Just when you think American education can’t get any nuttier, along comes another crazy idea.
The New York Times today reports on the project underway in California to test “joy and grit” in the classroom. It is only a pilot for what soon will be a national and international program to test soft skills. Think of the data! Parents will soon have data points about their children’s grit. Think of the data-based decision making!
Angela Duckworth, whose work in social-emotional learning has promoted the importance of “grit” (along with Paul Tough’s book “How Children Succeed”), resigned from the committee overseeing the project.
“I do not think we should be doing this; it is a bad idea,” said Angela Duckworth, the MacArthur fellow who has done more than anyone to popularize social-emotional learning, making “grit” — the title of her book to be released in May — a buzzword in schools.
She resigned from the board of the group overseeing the California project, saying she could not support using the tests to evaluate school performance. Last spring, after attending a White House meeting on measuring social-emotional skills, she and a colleague wrote a paper warning that there were no reliable ways to do so. “Our working title was all measures suck, and they all suck in their own way,” she said.
And there is little agreement on what skills matter: Self-control? Empathy? Perseverance? Joy?
“There are so many ways to do this wrong,” said Camille A. Farrington, a researcher at the University of Chicago who is working with a network of schools across the country to measure the development of social-emotional skills. “In education, we have a great track record of finding the wrong way to do stuff.”
Schools began emphasizing social-emotional learning around 2011, after an analysis of 213 school-based programs teaching such skills found that they improved academic achievement by 11 percentile points. A book extolling efforts to teach social-emotional skills in schools such as the KIPP charter network and Horace Mann in New York, “How Children Succeed” by Paul Tough, appeared the next year.
Argument still rages about whether schools can or should emphasize these skills. Critics say the approach risks blaming the victim — if only students had more resilience, they could rise above generational poverty and neglected schools — and excuses uninspired teaching by telling students it is on them to develop “zest,” or enthusiasm. Groups that spent decades urging the country toward higher academic standards worry about returning to empty talk of self-esteem, accepting low achievement as long as students feel good.
But teaching social-emotional skills is often seen as a way to move away from a narrow focus on test scores, and to consider instead the whole child. It may seem contradictory, then, to test for those skills. In education, however, the adage is “what’s measured gets treasured”; states give schools money to teach the subjects on which they will be judged.
Next year, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test of students in grades four, eight and 12 that is often referred to as the nation’s report card, will include questions about students’ social-emotional skills. A well-known international test, PISA, is moving toward the same.
The biggest concern about testing for social-emotional skills is that it typically relies on surveys asking students to evaluate recent behaviors or mind-sets, like how many days they remembered their homework, or if they consider themselves hard workers. This makes the testing highly susceptible to fakery and subjectivity. In their paper published in May, Dr. Duckworth and David Yeager argued that even if students do not fake their answers, the tests provide incentive for “superficial parroting” rather than real changes in mind-set.
But Martin West, a supporter of school choice and high-stakes testing, defended the value of testing soft skills.
Pearson and the other giants of the testing industry must be delighted. More tests!
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware.
My published response to the NYTimes insanity:
“Grit” as in grit your teeth. As so much else in the irrational world of measuring the minds and hearts of children this obsession with metrics is a buzz kill of joy and spontaneity around teaching and learning. More $ siphoned from art and play to feed the rapacious testing industry to bully teachers and students into robotic conformity is more than folly, it is sinful.
You express this well: money siphoned away from art and play to feed the testing industry. Are we moving back toward our days of an
unprotected child labor? (Yes, I guess we could then more fully compete with China or India or Nigeria or….)
“The Gritwit”
(Ode to Angela Duckworth)
I really am a gritwit
I really have allure
To every single nitwit
Who seeks an edu-cure
It really is rich when folks like Duckworth come up with their pseudo-scientific claptrap and then balk when people take the logical next step and try to put a number on and “measure” it.
What did she expect?
INSANITY to the MAX! OMG … NUTS! I really don’t want to be tested for my joy and grit. This is intrusive and totally none of anyone’s business.
