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How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character

Page 27

by Paul Tough


  [>] “the worst slum area in the United States”: Pam Belluck, “Razing the Slums to Rescue the Residents,” New York Times, September 6, 1998.

  one in nine murders in Chicago: William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 25.

  single mothers on welfare: Ibid.

  [>] The Chicago public schools’ average is 17: Rosalind Rossi, “CPS High School ACT Scores Go Down—and They Go Up,” Chicago Tribune, November 3, 2011.

  only students who score in the top 20 percent: Murray, Real Education, 67, 75.

  “As long as it remains taboo”: Ibid., 104.

  [>] “just not smart enough”: Ibid., 44.

  [>] Recently, two labor economists: Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks, “Leisure College, USA: The Decline in Student Study Time,” AEI Education Outlook (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, August 2010); Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks, “The Falling Time Cost of College: Evidence from Half a Century of Time Use Data,” unpublished paper (March 24, 2010).

  [>] A separate study of 6,300 undergraduates: Steven Brint and Allison M. Cantwell, Undergraduate Time Use and Academic Outcomes: Results from UCUES 2006 (Berkeley, CA: Research and Occasional Paper Series, Center for Students in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley, October 2008).

  5. A Better Path

  [>] I wrote an article about KIPP and Riverdale: Paul Tough, “What If the Secret to Success Is Failure?,” New York Times Magazine, September 18, 2011.

  [>] “I’m left now, in my thirties”: See http://community.nytimes.com/com ments/www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret- to-success-is-failure.html?permid=141#comment141.

  [>] “one of the best decisions I ever made”: “‘You’ve Got to Find What You Love,’ Jobs Says,” Stanford Report, June 14, 2005.

  [>] There are fewer entrepreneurs: Paul Kedrosky and Dane Stangler, Financialization and Its Entrepreneurial Consequences (Kansas City, MO: Kauffman Foundation Research Series, March 2011).

  36 percent of new Princeton graduates: Catherine Rampell, “Out of Harvard, and Into Finance,” New York Times Economix blog, December 21, 2011.

  an insightful blog post addressing this issue: James Kwak, “Why Do Harvard Kids Head to Wall Street?,” Baseline Scenario blog, May 4, 2010, http://baselinescenario.com/2010/05/04/why-do-harvard-kids-head-to-wall-street/.

  [>] The recruiters also make the argument: Marina Keegan, “Another View: The Science and Strategy of College Recruiting,” New York Times DealBook blog, November 9, 2011.

  an ongoing survey of attitudes by the Pew Research Center: “September 22–25, 2011, Omnibus,” Pew Research Center.

  [>] In 1966, at the height of the War on Poverty: Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2011), 14, figure 4.

  And the child poverty rate: “Poverty Among Children,” Congressional Budget Office, December 3, 1984; DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, and Smith, Income, Poverty, 17, figure 4.

  [>] The first goes back to The Bell Curve: Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Free Press, 1994). See also James J. Heckman, “Lessons from the Bell Curve,” Journal of Political Economy 103, no. 5 (1995).

  [>] gap between rich and poor was getting worse: Sean F. Reardon, “The Widening Achievement Gap Between the Rich and the Poor,” in Whither Opportunity?, eds. Greg Duncan and Richard Murnane (New York: Russell Sage, 2011). See also Sabrina Tavernise, “Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say,” New York Times, February 9, 2012.

  [>] The consensus of most reform advocates: Steven Brill chronicles the way that the broad education-reform movement became a narrowly focused teacher-quality movement in Steven Brill, Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011).

