Boys Deserve Better Than the Command to 'Be a Man,' by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Boys Deserve Better Than the Command to 'Be a Man'

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

July 9, 2026

Adam Stanaland’s (2025) Scientific American essay, “Our Narrow View of Masculinity Is Hurting Boys,” offers an important intervention in a moment when masculinity is being weaponized in our politics, schools, media, and homes.

His argument is both simple and profound: masculinity itself is not “toxic.” What harms boys is the pressure to perform a narrow, rigid, emotionally constricted version of masculinity—one that tells them not to cry, not to appear vulnerable, not to be “feminine,” not to ask for help, and not to become anything less than dominant.

This matters deeply for educators and parents. Thankfully, research offers helpful evidence-based insights into how gender norms, social pressure, and rigid expectations shape boys’ development, identity, and behavior (Orenstein, 2020; Rudman & Glick, 2021; Stanaland et al., 2021; Stanaland et al., 2024).

In schools, boys are often socialized into silence long before they are invited into self-knowledge. They learn that tenderness is weakness, that anger is more acceptable than grief, and that care work is somehow beneath them. They absorb lessons about manhood not only from parents and peers, but from classrooms, sports culture, social media, churches, political leaders, and the larger society.

Stanaland’s point is that these pressures do not produce strong boys. They produce fragile ones—boys who may feel compelled to prove their manhood through aggression, domination, homophobia, sexism, emotional withdrawal, or contempt for anything coded as feminine. His research with colleagues similarly finds that adolescent boys can respond aggressively when their masculinity feels threatened, especially when they already feel pressure to be conventionally “manly.”

This is not just a family issue. It is a public issue.

When boys are taught that power matters more than connection, that dominance matters more than empathy, and that vulnerability is shameful, democracy itself suffers. A democratic society requires people who can listen, reflect, collaborate, repair harm, and care for others. These are not “soft” skills. They are civic capacities.

This is why the current political attack on so-called “gender ideology” is so harmful—and, frankly, so nonsensical. The phrase itself is vague by design. It turns serious scholarship, honest classroom discussion, and students’ lived experiences into a caricature. It suggests that talking about gender somehow imposes an ideology, when in fact silence about gender is itself ideological. 

The command to “be a man” is gender ideology. 

The shaming of boys for crying is gender ideology. 

The insistence that girls be compliant and boys be dominant is gender ideology. 

The erasure of LGBTQ+ students and families is gender ideology. 

What opponents call “gender ideology” is often simply the attempt to give young people language for understanding themselves, one another, and the unequal world they are inheriting.

The irony is that our society has rightly encouraged girls to enter domains historically coded as masculine—science, leadership, politics, law, medicine, business, athletics. But we have done far less to encourage boys to enter domains coded as feminine: teaching, nursing, caregiving, early childhood education, social work, emotional labor, and peacemaking. We tell girls they can be anything, but too often tell boys they must be one thing.

That is not liberation. It is another cage.

For communities of color, this conversation is especially layered. Black and Brown boys are already too often read through racist lenses of threat, discipline, criminality, and deficit. They do not need more pressure to perform hardness in order to survive. They need schools and communities that recognize their full humanity—their brilliance, tenderness, humor, creativity, grief, anger, cultural knowledge, and capacity for care.

This is where culturally sustaining education matters. Ethnic Studies, gender studies, restorative practices, critical pedagogy, and social-emotional learning do not “weaken” young people. They give them language for their lives. They help students understand how power works, how identities are formed, how harm is reproduced, and how people can choose otherwise.

In today’s culture wars, however, these very forms of education are under attack. The same politics that censor race, gender, sexuality, and history also narrows the emotional and moral vocabulary available to young people. It tells boys that strength means control, that freedom means domination, and that care is weakness. It calls this “tradition,” but it is really a refusal to let children become fully human.

We should reject this.

Boys deserve a wider horizon. They deserve to know that courage can look like telling the truth. Strength can look like asking for help. Leadership can look like listening. Manhood can include tenderness. And masculinity, when freely chosen and rooted in care, responsibility, humility, and justice, need not be toxic at all.