Parents NEED to REVOLT. Students need to REVOLT. REVOLT!
I’d like those who love this cr*p to take these tests they deem important. We know it’s just more $$$$$ 4 the DEFORMERS.
The test for “joy” should be recess. If kids get to go outside, then they have joy. Test over.
The test for grit? That’s more puzzling.
Maybe the test should check whether kids have dirty knees or hands when they come back inside school after recess.
Do we really need another FAILED idea from the reform crowd?
Ye$$$$.
Since my middle-school students generally felt they were overworked if given any work at all, it will be interesting to see how these self-evaluation tests go. Most students in the 21st century have enough cynicism to answer the questions to show the world what it wants to see.
When the…are we going to allow children to be children and allow teachers to teach? When are these fools who insist on testing everything going to stop!? And who are they?
They are the corporate and conservative cabals and the neoliberal nudniks.
No, they aren’t “conservative” cabals, retired teacher. Those are “regressive” cabals. True conservatives (which in many ways I consider myself conservative) look askance at unproven “newest, bestest” supposed ideas.
This could be the new out-come based education and values debate of the 90’s. Oh boy, history really does repeat!
Yes, it is!
The article states that, “no teacher will lose a job for failing to instill a growth mindset.” Why not? Surely if teachers can control the learning of each and every student, they can also control to what degree they “instill a growth mindset.” And all while leaping tall buildings in a single bound!!!
I love the idea of the hero teacher, but I wonder, where do they get their costumes, and are capes safe within a science classroom?
I’m sure there’s money in the budget for the capes! Science is a STEM subject!
“’Our working title was all measures suck, and they all suck in their own way,’ she said.”
By ‘misdefinition’ all measures suck. That ‘misdefinition’ being the fact that folks believe they can ‘measure’ anything in the teaching and learning process.
“The biggest concern . . . This makes the testing highly susceptible to fakery and subjectivity.”
No $hit Sherlock!?! Rocket science 101.
“Our working title was all measures suck, and they all suck in their own way,’
…said Angela Suckworth.
I suppose we should just be happy that she is honest.
This seems like an article from The Onion…
Especially given:
Angela Duckworth, whose work in social-emotional learning has promoted the importance of “grit” (along with Paul Tough’s book “How Children Succeed”), resigned from the committee overseeing the project.
That can’t be his real name!
Yeah, Paul “Tough”, who writes about true grit and Angela Duckworth, whose ideas are worth about as much as duck poop.
No, NYC Mother, fiction has to at least resemble something plausible, this is pure fantasy being imposed by ignoramus’s who have money and plan to benefit from it.
The article in the NY Times today “Testing for Joy and Grit? Schools Nationwide Push to Measure Students’ Emotional Skills” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/us/testing-for-joy-and-grit-schools-nationwide-push-to-measure-students-emotional-skills.html?_r=0 points out that the futility of schools testing for joy and grit may be doing children a disservice regarding what schools are for. John Goodlad pointed out that the schools job is obviously an intellectual one. However, he added, it should also be concerned about personal development. With an academic program in place, the school must focus on the other three goals of schools: personal, social, and vocational.
The Times article notes “that Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, showed that students become more motivated when they learn the brain is a muscle, which can get stronger, and that learning can lead to physical changes in the brain’s structure. In other words, teaching students that the ability to learn can change with hard work encourages them to persevere.”
Moreover, although Dr. Duckworth resigned from the committee overseeing the project, I would imagine it was over the testing aspect of this movement not because of the value of emotional-social learning. I hope that schools will pay more attention to what schools are for and what students need and not eliminate an important aspect of schools. In Goodlad’s study, A Study of Schooling data suggested that students in junior and senior high school years are very much preoccupied with matters having little to do with the intellectual function of schools.
“A Study of Schooling data suggested that students in junior and senior high school years are very much preoccupied with matters having little to do with the intellectual function of schools.”
And I thought it was just me.
“Gym” and lunch have been the two most popular periods of the day for as long as I’ve been polling students.