  This argument has its intellectual roots: William L. Sanders and June C. Rivers, Cumulative and Residual Effects of Teachers on Future Student Academic Achievement (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Value-Added Research and Assessment Center, November 1996); William L. Sanders and Sandra P. Horn, “Research Findings from the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) Database: Implications for Educational Evaluation and Research,” Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education 12, no. 3 (1998); Heather R. Jordan, Robert L. Mendro, and Dash Weerasinghe, Teacher Effects on Longitudinal Student Achievement: A Report on Research in Progress (Dallas: Dallas Public Schools, July 1997); Kati Haycock, “Good Teaching Matters . . . a Lot,” Thinking K−16 3, no. 2 (Summer 1998); Eric A. Hanushek, John F. Kain, and Steven G. Rivkin, “Teachers, Schools, and Academic Achievement,” NBER Working Paper 6691 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, August 1998); Eric A. Hanushek, “Efficiency and Equity in Education,” NBER Reporter (Spring 2001); Robert Gordon, Thomas J. Kane, and Douglas O. Staiger, Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job, Hamilton Project White Paper 2006-01 (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2006).

  [>] brilliant teachers suddenly go downhill: See, e.g., Michael Marder, “Visualizing Educational Data,” unpublished paper, Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin, February 9, 2011; and Michael Marder, “Failure of U.S. Public Secondary Schools in Mathematics: Poverty Is a More Important Cause than Teacher Quality,” unpublished paper, 2011.

  [>] teacher quality probably accounted for less than 10 percent: Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin, “Teachers, Schools”; Eric Eide, Dan Goldhaber, and Dominic Brewer, “The Teacher Labour Market and Teacher Quality,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 20, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 232.

  $41,348 for a family of four: United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service, National School Lunch Program Fact Sheet (Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service, October 2011).

  [>] covers about 40 percent of American children: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2011 Annual Social and Economic Supplement, http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032011/pov/new01_185_01.htm.

  just one student in eight doesn’t qualify: As of the spring of 2012, 87 percent of Chicago public school students are low-income by federal education standards. “Stats and facts” page, Chicago Public Schools website, http://www.cps.edu/about_cps/at-a-glance/pages/stats_and_facts.aspx.

  about 10 percent of all American children: DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, and Smith, Income, Poverty, 19, table 6.

  an income of less than about $11,000 a year: Ibid., 61. See also Hope Yen and Laura Wides-Munoz, “Poorest Poor in US Hits New Record: 1 in 15 People,” Associated Press, November 3, 2011.

  more than seven million American children: DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, and Smith, Income, Poverty, 19, table 6.

  [>] an effective program of support for parents: See, for instance, Jack Shonkoff, speech at the NBC News Education Nation Summit, September 26, 2011, http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/resources/multimedia/lectures_and_presentations/education_nation/.

  between seven and twelve dollars of tangible benefit: James J. Heckman, Seong Hyeok Moon, Rodrigo Pinto, Peter A. Savelyev, and Adam Yavitz, “The Rate of Return to the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program,” Journal of Public Economics 94, nos. 1 and 2 (February 2010).

  Index

  A. J. (IS 318 student), [>]–[>]

  ABC program. See Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-Up (ABC) program

  academic self-control, [>]

  ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) scores, [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>]

  ACE Tech Charter High School, [>]–[>], [>]

  achievement, dimensions of, [>]

  achievement gap

  executive functions and, [>]–[>]

  OneGoal students and, [>]–[>]

  policy debates and, [>]–[>]

  teacher quality and, [>]–[>]

&n
bsp; achievement tests. See also standardized college admissions tests

  low-scorers on, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

  malleability of intelligence and, [>]–[>]

  as predictor of life outcomes, [>]–[>]

  unfulfilled potential and, [>]–[>]

  ACT test

  college success and, [>], [>]

  Kewauna’s story and, [>], [>], [>]

  as measure, [>]–[>]

  score improvement efforts and, [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>]

  ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), [>]

  adolescence

  decision making and, [>]–[>]

  discipline and, [>]–[>]

  early nurturing and, [>]–[>]

  effectiveness of interventions in, [>]–[>]

  effects of childhood stress in, [>]–[>]

  affluent students. See privileged students

  African American students. See also Black, James, Jr.; Lerma, Kewauna; Williams, Justus

  chess and, [>], [>], [>]

  college and, [>]–[>]

  compared with affluent white teens, [>]–[>]

  Ainsworth, Mary, [>]–[>], [>]

  Albert, Derrion, [>]