Stanaland’s essay reminds us that the work before us is not to shame boys or men. It is to free them—and all of us—from scripts that are too small for the lives our children deserve.

The question for parents, educators, and policymakers is not simply, “What kind of men are we raising?”

The deeper question is: “What kind of human beings are we allowing boys to become?”

References

Stanaland, A. (2025, March 10). Our narrow view of masculinity is hurting boys. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-narrow-view-of-masculinity-is-hurting-boys/

Stanaland, A., Gaither, S. E., Gassman-Pines, A., Galvez-Cepeda, D., & Cimpian, A. (2024). Adolescent boys’ aggressive responses to perceived threats to their gender typicality. Developmental Science. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39007941/

Stanaland, A., Gaither, S. E., & Gassman-Pines, A. (2021). The role of social pressure in eliciting men’s aggressive cognition. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33504285/

Rudman, L. A., & Glick, P. (2021). The social psychology of gender: How power and intimacy shape gender relations (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Orenstein, P. (2020). Boys & sex: Young men on hookups, love, porn, consent, and navigating the new masculinity. Harper.

Our Narrow View of Masculinity Is Hurting Boys

Masculinity isn’t “toxic” by itself, but the strain boys feel from society and parents to meet unrealistic expectations is

By Adam Stanaland edited by Megha Satyanarayana | Scientific American | March 10, 2025

Matt Porteous/Getty Images

Each semester, I ask my psychology students to imagine how people would grow up, think and act in a world without societal rules and expectations. This may seem like an easy task, but their initial answers are similar to what you’d expect a fish to say if asked what it’s like to live in water. “What norms?” they ask. This is especially the case for the young men who, like me, had never explicitly questioned messages like, “Boys don’t cry” and “Be a man” before going to college. Amid a resurgence of rigid masculinity—and as a psychologist who studies these issues—I’ve grown increasingly concerned with these unacknowledged pressures that can thwart the healthy development of boys and young men.

This question I pose to my students is based on research I and others did a couple of years ago, looking at how pervasive social norms, especially current views of masculinity, can shape people often in unideal ways. As I’ve noted before in Scientific American, many boys and men report feeling pressured to be stereotypically masculine. This means, for example, pressure to be tough (physical and emotionally), able to fix things and in positions of power – what we call “hegemonic masculinity.” These pressure are often rooted in fundamentally human needs, such as men’s desire to provide for their families, or simply to belong and accepted by others.

Importantly, we’ve found that pressure to be a certain kind of masculine leads to aggressive thoughts and feelings, especially among adolescent boys and young adult men who are in throes of forming an identity. To me, it’s not masculinity that is inherently bad or toxic. Rather, problems arise when rigid masculinity is pressured onto boys and men.

In psychology, pressure is the antithesis of autonomy—or the basic human need to act in line with one’s true self. This is why acting out manliness for pressured reasons leads to “fragile” masculine identities. Instead of a healthy identity rooted in authenticity and autonomy, fragility stems from an insecure need for external validation. As a result, these boys and men feel compelled to prove their manhood to others through stereotypically masculine means. We see the results in the disproportionate rates of men’s gun violence, homophobia, sexual aggression, political bigotry and even anti-environmental behavior, compared to women.

Against this, parents are a critical part of how boys see themselves, and how they understand masculinity. With the rise of a “masculinity” that is increasingly pressuring, parents can help boys develop more expansive identities. This is not about demonizing one idea of masculinity, or boys and men as group, but reducing the pressure to be a narrowly defined man. Genuine and compassionate versions of masculinity exist, and it’s okay for boys to take those paths. Getting there means conversation, modeling desired behavior, and reckoning with our own definitions of what a man is. But it matters, because this pressure to conform to narrow norms is hurting boys.

While we were collecting data on boys’ aggression, we also surveyed their parents, asking them to agree or disagree with statements relating to current beliefs about masculinity. Some of these items had to do with relatively benign beliefs—like, whether men should be handy—and some were more consequential, such as beliefs about homophobia and gender inequality.

