The Huffington Post – Rebbecca Klein
“It may be just as important to evaluate schools based on students’ levels of motivation and perseverance as it is to judge them based on students’ standardized test scores. A report released by the National Bureau of Economic Research in December argues that policymakers tend to focus too much on test scores even though noncognitive skills, like motivation and perseverance, are just as predictive of students’ future success. The researchers from the University of Chicago, Belgium’s KU Leuven and Maastricht University in The Netherlands looked at the outcomes of more than 25 programs designed to boost students’ cognitive and noncognitive abilities. They concluded that it is possible both to measure and to teach these noncognitive skills.”(more)