  Alinsky, Saul, [>]

  allostatic load, [>]

  executive functions and, [>]–[>]

  index for, [>]–[>], [>]

  parenting and, [>]–[>]

  Amistad Academy in New Haven, [>]

  Anda, Robert, [>]–[>]

  animal-behavior studies. See LG study

  anxiety, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

  anxious attachment, [>]–[>]

  Aronson, Joshua, [>]–[>]

  Ashley, Maurice, [>]

  Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-Up (ABC) program, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

  attachment relationships

  interventions and, [>]–[>]

  Minnesota study on, [>]–[>]

  parental history and, [>]–[>]

  parenting and, [>]–[>]

  as predictor of success, [>]–[>]

  Babcock, Philip, [>]–[>]

  Barayev, Isaac (student), [>], [>]

  Bayview Child Health Center in San Francisco, [>]–[>]

  behavioral theory, [>]–[>]

  behavior modification, [>]–[>]

  The Bell Curve (Murray and Herrnstein), [>], [>]–[>]

  Bennett, Juaquin (KIPP student), [>]–[>]

  Bennett, William, [>]

  Binet, Alfred, [>]

  Black, James, Jr. (IS 318 student), [>]–[>], [>], [>]

  chess rating, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

  Columbus tournament and, [>]–[>]

  match against Lapshun, [>]–[>], [>]

  specialized-school test and, [>]–[>]

  Black, James, Sr., [>]

  Blair, Clancy, [>], [>], [>]

  Block, Jack, [>]

  blood pressure, and health risk, [>]

  Bowen, William G., [>]–[>]

  Bowlby, John, [>]–[>]

  Bowles, Samuel, [>]–[>]

  Bridges, Ruby Nell, [>]

  Bring Up Genius! (Polgar), [>]

  Brunzell, Tom, [>]–[>], [>], [>]

  Burke Harris, Nadine, [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>]

  neuroscientific perspective and, [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>]

  Byrne, Ruth, [>]

  CARE. See Children Aware of Riverdale Ethics (CARE)

  Caspi, Avshalom, [>]

  CBT. See cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)

  character. See also character strengths; noncognitive skills

  habits and, [>]–[>]

  infant brain chemistry and, [>]

  meaning of, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

  quantification of, [>]–[>]

  rules and, [>]–[>]

  character-education initiatives, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

  Character Education Partnership, [>]

  character report card, [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>]

  development of, [>]–[>]

  character strengths. See also grit; noncognitive skills; optimism; self-control

  American high school students and, [>]–[>]

  as antipoverty tool, [>]

  definition of character and, [>]–[>]

  development of, [>]

  dual-purpose instruction and, [>]–[>]

  good habits and, [>]–[>]

  high-school GPA and, [>]–[>]

  KIPP development of, [>]–[>]

  malleability of, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

  parenting and, [>]–[>]

  Peterson’s list of, [>]–[>]

  risk of failure and, [>]–[>]

  as social safety net, [>], [>]–[>]

  teaching technique and, [>]–[>]

  Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (Seligman and Peterson), [>], [>]

  charter schools, [>], [>], [>], [>]. See also ACE Tech Charter High School; KIPP middle schools

  chess. See also chess mastery; chess tournaments; Spiegel, Elizabeth

  IQ and, [>]–[>]

  and thinking habits, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

  Chess-in-the-Schools, [>], [>], [>], [>]

  chess mastery, [>]–[>]

  African Americans and, [>], [>]

  allure of, [>]–[>]

  deliberate practice and, [>]–[>]

  mental abilities in, [>]–[>]

  chess ratings, [>]–[>]

  James Black and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

  chess tournaments

  elite dominance of, [>]–[>]

  team strategy and, [>]–[>]

  Chicago Public Schools reform initiatives, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

  Chicago Tribune, [>]–[>]

  childhood trauma. See also ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) scores

  adolescence and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

  adult outcomes and, [>]–[>]

  neurophysiological effects of, [>]–[>], [>]

  nurturing parenting habits and, [>]–[>]

  prevalence of, [>]

  child-parent psychotherapy, [>]