We found that parents’ beliefs about hegemonic masculinity related to pressure their sons reported to be stereotypically masculine; that is, parents who simply believed that men should have status and power over others had sons (some as young as 10) who reported feeling pressured to be manly. It’s no surprise, then, that these were the boys who responded aggressively when we challenged their manhood, especially when they were already in the throes of puberty.

These results tell us there is a consequence to raising boys in a man’s world: living up to these expectations is stressing them out. We know this because they report being bullied, or shut out of peer groups. They tell us they have low self-esteem. In their book on the psychology of gender relations between women and men, Laurie Rudman and Peter Glick propose that we are powerfully shaped by how societies are structured—with men most often at the top and women (and people of other genders) situated below them. For proof, look no further than government and business in the U.S. where only 27 percent of federal lawmakers, 10 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs and 0 percent of presidents are women.

Immediately, we think about what these disparities mean for girls, and we should, but to the extent that girls receive messages that they can’t get to the top, many boys are hearing that they must get to the top. It’s certainly a double-edged sword. Boys and men are afforded power and privilege, yet many are also pressured to earn and maintain it.


AleksandarNakic/Getty Images

We’ve made great strides in inspiring girls to achieve just as well as boys (and even better)—though there is still much work to do here—yet we’ve so far failed to encourage boys to aspire toward culturally feminized work and communal careers in fields such as nursing, child care and early-childhood education. Instead, in many capitalist cultures across the world, we continue to push and pressure our boys away from anything remotely feminine—away from the innate nurturing and caring tendencies that they demonstrate in childhood—and toward the pinnacles of what we (as societies) have defined as success.

Redefining masculinity starts with you. Not every expression or experiment in masculinity will be safe for your child to pursue, especially in certain areas of the world. (For example, we found that parents in conservative parts of the U.S. put significant pressure on their sons to be masculine, which may be rooted in a fear of openly challenging masculinity norms.) But, as psychologist Onnie Rogers notes, we can encourage boys to “run with intentionality in the opposite direction, against the grain, and more importantly, toward [their] full humanity,” and this means that ideas around masculinity are worth talking about.

As you talk to, play with, observe and guide your sons along their paths, here are some ideas to consider, what I think of as “four Rs” to get you started:

Realize that you can have these hard conversations; that you can intervene and guide. Although you might feel like your sons will develop in ways beyond your control, you do have a significant effect on your children’s core beliefs, values and worldviews. Psychologist Sylvia Perry recently wrote in this very column about how children and young adults can handle hard conversations about race. They can understand complex ideas, histories and perspectives about gender, too.

Reconsider the messages boys are sent (and not sent), both explicitly and implicitly. Children learn about gender through many pathways—summed up as direct teaching, experiencing and modeling. You might try to directly teach your boys to combat gender stereotypes and even explicitly encourage them to take part in “feminine” activities; but arguably more important is what they learn by watching you and what they experience in their own worlds. What’s vital is that boys be given the space to develop apart from pressures to be masculine or feminine—nothing is inherently wrong with boys liking to play with trucks, and pressuring boys to do more “girly” things against their inclinations defeats the purpose.

Resist in the sense of equipping boys to resist messages about who they should and shouldn’t be. Even the best schoolteachers sometimes fall back on antiquated tropes like gendering pink versus blue pencils. If your son wants to use the pink pencil, why the hell shouldn’t he? A new and exciting area of research is looking at how easy it is for boys to actively resist masculinity norms and what benefits they may get from this.

Recognize that the way that society is right now isn’t how it has to be. You could, for instance, tell boys that even though there has never been a woman U.S. president, anyone can be president, regardless of their gender. Highlight women who are leading companies and, possibly more importantly, men who excel in HEED occupations (health care, early education and domestic roles).

These won’t be easy. It won’t be a onetime thing. But the sooner we can start dismantling gender gaps at all levels of society, the sooner we’ll see boys (and girls) less pressured to meet outdated expectations—and more fulfilled in finding authenticity.

