What should kids be learning in school?

What should kids be learning in school? This is a question at the root of many an ideological debate. But I don’t want to take on that broad of a consideration now. Instead, I’d like to refine this question to: What do kids need to become successful regardless of their environmental challenges?

A long-term study by James Heckman of the University of Chicago recently looked at success rates among students in Texas who, in the 1990s had been unsuccessful in school, but who had subsequently earned their GEDs. What was striking was that these kids had met basic academic requirements for high school in about 32 hours of test preparation, while the average traditional graduate put in about 1,000 hours per year. Yet looking at long-term indicators of success, such as holding a job, salary, home stability, etc., Heckman found that the GED graduates did only marginally better than dropouts. Worse yet, compared to students who spent the 4,000 hours to gain a full-fledged diploma, they fell far short in terms of long-term success. High rates of getting fired, broken personal relationships, and low earning potential were normal among the GED grads.

Both GED and regular diploma graduates had met basic academic requirements, easily measured by standardized tests. So what was it that the GED students were not mastering, that had been overlooked by fill-in-the-bubbles testing? Heckman’s research revealed some specifics, variously called “soft” or “non-cognitive skills,” or simply “personality traits.” Prominent among them are impulse control and tolerance for delayed gratification. Heckman’s research then found strong correlations between these traits and success in later life. Lack of them was frequently due to various kinds of adverse childhood experiences: neglect, homelessness, poverty, and abuse.

In his book “How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character,” author Paul Tough explores this further. He reports that kids who have four or more traumatic childhood experiences are 32 times more likely to have learning or behavior problems (frequently misdiagnosed as attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder) in school than kids with more neutral or positive childhood experiences. Additionally, they have statistically higher incidences of long-term negative health effects such as heart disease, mental health issues, drug dependence, and suicide.

The good news is that non-cognitive skills can be learned, provided there are curricula, time and a shared high value for teaching such skills. Personality traits such as resilience, ability to stay on task, leadership, cooperation, ambition, resourcefulness, networking, and asking thoughtful questions can be taught. Many of our finest teachers do this already. Yet when it comes to assessing how teachers, administrators, and schools are performing, instruction focused on improving students’ non-cognitive skills is not considered.

It could be argued that teaching non-cognitive skills is a necessary prerequisite to learning academics. Kids deficient in or lacking an ability to control impulsive behavior, to remain on-task, and to think critically are less likely to succeed in their studies. Furthermore, without specific instruction in non-academic skills, they are more likely to perform poorly on the very measures of academic progress, in turn used to measure teacher, principal, and school proficiency.

It’s possible that in our efforts to increase academic accountability, we are overlooking a critical component of student learning. What if someday teacher, principal, and school evaluations incorporated measures of how educators individually and collectively teach non-cognitive skills hand-in-hand with academics? If we did, we might be gaining a more complete assessment of how well we are contributing to the long-term success of our future citizens.

Paul Morley is a teacher at Burchell High.