When Grit Isn't Enough: A High School Principal Examines How Poverty and Inequality Thwart the College-for-All Promise

Deeply held beliefs frequently go unchallenged in societies. They are how we explain phenomena or culture or history. They are often false, yet persist. I believe that these assumptions, or what I've come to call false promises, persist in public education because we hold so tightly to the American ideal of equality. It is this belief that I and many Americans desperately want to be true. It is this belief that we fight for. But it is also this belief that we must fully unpack, deeply understand, and interrogate if we are to uphold our fragile democracy." - p. 6

"It is the 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' ethos to which so many generations of Americans adhere. Yet data repeatedly show hoe poverty, social class, race, and parents' educational attainment more directly influence an individual's success and potential earnings than any individual effort. We clearly do no yet have a level playing field, but this belief is all but impossible to challenge. Whenever we hear of another bootstraps story, we want to generalize. We disregard the fact that luck often plays a major role. And in generalizing and celebrating the individual nature of success, we disregard the imperative to rethink social and economic policies that leave many behind." - p. 8

"In middle- and upper-middle-class families, an invisible safety net typically surrounds young people planning to go on to college. There is usually a family member or friend who will step in and remind a student about the intricacies of student loans and deadlines, or the m any requirements for staying registered once enrolled, or issues that can arise with housing. However, if you are a lower-income student and you miss one or two e-mails or have a change in your adviser, you may find your dreams derailed. It may be tempting to dismiss the examples above as ineptitude or carelessness on the part of individual students, but why must there be different rules, expectations, and outcomes for low-income versus middle- or upper-income students?" - p. 23

"If we allow an assumption like 'race doesn't matter' to prevail, racial issues can be conveniently explained or excused as singular matters to be solved by individual intervention. Singular responses allow us to avoid the actions needed for racial and socio-economic equity and a path toward a healthy and vibrant society and economy." - p. 73-74

"What all the talk about grit seems to miss is the importance of putting children's experience front and center. In other words, when the emphasis on grit ends up as a stand-alone pedagogy, the context of student' life and family circumstances is ignore." - p.76

"We want to allow for growth mindsets in a way that might equalize the playing field, yet we continue to entrap so many of our young people with the assumption that if they just play by the rules, do the right things, they will be successful. Achieving high test scores has become the only way to measure success or to prove that students have learned grit. Equating better test results with healthy learning has reduced many schools to a narrow understanding of learning." - p. 106

"Imagine if American high school students knew that they could study careers in music or finance in a vocational school as either an alternative or precursor to college. Imagine if our community colleges could truly reinvent themselves and be places where students enter the allied health professions or even design professions." - p. 133

"School can be the place where you practice how dreams are realized. School can be where you can build a strong sense of self - an identity that you can belong to a special tribe, like artists, or change-makers, or mathematicians or inventors. To ensure that schools incubate future dreams and dreamers, curriculum, structures, and pedagogy must encourage deep engagement both with teachers and with community members. The walls between school and community can and should be permeable." - p. 161