Adam Stanaland is an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of Richmond. He received a joint Ph.D. in psychology and public policy from Duke University, after which he completed postdoctoral training at New York University. Broadly, his research explores the interplay between societal structures and social norms, such as how political and economic systems influence norms, as well as how norms and beliefs shape group-level behavior.More by Adam Stanaland

How the Pandemic Impacted Gen Z’s Soft Skills

 Friends:

The pandemic really shook things up for Gen Z, especially when it comes to developing those all-important soft skills. Even though this generation is super comfortable with technology and cares deeply about diversity and purpose, the shift to remote learning made it harder for them to practice things like networking, negotiating, and speaking confidently in front of others. Plus, all the stress and uncertainty didn’t make it any easier.

I’ve always thought of Ethnic Studies as a powerful way to promote these soft skills. Ethnic Studies classrooms don’t just teach history and culture—they create spaces for critical dialogue, empathy, and self-reflection. Students learn to listen across difference, engage in difficult conversations, and build community—all essential skills for navigating today’s diverse workplaces and society. These courses encourage students to develop confidence in expressing their identities and experiences, while also fostering collaboration and social awareness. In many ways, Ethnic Studies equips young people with the interpersonal and leadership skills that traditional schooling and articles like these often overlook.

A science of leadership that doesn’t take into account the full diversity of experiences—including race, ethnicity, gender, and other identities—is incomplete and risks missing the very complexities that shape effective leadership and workforce development. Without embracing this nuance, leadership strategies run the danger of being one-size-fits-all solutions that fail to meet the real needs of diverse teams, especially emerging generations like Gen Z.

Here is some good news: Gen Z appears to have a pretty good sense of where they need to grow, and they’re ready to put in the work—especially when they have mentors and supportive leaders around them. For companies trying to bring in and keep Gen Z talent, it’s not enough to just offer a paycheck. They need managers who listen, encourage, and help build those skills. When that happens, Gen Z can really thrive and help shape a better workplace for everyone.

That said, a big problem with a lot of this literature—especially articles written for popular audiences—is that it often misses the deeper, more textured realities of Gen Z’s experiences by race, ethnicity, gender, urbanity, sexual orientation, and so on. Without those perspectives, we risk oversimplifying or missing important challenges and strengths that shape how different groups within Gen Z navigate the world. That lack of nuance makes me cautious about relying too heavily on generalizations and reminds me how important it is to listen closely to diverse voices.

-Angela Valenzuela

How the Pandemic Impacted Gen Z’s Soft Skills

Published by The National Society of Leadership and Success February 15, 2022

As Gen Z begins to enter the workforce, organizations are scrambling to understand how to attract and retain them.

Many organizations focus on the common facts that everyone seems to talk about, such as how Gen Z is the first digitally native generation, that they value diversity and inclusion more than ever, and aim to work for companies that share their beliefs.

While those aspects are important, an even bigger issue is not getting enough attention: How the pandemic has impacted their skills development.

In this week’s edition of The Science of Leadership, we look at how COVID-19 has impacted Gen Z’s development and what organizations can do to make sure they succeed.

Editor’s Note: It’s important to note that even great studies into generations can lump a large group of individuals together and paint them in the same light. While this is okay for identifying broad trends, remember that not everyone in a given generation is the same.

Education in the Time of COVID

Before we jump into development, we must first look into Gen Z and education. 

The pandemic has loomed over the heads of Gen Z as they go through some of the most transformational times in their lives. One of the largest areas impacted is education (high school and higher ed). Specifically, the shift from in-person to virtual learning. 

Even though Gen Z is known for their technological prowess, remote learning hasn’t been kind. According to a study by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (AP-NORC), 65 percent of Gen Z participants said that education was extremely important to their identities.

“The pandemic is taking a toll on their education and career goals. 46 percent feel that the pandemic has made pursuing their educational or career goals more difficult. Fewer Millennials (36 percent) or Gen X (31 percent) share that concern.”

The study also found that 55 percent said having fun is difficult, 46 percent said being happy is difficult, and 45 percent said maintaining relationships is difficult. 

