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I often recall Houston's Apollo 20 experiment, designed to bring "No Excuses" charter school methods to neighborhood schools. Its output-driven, reward and punish policies failed.  It was incredibly expensive, costing $52 million and it didn't increase reading scores. Intensive math tutoring produced test score gains in that subject. The only real success was due to the old-fashioned, win-win, input-driven method of hiring more counselors.

Michels finds no evidence that Grier's test-driven accountability has benefitted students, but he describes the great success of constructive programs that build on kids' strengths and provide them more opportunities.

With the help of local philanthropies, however, Houston has introduced a wide range of humane, holistic, and effective programs. Michels starts with Las Americas Newcomer School, which is "on paper a failing school." It offers group therapy and social workers who help immigrants "navigate bureaucratic barriers—like proof of residency or vaccination records." He then describes outstanding early education programs that are ready to be scaled up, such as  the Gabriela Mistral Center for Early Childhood, and Project Grad which has provided counseling and helped more than 7,600 students go to college.

Federal education law now requires one non-academic measure of school progress, which has led some districts to consider including students’ social and emotional growth as a performance measure.

She writes that even the researchers who popularized terms like “grit” think using it to measure school effectiveness is a bad idea:

Assessments should give us loads of information about what our students understand, what they don’t understand, and how well we’ve taught them.

It took me years of teaching before I realized I was using my tests and quizzes to sort out, reward and punish my students, rather than measure and inform my teaching. I needed to make my assessments work harder for me.

I could identify specific misconceptions students had about the material and get better at addressing those the next time around. I also became a much better test maker.