  Children Aware of Riverdale Ethics (CARE), [>]

  Child Trauma Research Program, University of California at San Francisco, [>]

  Chingos, Matthew, [>]–[>]

  Cicchetti, Dante, [>], [>]

  Clarke, Whitney, [>]

  Clinton, Hillary, [>]–[>]

  Clinton, William Jefferson (U.S. president), [>]–[>]

  coding-speed test, [>]–[>], [>]

  cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), [>], [>]

  cognitive control system, [>]–[>]. See also self-control

  cognitive flexibility, [>]

  cognitive hypothesis, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>]. See also intelligence; Murray, Charles

  cognitive self-control, [>]

  Cohen, K. C., [>], [>], [>]–[>]

  Colas, Joshua, [>]

  College Advisory Playbook (KIPP), [>]–[>]

  college graduation trends, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

  college students

  college access vs. completion and, [>]–[>]

  jobs of graduates and, [>]–[>]

  KIPP graduates as, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], 209n50

  OneGoal program and, [>]–[>]

  relationships with professors, [>]

  time use by, [>]–[>]

  college wage premium, [>], [>]–[>]

  “compliance-based” discipline system, [>]–[>]

  CompStat data analysis system, [>]

  compulsiveness, [>]–[>]

  confidence, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

  confirmation bias, [>]–[>]

  conscientiousness, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]. See also self-control

  consciousness, [>]–[>]

  Consortium on Chicago Schools Research, [>], [>]

  Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center in Chicago, [>]

  cortisol levels, [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]. See also stress-response system

  counseling, [>], [>]

  Cowley, Michelle, [>]

 
; CPA (character point average), [>]–[>]

  cross-fostering studies, [>]

  Crossing the Finish Line (Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson), [>]–[>], [>]

  Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, [>]

  Daley, Richard (Chicago mayor), [>], [>]

  Danson, Ted, [>]

  Dark Knights of Harlem, [>]

  decision making, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

  Deep Blue, [>]–[>]

  de Groot, Adriaan, [>]

  delayed gratification, [>], [>]–[>]. See also self-control

  depression, [>]–[>]

  The Development of the Person (Egeland and Sroufe), [>]–[>]

  discipline, and middle school students, [>]–[>]

  DNA-related effects, and parenting behaviors, [>]

  Dowling, Jane Martinez, [>]–[>]

  Dozier, Elizabeth, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]

  Keitha Jones and, [>], [>]

  “Mush” and, [>], [>], [>]

  Dozier, Mary, [>], [>]

  dropping out

  adolescent decisions and, [>]

  author’s experience and, [>]–[>]

  from college, [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>]

  noncognitive skills and, [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>]

  OneGoal program and, [>]

  parental care and, [>]

  as positive step, [>]–[>]

  poverty and, [>], [>]

  predictors of, [>], [>]

  U.S. trends in, [>]–[>]

  dual-purpose instruction, [>]–[>]

  Dubner, Stephen, [>]

  Duckworth, Angela, [>]

  character research, [>]–[>], [>], [>]

  Grit Scale and, [>]–[>]

  motivation vs. volition and, [>], [>]

  volitional tools and, [>]–[>]

  Duncan, Arne, [>]–[>], [>], [>]

  Du Sable High School in Chicago, [>], [>]

  Dweck, Carol, [>], [>], [>]

  dwelling strategies, [>]–[>]

  Edlund, Calvin, [>]–[>]

  education reform

  poverty debate and, [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

  students’ home lives and, [>]–[>]

  teacher quality and, [>]–[>]

  Egeland, Byron, [>]–[>]

  elite schools. See also Riverdale Country School

  character and, [>]–[>]

  chess playing and, [>]–[>]

  opportunity and, [>]

  emotional capacity, [>]–[>], [>]

  emotional intelligence, [>], [>]–[>]

  The End of Overeating (Kessler), [>]–[>]

  Ericsson, K. Anders, [>

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