Yeah, that students are “preoccupied with matters having little to do with the intellectual function of schools” is a finding worthy of a “Nobel” economics prize.
Who ever would thunk it?
“I do not think we should be doing this; it is a bad idea,” said Angela Duckworth, the MacArthur fellow who has done more than anyone to popularize social-emotional learning, making “grit” — the title of her book to be released in May — a buzzword in schools.”
Ed reforms response will be: “Ignore her the dissenter! Put the programs in immediately, nation-wide!”
I wonder when kids themselves will start to object to this constant watching and prodding and poking.
I can’t wait to see the glossy brochure Ohio sends me with my son’s “grit score”, hopefully compared to the grittiness of 13 year olds in South Korea! 🙂
Do they know they’re becoming a parody of people who focus too much on test scores and “data”? Because they are.
She wrote a book entitled “Grit” that made “grit” a buzzword and then expects no one will use/abuse it??
That strikes me as either utterly clueless at best and disingenuous at worst.
In my opinion, people need to start taking responsibility for their actions and it begins with those who are coming up with the half-baked ideas. The mere fact that she called it “grit” makes it fair game for mockery.
How can you pretend that you are doing science while using such a nebulous (essentially meaningless) terminology?
A lot of kids actually like testing days. It gets them out of their “boring” daily routine and they know the tests are (in the words of Governor Cuomo) “meaningless”. The periods after a test is administered are pretty much shot and they get a free-ride for the day.
SDP
Who says you can’t quantify grit?
Rage,
Yes, from the Home Depot School of Education at DIY University.
As every good reformer knows, that’s where the very best ideas in education originate. Based on the latest in cutting edge research (especially from the power saw section)
Rage,
Angela Duckworth actually devised a Grit Scale:
http://angeladuckworth.com/grit-scale/
I prefer yours !
Rage,
Those sizes in microns on your chart had nothing to do with grit; the chart you oosted explained brain sizes for a spectrum of current day reformers.
Please set the record straight, now that I bothered to fact check for you . . .
Diane, I can’t believe you, a scholar, are not commenting on the nonsense that folks like SomeDAM Poet are spewing.
He is suggesting that Angela Duckworth should not have even investigated how organizations like the US Army try to instill discipline in their soldiers and officers simply because some could use the concept to measure the instillation of grit in K-12 students. Think about that a second. Folks are saying researchers must try to predict whether a concept could be misused, even if it’s a very real concept, before deciding to investigate!
Here’s what you cannot escape:
1. GRIT/perseverance is real. It has a large effect on outcomes.
2. GRIT can be increased. This is what the military and successful sports teams do well! Is there anybody who disagrees that teens “grow up” after a stint in the military? It has often been said that the “greatest generation” was so successful because they matured so quickly during WWII.
3. Because the research is still new, reliable ways to measure grit have not been fully devised. Angela and her peers conducting research into this area acknowledge this. For goodness sakes, she resigned from the board who proposed testing for it. So how can you blame the researchers for forcing this on anybody.
It’s as if folks determined that because environmental crazies would recommend draconian conservation policies that would decimate the very growth that helps the poor around the world, nobody should have been allowed to conduct research into climate change. How much sense does that make?
GE2L2R, of course she developed a “scale”. That’s how you measure inputs vs outcomes. Is there not a Myers-Briggs personality scale? Do you oppose evaluating different personality types in order to figure out how various individuals can best maximize their strengths or work more effectively together?
I really can’t believe some of the holier-than-thou, nobody-should-research-anything, if-you-can-give-a-test-for-it-then-it-must-be-evil garbage some of you post. And you are notionally in the field of education?
Virginia,
Did you miss the part of the article where it said that Angela Duckworth quit the grit commission because she didn’t want the testing?
Diane, I acknowledge that you reported the researchers distanced themselves from the commission. I assume that was intended to prove that even the grit researchers do not support the evaluation of teachers on grit enhancement.
