The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP)-nicknamed "the Nation's Report Card"-is the largest nationally representative assessment that tests what American students know and can do in different subjects.
Curiously, it was recently announced that beginning in 2017, NAEP plans to start measuring so-called "non-cognitive skills" like motivation and grit in the background surveys they issue to all test-takers. Additionally, according to Education Week, questions about "self-efficacy and personal achievement goals may be included on questionnaires for specific subjects to create content-area measures."
Though schools won't be judged based on these NAEP measures, the article says, "other such tests for accountability purposes may be on the horizon." A coalition of seven districts in California are reportedly developing an accountability system that will evaluate schools in part by including measures of "growth mindset, self efficacy and self-management, and social awareness." These are supposed to be in place next year.
The odd thing about this NAEP announcement is that very recently psychologists Angela Duckworth and David Scott Yeager published a paper in the journal Educational Researcher arguing that while emerging findings on character skills are promising, existing research is not ready to be incorporated into accountability assessments. Angela Duckworth told NPR that she feels "enthusiasm" for these measures "is getting ahead of the science" and that wanting to use these skills for evaluation would be gravely premature.
In April I published a long piece on the rise of grit fervor in education reform, which looked at the ways in which current tools to measure grit and other character traits are flawed. There are significant limitations to self-reported assessments, and Duckworth and Yeager's subsequent journal paper echoed these concerns. Researchers haven't given up on developing improved measures, and they are currently exploring future possibilities like computer simulations.
The intellectual humility Duckworth and Yeager demonstrated in their paper (and this video) is quite impressive, and should not be understated. Why school districts and NAEP are still intent on moving forward quickly with measuring these skills then deserves some further clarification.
