First-rate temperaments: liberals don't want to admit it, and conservatives don't want to pay for it, but building character--resilience, optimism, perseverance, focus--may be the best way to help poor students succeed.

• Author: Toch, Thomas
• Position: How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character - Book review

How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character

by Paul Tough

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 256 pp.

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When Barack Obama campaigned for the White House four years ago, Democrats and their allies in education policy circles were embroiled in a fierce debate over how best to improve the educational performance of the millions of K-12 students living in poverty.

One camp, a coalition of researchers and educators formed by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank, argued in a manifesto called A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education that tackling poverty's causes and consequences was the way to free disadvantaged students from the grip of educational failure. "Schools can ameliorate some of the impact of social and economic disadvantage on achievement," the coalition wrote. But, it continued, "[t]here is no evidence that school improvement strategies by themselves can substantially, consistently, and sustainably close these gaps."

In sharp contrast, a second reform group, led by then school superintendents Joel Klein of New York and Michelle Rhee of Washington, D.C., and others drafted a competing reform manifesto under the auspices of an organization known as the Education Equity Project that stressed tougher accountability for schools and teachers, governance reforms for failing schools, and the expansion of charter schools. They largely refused to acknowledge that poverty rather than school quality was the root cause of the educational problems of disadvantaged kids, for fear that saying so would merely reinforce a long-standing belief among public educators that students unlucky enough to live in poverty shouldn't be expected to achieve at high levels--and public educators shouldn't be expected to get them there.

While one of the few reformers with feet in both camps, Chicago schools superintendent Arne Duncan, was named U.S. secretary of education, the Klein cabal won the policy fight. The Obama agenda has focused almost exclusively on systemic school reform to address the achievement deficits of disadvantaged students: standards, testing, teacher evaluations, and a continued, if different, focus on accountability. The administration's one education-related poverty-fighting program, Duncan's Promise Neighborhoods initiative, is a rounding error in the Department of Education's budget.

Duncan was right to align himself early on with both Democratic factions. Good schools can, of course, make a difference in student achievement just by being good. And the inadequate nutrition, housing, language development...