But that was not my point. I was referring to your readers’ comments that studying the enhancement of discipline/focus/perseverance is not itself a worthy/legitimate pursuit simply because it could be used at some point to measure teachers. You have even published posts from some of these same commenters (SomeDAM Poet, etc.) but remain remarkably quiet on this suggested censorship. If hordes of your followers suggested that we burn all books which could be misused would you also stand by in silence?
Virginia, disagreement is not censorship. I know you have been censored on other blogs, but I tolerate your dissent.
Yes, I appreciate that. But SomeDAM Poet is directly calling for censorship. He submits that Duckworth and company should have known there research on grit could have been misused to measure teachers; therefore, it should never have been conducted. That’s tantamount to saying that if research into IQ might reveal inconvenient findings for certain groups, the research should not even be conducted.
I can’t imagine you support Poet’s position. If all of your posters urged any book that criticizes a teacher be burned/banned, would you not speak out? Disagreement on grit is fine. Skepticism is fine. Advocating self-censorship based on possible uses is a bridge too far.
I would oppose any suggestion of book burning.
virginiasgp: “I really can’t believe some of the holier-than-thou, nobody-should-research-anything, if-you-can-give-a-test-for-it-then-it-must-be-evil garbage some of you post. And you are notionally in the field of education?”
Do you know what a “strawman” is? Frankly, I’m still not convinced you aren’t just a troll — just here to make people upset, possibly paid to do so. If not, you have serious problems with logic and philosophy.
All I can say is, “wow”.
Why would anyone want to “measure” another person’s soft skills? How pointless this data is going to be! Seriously.
The first thing I thought about was this scenario: imagine an intelligent (or not so intelligent) student in your course does poorly because he/she doesn’t pay attention in class, doesn’t complete homework, etc. This sithation is more common than we’d like, no? Imagine these students “trick” the tests to get favorable results (very “gritty”, high motivation, etc). What happens to the teacher when the principal and parents get involved and ask, “teacher, why is this student performing so poorly?” The teacher replies, “this student doesn’t do their part, doesn’t turn homework in, doesn’t pay attention, etc.”. The principal says, “the grit data doesn’t show this – it must be something else on your end”.
Oh snap! Another set of data to use against teachers.
Oh, and let’s not forget about the “growth” situation! “Great job, teacher! The student’s data shows that they grew in perseverance, everything related to grit, etc! Why didn’t this student receive an “A” in your course?”.
I’m not sure if these are questions that some of you have experienced with your administration, but when I taught I got these questions all of the time. I can only imagine what else my principal would say to this type of test.
#contrivedresults
Surely it’s all just a matter of finding the right “formula” to calculate the teachers’ “grit VAM” and “joy VAM.”
Fun and engaging lessons won’t really do much to build grit. Dry, stultifying, onerous work is the stuff. I wonder where we can find some of that?
Actually, “grit” is a direct by-product of interest. If you find something intrinsically worthwhile, you’ll stick with it because it’s enjoyable (not necessarily “fun” – I hate that word applied to education) or otherwise worth your while.
I read the book THE OTHER WES MOORE in which the author (Wes Moore) is a Rhodes Scholar and other distinguished stuff and he learns about another Wes Moore who is incarcerated for life for murder. He’s intrigued by the same name and that they lived geographically close to each other (although not as close as the author makes it out to be), so why did the author end up so successful and what went wrong with the other Wes Moore. Among the author’s conclusions is that the other Wes Moore lacked “grit”, which is patently ridiculous. He worked his way up in the drug trade from the time he was 10 years old and was running his own little empire by the time he was 14. You can say all you want about the evils of drugs and drug dealing (and I’d agree), but you can’t argue this kid lacked “grit” – it’s not like a drug empire just gets handed to a slacker or quitter. It’s just that, unfortunately, given the life that was handed to him, the other Wes Moore found the drug trade more relevant and worth working for than school. He could see how the drug trade could advance him and serve his interests – he couldn’t see that about school.
The problem with “grit” as an educational gauge is that it means whatever people want it to mean.