This paints a picture of an extremely stressed-out generation struggling to achieve educational goals, which are highly valuable to them.

These findings were also backed up by a study, The Impact of COVID-19 and Gen Z Looking Ahead, from Mt. San Jacinto College. They found that:

• 44 percent of Gen Z will likely change their education plans because of COVID 
• 40 percent are reconsidering where they’ll go to college
• 34 percent are less likely to enroll in the next semester

In short, education is a pain point for this generation. Adapting to fully remote learning has distanced them from the things they enjoy about school while also making it harder for them to actually learn.

Gen Z and Skill Competencies

Gen Z has been short-changed when it comes to developing the skills necessary to land a job and thrive in a role or career. According to a study by The Workforce Institute, Gen Z is well aware of this, finding that 51 percent of participants believe that education systems haven’t helped them prepare for work.

The study entitled, Meet Gen Z, surveyed over 3,000 across 11 countries to better understand their skill competencies.

The team separated the data they collected into two groups. The first is what Gen Z feels prepared to do in the workplace and the other is what they feel they aren’t prepared to do.

Skills That Gen Z Feels Prepared For

In the first group, the results suggest that Gen Z is ready to complete basic workplace tasks. They discovered that:

• 67 percent said they’re prepared to show up to work on time
• 57 percent said they’re prepared to work on a team and complete tasks on deadline
• 56 percent said they’re prepared to work with customers

The team reports that these skills are developed mainly from prior work experience, which makes a lot of sense given that Gen Z is just now just entering the workforce. After all, these skills are the basic requirements for many entry-level roles.

Skills That Gen Z Feels Unprepared For

The list of skills Gen Z feels unprepared for is larger. According to the team, these skills include:

• Negotiating (26 percent)
• Networking (24 percent)
• Speaking confidently in front of crowds (24 percent)
• Working long hours (24 percent) 

“One in five also feel their education hasn’t adequately prepared them to resolve work conflicts or be managed by another person,” reports The Workforce Institute.

“Entering the workforce directly out of high school or college, a third of Gen Z is concerned that lack of professional connections or experience may negatively impact performance or success at work.”

These results suggest one thing: Due to the pandemic, Gen Z’s may lack the soft skills required for the modern workforce.

The Formation of a Soft-Skill Gap

The semi-good news is that Gen Z is aware of this. 

“A recent Tallo survey of over 2,400 Gen Z students, 92 percent reported that they are able to confidently identify which soft skills they have. What’s more, they know that soft skills are critical to their success in the workplace,” reports Casey Welch from ElearningInside News.

With the knowledge that they have a skills gap, they can start developing their soft skills to set themselves up for success.

This sentiment is backed up by more data from the Tallo survey, which found that, “A willingness to try new things also appears to be one of Gen Z’s strengths, as ‘stepping outside of your comfort zone’ was selected as the best way to develop soft skills. That response was followed by being open to feedback and communicating often.”

So, how can organizations create environments where Gen Z can thrive despite potentially having underdeveloped soft skills?

The fact that this generation has the self-awareness to understand they have a soft-skills gap, plus the fact they also have the willingness to address them, makes leadership more crucial than ever.

Leading Gen Z will require care and attention from managers who will play a prominent role in aiding the generation’s development. Gen Z knows this as well, listing management as a top concern when looking for work in many studies.

For example, The Workforce Institute survey found that, “Nearly a third of Gen Z is motivated to work harder and stay longer at a company if they have a supportive manager, and 29 percent believe having a poor manager would get in the way of their performance. In fact, 37 percent would never tolerate an unsupportive manager.”

At The National Society of Leadership and Success (NSLS), we firmly believe that leadership makes all the difference for all generations; however, it’s particularly important for Gen Z as they progress into the start of their careers. 

“Gen Z values ethical servant leadership that supports them and helps them develop their skills,” said NSLS President and CEO Neil Khaund, in a recent article. “Leading through empowerment allows Gen Z to develop their skill sets while building trust along the way. By doing so, organizations prepare Gen Z for success and they also create a culture of learning that can benefit the overall company.”

