[Vision2020] Education: Rethinking what spurs success

[Art Deco]

Rethinking what spurs success
 By Greg Toppo, @gtoppo, USA TODAY

In the late 1960s, Stanford
University<http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Organizations/Schools/Stanford+University>psychologist
Walter Mischel sat preschoolers at desks with a marshmallow, a
bell and a bargain: Eat the marshmallow any time you want, but if you wait
15 minutes, you'll get two marshmallows.

Mischel intended the experiment merely as a look into how children resist
temptation, but when he began tracking down the marshmallow kids in the
early 1980s, he found that those who'd waited for two marshmallows at age 4
had much higher SAT scores and better academic records as teenagers. Could
something as simple as self-control predict who got into a top-flight
college?

After decades of failed education policies, scientists, economists and
educators are beginning to rethink their basic ideas about what it takes to
succeed in school. They're beginning to look at non-cognitive skills --
grit, perseverance, conscientiousness and optimism, for instance -- and
wondering if they might be as important as cognitive skills.

The idea comes at a key time for
U.S.<http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/U.S>education. A decade
after Congress passed the No Child Left Behind law,
educators are as divided as ever on the law's key goal: how to improve
educational outcomes for poor children. On one side, an influential group
of educators says the stresses and deprivations of poverty doom kids'
aspirations -- cure poverty, they say, and education will follow. On the
other side are educators who say a more competitive, focused and
accountable education system will lift kids out of poverty by giving them a
ticket to college and the middle class.

So far we haven't cured poverty, and the results from several "no excuses"
experiments are mixed. Alumni of the highly regarded KIPP middle schools
for low-income students, for instance, boast excellent high school
graduation rates. But few make it through college.

New research suggests that a third way might be more practical: alleviate
the effects of poverty by helping parents raise more resilient kids -- and
helping kids develop habits of mind to persevere through difficulty.

"We haven't been able to solve big problems because we've been looking in
the wrong places," writes author Paul Tough, whose new book, *How Children
Succeed*, is reigniting interest in the topic. Among those heeding the new
research: David Levin <http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/David+Levin>,
a KIPP co-founder who adopted a 24-item "character report card" in the face
of the poor college-going results. After more than a decade of no-nonsense
academics and harsh discipline, "He (Levin) had created the perfect middle
school student, but he hadn't created the perfect college student," Tough
said. KIPP students now sit for parent-teacher conferences that detail not
just how they're doing in history and algebra, but how well they score on
zest, curiosity, social intelligence and optimism.

"When we think about the word 'character,' we often think of something that
is not at all changeable -- it's just like what you're born with," Tough
says. "But these strengths are things that are absolutely changeable.
Individuals can change them themselves. Teachers and parents can have a
huge impact on how they're developed."

A former editor of *The**New York Times
Magazine<http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/New+York+Times+Magazine>
*, Tough says the need to develop grit doesn't just occupy educators of
low-income kids. He writes that many elite schools offer students not so
much a chance to succeed as "a high probability of non-failure" -- and
connections that ensure a student never falls out of the upper class.

Indeed, says Dominic Randolph, headmaster of Riverdale Country School in
the Bronx, "In most highly academic environments in the United
States<http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Places,+Geography/Countries/United+States>,
no one fails anything."

Tough also details the efforts of Elizabeth Spiegel, a chess teacher at a
Brooklyn middle school who develops master players. She does it, Tough
discovers, by teaching her students to reflect on every move of every game
-- mistakes included. Her players write out each move and review them
afterward, drilling down to figure out why they made a mistake and how to
fix it. "Teaching chess is really about teaching the habits that go along
with thinking," Spiegel tells him.

She likens the process to psychotherapy, saying her players often make the
same mistakes repeatedly. In the end, she says, they must find a way to
separate themselves from their mistakes and losses. "I try to teach my
students that losing is something you do, not something you are," she says.

The results speak for themselves: Spiegel's teams and players both
consistently rank among the best nationwide, and a few students achieve
grand master status before age 13. After one young player, James Black,
beats international chess master Yuri Lapshun, the defeated Ukranian sits
down with James and Spiegel to analyze the game. Move by move, the teacher
realizes, James has outplayed one of the world's best players. In the end,
she tells James he'd played "exceptionally deep chess."


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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