April 24, 2011|By David L. Kirp
April is the time when students across the nation are being diligently prepped for the dread exams mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act. The fate of thousands of public schools turns on how well their charges do. Now there's a study that appears to show that a simple one-hour exercise can halve the racial achievement gap, while also making minority students healthier and happier. Although this claim sounds as preposterous as a pitch for a potion to cure baldness or to erase wrinkles, it's made in a recent issue of the journal Science.
The researchers, psychologists Geoffrey L. Cohen and Gregory M. Walton, don't claim that their intervention is a miracle cure for the problem of 17-year-old black and Latino students whose average reading and math skills are comparable to13-year-old white students. But their experiment — one of numerous scholarly studies examining the relationship between self-esteem and achievement that have reached the same conclusion — confirms an important, if often ignored, fact: Success in school doesn't necessarily result from ceaselessly drilling students to prep them for achievement tests. "Noncognitive" factors, such as students' sense that they fit in and are capable of doing the work, profoundly affect what they learn. Whether they believe they have the brainpower and the social skills to make it in the achievement-oriented world of school can shape how well they actually do.
Though many youngsters lack self-confidence, the research shows that minority students are especially prone to the fear of failing. As early as kindergarten, nearly a quarter of African American boys — three times more than whites — are convinced that they lack the innate ability to succeed in school. There's ample evidence that such fearfulness, which psychologists have labeled "stereotype vulnerability," undermines their performance. These students do badly, their fears are confirmed, and the cycle repeats itself.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/24/opinion/la-oe-kirp-esteem-20110424