Excellent schools strive to develop a comprehensive and integrative improvement process for students and their families that integrate best practices of positive school culture, climate, and social and emotional learning; character development skills, enhanced academic achievement strategies, and positive parent engagement. Character.org's "The 11 Principles of Effective Character" shares this vision and provides a self-evaluation structure to assist schools in that process. This article contains excerpts and interpretations from "The 11 Principles of Effective Character Guidebook" to help educators' understanding of character education and its implementation. This entire overview, unless otherwise noted, comes from "The 11 Principles of Effective Character--A Validation Framework: Guidebook" available from Character.org.