Key Takeaway

The pandemic has made a significant impact on Gen Z in a multitude of ways, specifically when it comes to soft-skill development. This doesn’t mean that Gen Z has no options. They’re ready and willing to learn and work hard to develop their skills as long as leaders are there to help guide them. The organizations that will win over Gen Z talent will lead with care and dignity, putting development and support at the forefront.

The Science of Leadership connects cutting-edge leadership research to the real world.

Ready to dig deeper? Read The Workforce Institute's full report here, and Tallo’s survey here. 

Want to brush up on your servant leadership skills to better lead Gen Z? Check out our full guide.

Have a burning question about any of the topics we’ve covered? Email us at blog@nsls.org. We’d love to hear from you.

Rise of the microschool: Small, student-centered learning spaces take off

Interesting piece on "microschools," that represent, as stated herein, a "middle ground between public school or homeschooling." These are smaller versions of public and private schools that I do think are ripe for partnerships with school districts with support going both directions.

Our Academia Cuauhtli Saturday school is a small school that differs from all the examples provided below in that it is partnered with the Austin Independent School District to provide a culture-rich curriculum to largely immigrant youth in the district's dual language program. Although this may change in the future, we only offer classes on Saturdays during the regular year. However, through the formal partnership and our sharing of our co-constructed curriculum district-wide together with the professional development opportunities with teachers we have conducted over the years, we are able to impact classrooms far beyond our "escuelita," our term of endearment for our little school.

What we all share is a critique of the high-stakes-testing educational landscape to which both public and charter schools are ensconced. We should never give up on our critique or advocacy for less mental testing. In the meantime, escuelitas are the way to go.

-Angela Valenzuela

Rise of the microschool: Small, student-centered learning spaces take off

By Jackie Valley Staff writer | Christian Science Monitor

August 14, 2023|  HENDERSON, NEV.; AND DENVER

In the back room of a Jewish temple, the kids are running the show.

It’s just after 6 p.m. on a Thursday, and the learners at Life Skills Academy have invited their parents to take a seat. Board games and video games – made by the older children – await the visitors, who, for the next hour, will try them out.

As her classmate gives the go-ahead, 7-year-old Freya Rollinson leads her father and younger brother to a corner. Her exuberant giggles punctuate the directions she’s trying to explain. She says the goal of the game, which features square blocks designated as creatures such as a dog, snake, and unicorn, is to “try not to get tricked.”

“What made you pick all these?” her father, Piers Rollinson, asks.

“My mind,” she replies.

Her answer speaks to the very nature of this learning environment. By Nevada law, Life Skills Academy can’t call itself a school, but education is its mission, albeit in an atypical format. The Montessori-inspired microschool, which rents space at the Jewish temple, served 13 children from age 5 through fifth grade during its inaugural 2022-23 academic year.

But don’t call them students. Here, they’re “learners” who chart their own educational journey through critical thinking and project-based learning. They even make up the classroom rules. The two teachers, known as “learning guides,” take a supporting role in the background.

“We’re building a civil society from scratch,” says James Lomax, founder and director of Life Skills Academy, which is part of the Acton Academy network of microschools. “They, over the course of that first six weeks, make the rules that they live by.”

Most passersby wouldn’t know this place exists. And, in some ways, that’s symbolic of the entire microschooling movement. Tiny learning environments – reminiscent of the one-room schoolhouse – are sprouting in churches, temples, commercial spaces, and even houses across the United States. They’re in bustling cities, rural communities, and suburban enclaves.

Oftentimes, they’re created by parents or teachers who wanted something for their children or students that couldn’t be readily found in traditional schools. But it was the pandemic that thrust this model into the limelight, as families scrambled to make remote learning work. So-called learning pods came into vogue, with kids clustered around kitchen tables, working elbow to elbow with neighborhood pals, relatives, or family friends. The city of North Las Vegas even temporarily ran its own microschools in recreation centers during the pandemic.

Some saw this approach as a Band-Aid solution to a difficult situation. For others, it was just the beginning.



