What's Lucy Reading?

TASC President Lucy N. Friedman catches you up on her list of must-reads:

James Heckman is a hero of mine, a Nobel laureate and an expert in the economics of human development. So it was inspiring to read this Q & A with Dr. Heckman on the Public School Insights Web site, run by the Learning First Alliance. “There's a category of skills, of traits called non-cognitive traits that have to do with behavior, with self-control, with motivation, with conscientiousness...And these factors turn out to be incredibly important in predicting academic and social success,” Dr. Heckman says in the interview. Much of his research applies to early education but has implications for our work.

Also worth reading: this compendium of issue briefs (PDF, 537 KB) from the Afterschool Alliance. The briefs focus on helping older kids in grades 6 through 12 through out-of-school approaches that include mentoring and career preparation.

For those of you like me, who try to keep up with the outpouring of studies and publications about expanding learning time, here are two more. Take a look at the chart in this Education Next article that ties annual yearly progress to snow days. This Catalyst Chicago article notes that research shows low income students stand to gain the most from more learning time.

After hearing many people praise Tony Wagner’s book, I join the chorus of appreciation and forgive the author for this title, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even the Best Schools Don’t Teach the Survival Skills Our Children Need – And What We Can Do About It. He focuses on secondary schools and argues persuasively for adapting the ways we try to teach kids to think creatively and solve problems, real skills they need for the information age.

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