It’s a very subjective thing.
of course things like “passion”, “drive”, “persistence”, etc matter in most endeavors, but they are very nebulous terms. The idea that you can attach a number to them and “measure” these things is just absurd and people like Duckworth are being very unscientific when they pretend to do so.
I say pretend because these folks are not “measuring” anything when they play their silly numbers game.
While I don’t agree with the plan to rate joy and grit, we can all agree that there are underachievers and overachievers. I have read theories and I’m sure there is research on this phenomena. I also have my own opinion based on personal experiences and observations. The goal should be to find a way to encourage students to work to their potential (or in some cases just simply to put forth a little effort in to their learning).
This study sounds like another way to label children, not to assist them in getting the most out of their educational opportunities.
I hope these planners realize that grit and joy have nothing to do with intelligence or ability. As parents many of us have seem the CCSS suck the joy out of our children’s souls and demoralize their psyche so that they no longer have the grit to do their best.
I don’t need a pilot program to discover these results.
Someone is defining what a good little robot looks like. Let’s see if we can standardize what joy looks like and grit. How about affability? Can we “can” curiosity? I’m sure someone can develop standardized tests and of course the scripted programs to teach to them (all of which will make them big bucks). What is really absurd is that there are people who will buy into these instruments. Can you imagine the PD presentations?
Our local, failed, gubernatoral candidate, and venture capitalist Chris Gabrieli, is also an educational gadfly. His last endeavor was called the National Center on Time & Learning, for which he got a no-bid,
“$325,000 contract expand the school day and implement its “Effective Time Use Audit Tools…” from the Boston Public Schools.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_coverage/2016/02/special_report_plugged_in_groups_snag_40m_in_no_bid_boston_schools
His lastest gig is a “Boston-based education nonprofit Transforming Education (TransformEd)”, which purports to, guess what? measure social and emotional learning (SEL) by administering surveys.
http://learninglab.wbur.org/2015/12/08/report-non-academic-skills-are-key-ingredient-to-student-success/
http://www.transformingeducation.org (funded, bien sûr, by BillandMelinda)
No only do these “non-profits” suck money from our schools, they also provide well paying white collar positions to a networked cast of characters who might otherwise have to work at real jobs doing honest labor, heaven forfend, as they build their résumés for the next rung on the career ladder of expertise about all things educational.
Good news: “Reformers” have wised up and realize “rigor” is how you estimate time of death, not make school better for children. Bad news: another available cheap trick for Moskiwitz-emptying all her schools of kids and staff for a PR extravaganza…a combo “civics field trip” and “lesson in photo-op PR ‘joy’ “. I can already see the matching tshirts, smiling faces, and even Gov Cuomo.
I wrote these a while back, but some reformanure (like “grit”) stays as fresh as the day it was deposited
“Grit is for pancakes”
Grit is for pancakes
For sandpaper too
It isn’t for kids’ sakes
It just makes them blue
“The Gritted Age”
The “Gritted Age”
Was full of grit
And “Gated Age”
Is full of it
Age of the Great Gritsby and
Age of the Great GatesB
Oh great another assay by the soft-science crowd to apply their ivory-tower metrics to public ed policy. They seem to be riding high these days– my ’60’s undergrad colleagues who were measuring rats’ maze behavior in Psych 101.
Is joy even a skill?
If they operationalize/define joy in behavioral terms, then they can apply the old “fake it til you make it” adage, which is a very rough (and unfair) approximation of cognitive therapy. I’m sure some company can come up with a scripted program that fits the bill.
The most important learning in elementary and middle school is SOCIAL SKILLS, which cannot be taught or tested,o of course. Pure nonsense!
Let me qualify your statement, Susan, since the teaching of social skills is an important part of many special education classrooms. Using standardized tests to measure their acquisition, however, is ludicrous. “Joy,” however, is not a term for any skill/attitude,trait we might have tried to cultivate. I guess we want to have happy robots.
The NPR version of the story, 3/3/2016:
Is ‘Grit’ Doomed To Be The New Self-Esteem?