John Thompson: Game-Changers Go for the Grit
Guest post by John Thompson.
The Hechinger Report's Sarah Butrymowicz, in "Teachers Weigh In on How to Identify Grit," explains that the word "Grit" has become an education buzzword. It is a term for character traits like perseverance and optimism or "zest" that is critical to student achievement.
Butrymowicz cites a report by the Gates-funded Educators 4 Excellence (E4E), "True Grit: The Game-changing Factors and People Lifting School Performance in Los Angeles," which at least used the word "grit" in its title, although it gives no evidence that schools are building that quality. As she explains, their report starts with the assumption that the schools serving poor and minority children have grit because they've increased student performance by 40 points on a scale of 200 to 1000.
It takes a lot of grit to be brazen enough to claim that the E4E's paper does anything other than use the words "True Grit" over and over, as it displays colorful photographs of attractive teachers and students, and state-of-the-art graphics to promote its agenda. It provides checklists that supposedly could be used for cultivating grit, but no evidence that these schools are attempting to do so. The only real conclusion that is supported by the evidence in the report is that someone