which curriculum is taught, and reconstructed the systems by which schools operate.

Despite these comprehensive efforts, one-third to one-half of college students seek remedial help in reading, writing or mathematics. Employers continue to express astonishment at how poorly prepared young employees are in writing, oral communication and even basic social skills. It is estimated that 30 percent of high school freshmen will not graduate and over 50 percent among minorities. More than 20 years into the "mathematics revolution," the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that American students place 24th behind Canada, Germany, France, Korea, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, among others.

Consequently, we must ask: If reform efforts are so comprehensive and varied, why isn't the reform movement successful?

In order to experience academic achievement, students must possess inner qualities that enable them to perform academic work. Qualities such as concentration, attentiveness, patience, persistence, cooperation, responsibility and thoughtfulness are the foundations for academic achievement. No matter what new curriculum is composed or new educational configurations are devised, if children do not have the inner qualities that are essential for any academic success, they are doomed to fail.

Young people today are quick to feel frustrated and consequently intolerant of intellectual challenge. Their impatience makes them less willing to apply critical thinking to a difficult mathematics problem, savor the challenge of reading a complex novel, work through an intricate lab experiment or master the subtleties of grammar in English or a foreign language. Frustration curtails a young person's ability to listen, absorb, and process the details that constitute learning and knowledge.

Brain research confirms this phenomenon. Today children are raised in a culture that stunts the development of the qualities necessary for academic success. The Herculean challenge of schools is to reverse this trend.

Some schools are instituting programs that develop essential inner qualities in their students. The Smart and Good High Schools program, for example, was developed at the Center for the Fourth and Fifth R at the State University of New York at Cortland. The authors created a program that presents "promising practices for building eight strengths of character that help youth lead productive, ethical, and fulfilling lives." They make the obvious (and often absent) link between academic performance and a student's inner qualities. The curriculum focuses on the development of: critical thinkers; diligent performers; socially skilled, ethical thinkers; responsible moral agents; self-disciplined persons; contributing citizens; and a life of noble purpose.

In these and other efforts we learn that what is traditionally referred to as "character education" isn't just about making sure students get along and learn values that will enhance their lives. Rather, character education can be a platform on which students develop the ability to think, analyze, debate, process and problem-solve because the discipline to practice such skills in turn shapes important aspects of the brain's development and functioning.

Remarkably, programs that promote character education demonstrate that they influence a student's academic motivation, achievement, bonding to school, responsibility, self-control and self-esteem.

Independent schools do not face the significant challenge that exists in many public schools. Nonetheless, independent schools have also experienced the apparent decline in students' academic capacities and inner qualities. So these schools, too, are endeavoring to be more deliberate in attempts to foster qualities within their students that assure academic, social and emotional development.

Last year my own school went through the exercise of identifying its core values. After a comprehensive process we named critical thinking, integrity, empathy, community and diversity as the school's five most important values. After defining what we meant by each of these, we then began a discussion as to how we live these out.

The conversation turned practical when teachers concluded that listening was foundational to empathy. At the high school level this resulted in a deliberate effort to use a teaching approach known as the Harkness Method which fosters patient listening and respectful disagreement in classroom discussions. An 11th-grader wrote the following description about his experience using the Harkness Method:

"In short, the Harkness discussion is a fantastically successful method of reaching new intellectual heights. Thought and reason, coupled with emotion, create a forum for students to freely express their true reactions to a subject; this truth allows for trust, and this trust allows us all to accept arguments of our peers and build upon them."

Here is the root of successful education reform: the institution of an academic practice that fosters character development within the student and promotes intellectual engagement and academic achievement.

In his book "Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong: The Case For Character Education," William Kilpatrick says, "The core problem facing our schools is a moral one. All the other problems derive from it. Even academic reform depends on putting character first." Although some education reform attempts to address the development of students' inner qualities as an important aspect of reform, few reform efforts address it directly. This is the major reason for the failure of education reform.