Ira Glass: But what struck Heckman is that this didn’t show up in the test results. Our entire education system is organized around the idea that testing and the kind of smarts that you can measure on a test, are the most important information we could have about a student.That’s how we evaluate whether a school is well-run. There are kids who do better on standardized tests. That’s at the heart of huge policy initiatives, like No Child Left Behind.
But here was a test, the GED, that said that millions of people were just as smart as high school graduates. If they passed the GED, it proved that their cognitive skills were just as good. But these people were failing, which led Heckman to conclude—
James Heckman: That these test scores explain only a tiny fraction of the variability among individuals— who’s successful and who’s not— and that other factors are out there that aren’t measured that aren’t even accounted for in public policy that make a big difference. And so I said, “Hm, something’s missing.”
Ira Glass: What were the skills that the GED students lacked that the high school graduates had? Specifically, what was this unnamed dark matter, and how could you measure it? Heckman started calling these mystery skills that he was looking for non-cognitive skills to distinguish them from the stuff that educators normally focused on, which of course were cognitive skills.
… Now, for James Heckman, and for writer Paul Tough for that matter,what is most exciting about the power of these non-cognitive skills is the possibility they would give kids the skills they need to get out of poverty and the skills they need in the short run to counter-act the effects of poverty on children in school.
It’s well-documented that poor children do worse on tests and worse in school than better-off ones. This is the so-called achievement gap.
What this new science seems to indicate is that what is holding these children back is not poverty. It’s not the lack of money or resources in their homes. It’s stress. If you grew up in a poor household, it is more likely to be a household the just stresses you out in ways that kids in better-off homes are not stressed out. And that stress prevents you from developing these non-cognitive skills.
But here was a test, the GED, that said that millions of people were just as smart as high school graduates. If they passed the GED, it proved that their cognitive skills were just as good. But these people were failing, which led Heckman to conclude—
James Heckman: That these test scores explain only a tiny fraction of the variability among individuals— who’s successful and who’s not— and that other factors are out there that aren’t measured that aren’t even accounted for in public policy that make a big difference. And so I said, “Hm, something’s missing.”
Ira Glass: What were the skills that the GED students lacked that the high school graduates had? Specifically, what was this unnamed dark matter, and how could you measure it? Heckman started calling these mystery skills that he was looking for non-cognitive skills to distinguish them from the stuff that educators normally focused on, which of course were cognitive skills.
… Now, for James Heckman, and for writer Paul Tough for that matter,what is most exciting about the power of these non-cognitive skills is the possibility they would give kids the skills they need to get out of poverty and the skills they need in the short run to counter-act the effects of poverty on children in school.
It’s well-documented that poor children do worse on tests and worse in school than better-off ones. This is the so-called achievement gap.
What this new science seems to indicate is that what is holding these children back is not poverty. It’s not the lack of money or resources in their homes. It’s stress. If you grew up in a poor household, it is more likely to be a household the just stresses you out in ways that kids in better-off homes are not stressed out. And that stress prevents you from developing these non-cognitive skills.
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