How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character (35 page)

[>]
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Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks, “The Falling Time Cost of College: Evidence from Half a Century of Time Use Data,” unpublished paper (March 24, 2010).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,
[>]
–
[>]

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,
[>]