Mom Behind the Curtain

every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard

College isn’t needed for success

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How Children SucceedIn this series of posts, I’ve been exploring the ideas in How Children Succeed, that suggest that doing well in school won’t lead to success.  As a final note, in How Children Succeed, Paul Tough spent a lot of time defining success as disadvantaged students graduating from college. However, his book shows that –

College isn’t needed for success.

Let me follow this by immediately saying that we’ve decided that our kids will go to college, which I might cover in another post, but for now I’m just going to go over the evidence that shows that is isn’t necessary for success….

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Predicting and Teaching Innovators

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How Children SucceedIn my last post about How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough, I considered how Advanced Placement (AP, IB, and other courses designed to teach college courses at the high school level) try to challenge high achieving students. Certainly, these rigorous (often defined as requiring lots of hours of study outside of class, that is, homework) can teach self-discipline, which is measured by grades. However, good grades don’t always lead to success. And my research has shown that for the jobs of the future, we really need to be teaching innovators. So what do grades have to do with teaching innovators? Nothing.

“[Self-discipline] may be very useful for predicting who will graduate from high school, but it’s not as relevant when it come to identifying who might invent a new technology or direct an award-winning movie.” – Angela Duckworth, How Children Succeed p 74

Self-discipline isn’t good a good predictor of innovators and teaching it isn’t teaching innovators.

This really gets to the heart of what I’m searching for….

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AP classes don’t challenge students

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How Children SucceedIn How Children Succeed, Paul Tough found that good grades and lots of homework aren’t future predictors of success. Students need to learn how to set and approach goals with mental contrasting, grit, the ability to take on challenges and face failures, and the ability to persuade other people to give them what they need.

Providing challenges is often given as a reason for AP classes (Advanced Placement courses, or IB courses, college courses designed to be taught in high school and success measured by a standardized exam.) But in our personal experience, that isn’t happening for several reasons. In How Children Succeed, there was evidence that agreed with this view….

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4 characteristics that lead to success

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How Children SucceedSo if good grades and lots of homework aren’t future predictors of success, what are the factors that do lead to success? In his book, How Children Succeed, Paul Tough looks at characteristics they found in students from an underprivileged school where they measured success as graduating from college.

When KIPP started looking at their students who did finish college, they found that instead of being those that were the best scholars while they were at KIPP, “They were the students who were able to recover from the bad grades and resolve to do better, bounce back from [personal conflicts]; could persuade professors to give them extra help after class; could resist the urge [to have fun] and stay home and study.” – How Children Succeed, p 52

Obviously resisting “the urge [to have fun] and stay home and study” relates to self-discipline, but remember that while grades are a measure of self-discipline, good grades alone were not a good predictor of which students from KIPP would go on to graduate from college.…

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Good grades don’t predict success

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How Children SucceedIn my last post about How Children Succeed,  by Paul Tough, I covered how a student’s GPA is more a measure of self-discipline than IQ. The education system is set up to reward students with self-discipline and high GPAs with admission into college. In How Children Succeed, success of disadvantaged students was measured by whether or not they went on to graduate from college. In spite of this, Tough, surprisingly, concludes that the ability to perform well in the ways that school measures aren’t a good predictor of success, even though here success is measured by going on to college.

Specifically, good grades and lots of homework aren’t good predictors of success, and in fact can lead to stress that actually inhibits success….

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Self-discipline is more important to grades than IQ

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How Children SucceedMy alarming conclusion from How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough, was that the set of qualities that our education system emphasizes – measures, teaches, and drills – aren’t traits that lead to success.

Why are grades so important to us? What, exactly, do grades and GPAs measure, and how did they come to be known as future predictors of success?…

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11 Reasons your high-achieving student will fail

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How Children SucceedAs I covered in my post about getting back into the schedule of the school year, teens in high school are busy, busy, busy, trying to make sure they have enough AP classes, keep their GPA and their class rank high, and fill all the rest of the “free” time they have with extracurriculars and service hours, hoping to have resumes spectacular enough to get into a “good” college. It’s common knowledge that if you do your best in high school – especially if it means you can be valedictorian! – it will show everyone, including colleges, that you have what it takes to be a success in life. But does that common knowledge have it right?

Have we gone to far with the rigor of high school with overwhelming loads of AP classes, extracurriculars and volunteerism? Are there enough hours in a day? And if you don’t encourage that standard of excellence, are you encouraging your child to be a slacker?

If you don’t do what everyone else is doing, how can you be sure your kid is going to succeed?!?

It’s a question that keeps parents up at night.

So when I came across the book How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough,  I read it. (I was up, after all.)…

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The Martian – the book, the movie

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The Martian

Read the book?
Seen the movie?

Yes and yes.

I love a science fiction or fantasy novel that includes real science. And the book has more science than the movie.

Is the book The Martian, by Andy Weir, suitable for kids?

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Breaking Point – from bones to academics, everything has one

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A couple months ago I slipped on some water. I could tell you that I managed to catch all my weight with my right hand, so that I didn’t even get a bruise on any other part of my body.

Or I could tell you — that the over-achievement of my right arm and hand led to breaking my wrist.

Which has turned out to be more of a pain, in every possible definition of the word, than I thought it would be. Of course, I’m right handed. So this post, typed with one hand, will be short.

Related to the subject of this blog, I’ve been gathering information about education, job prospects, and entrepreneurship. This episode of the podcast Start Up, by Gimlet Media, shows an interesting connection between them. In this episode, the ADULT employees talk about the effects of their late hours and stress are having on their health and personal lives.

Their schedule sounds remarkably like high-achieving high school TEENS I know….

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National Merit Semifinalist 2016 Cutoff Qualifying PSAT Scores by State

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National Merit Scholarship Program has released the 2016 PSAT qualifying scores.**

UPDATE 9/25/2017 New information on National Merit Semifinalist 2018 Cutoff Qualifying PSAT Scores.

(UPDATE: SEE NEW POST DECEMBER 2016 FOR 2018 GRADUATES)

The National Merit cutoff score for Texas has gone even higher this graduating year – 2016. The SemiFinalist cutoff score for Texas is 220. The race is getting ever tighter and it’s debatable how relevant it is when qualifying scores represent such a small different between abilities. But there are quite a few excellent schools who use National Merit qualifications to give out excellent academic scholarships, so it makes sense to pay attention to the PSAT. In any case, studying for the PSAT won’t be a total waste, since it does help prepare you to take the SAT later. (It’s original purpose, as in “Preliminary” SAT.)

From our son’s experience, here are my tips on preparing for the PSAT and SAT. Our son achieved a score high enough to be a National Merit Semifinalist. We are very proud of all his hard work (and thankful for a little luck.) But also, in case you haven’t heard yet, the PSAT and SAT are changing, with the PSAT taken in fall 2015 already reflecting the changes.

Here are the 2016 National Merit Scholarship Program Semifinalist Selection Index Qualifying Scores by state from the National Merit Scholarship Program Guide September 2015. Students who make this cut-off will need to submit a “confirming” SAT score (see my guide to best study aids) along with their application for the next stage of the competition in October.

** UPDATE 1/7/2016** The scores below are from the 2014 PSAT test. Qualifying scores were released in 2015 for 2016 graduating seniors. The PSAT scores released today for the newly designed 2015 PSAT, the National Merit Qualifying test for graduating Seniors in 2017, are on a different scale than in past years. I’m working on a post on how to interpret 2015 PSAT scores. And I’ve now complete a post about how to predict which 2015 PSAT scores might qualify for National Merit Semifinalist.

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