“For lots of people, schools just got too big,” says Michael McShane, director of national research at EdChoice. “They felt like they were a number. They did not feel like they knew the other people in their community.”

Ask a dozen microschool leaders to describe their schools, and you’ll likely receive a dozen slightly different responses:
Montessori-inspired, nature-focused, project-based, faith-oriented, child-led, or some combination of other attributes. They may exist independently, as part of a provider network, or in partnership with another entity such as an employer or a faith organization. Their schedules vary, too. Some follow a typical academic calendar, while others operate year-round, and some allow students to attend part time.

In other words, there is no one-size-fits-all definition for microschools. But, in general, they’re intentionally small learning environments. They often serve fewer than 30 students total and operate as learning centers to support home-schooled students or as accredited or unaccredited private schools. Their exact designations differ based on state laws.

“What I love about microschools is that [they’re] kind of providing this middle ground between public school or home schooling,” says Dalena Wallace, founder and president of Wichita Innovative Schools and Educators, a support network for alternative education models.

The National Microschooling Center launched in August 2022 to support this patchwork quilt of tiny learning communities dotting the American landscape. For a sector analysis released in April, the center examined 100 microschools that exist in 34 states, as well as 100 prospective microschools preparing to open. Though it’s difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint the exact number of students attending microschools, researchers say it’s likely between 1.1 million and 2.1 million. On the low end, that would mean microschools serve an estimated 2% of school-age children in the U.S.

“I don’t expect that it’s ever going to displace public school systems,” says Don Soifer, CEO of the National Microschooling Center, which is based in Las Vegas. “But it really wouldn’t surprise me if you were to get much closer to a 10% market share.”

The Hechinger Report. Study: Boosting soft skills is better than raising test scores

This research shows that boosting soft, socio-emotional learning (SEL) skills is better than test-prep curriculum used to boost test scores.  We still need to address the injustices and lack of validity of our high-stakes testing systems and not let the testing companies get off the hook. 

In addition to SEL, let's fully incorporate Ethnic Studies and well-designed, staffed, and funded bilingual education programs to this list given that ample research solidly points to these as not solely achievement boosters, but achievement-gap reducers. 

These are not issues of evidence, but rather politics.  Why can't we do all three?  How and where do we get the leadership and teachers that can implement all three?  I have a lot to say about this, but I'll stop here for now.

-Angela Valenzuela

Study: Boosting soft skills is better than raising test scores

Chicago analysis finds schools that foster social-emotional development get better results for students

Proof Points

Column by JILL BARSHAY

March 2, 2020

High school students comfort each other on Chicago’s South Side. A new Chicago study shows that students who attend schools that foster soft skills do better in high school and beyond. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

We hear the phrase “failing schools” a lot but what really defines a failing school? Generally, we look at test scores. Schools that aren’t getting students to improve their math and reading achievement on the standardized tests administered by each state are the ones singled out for shame, punishment and sometimes closure. That’s led to excessive test preparation — and even fraud — to boost scores.

Education researchers are trying to come up with different ways to measure success. One of them, economist Kirabo Jackson of Northwestern University, has zeroed in on soft skills, which include traits like empathy and perseverance, and found that if you were to set up a competition between schools that raise test scores and schools that foster soft skills, the soft skills schools would win.

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In a large study of more than 150,000 students in all 133 of Chicago’s public high schools, Jackson has calculated that schools that build social-emotional qualities such as the ability to resolve conflicts and the motivation to work hard  are getting even better short-term and long-term results for students than schools that only boost test scores. The schools that develop soft skills produced students with higher grades, fewer absences and fewer disciplinary problems and arrests in high school. Later, the students who attended these high schools graduated and went to college in higher rates. In a few more years, we may learn that the students who attended schools that are strong in soft skills earned more college degrees.

“What we’re showing is that schools that actually cause kids to become more gritty, those kids tend to be likely to persist more in college,” said Jackson.

“You could actually do a lot more good by focusing on schools that promote social-emotional development as opposed to focusing on schools that raise test scores,” he added.

We haven’t been totally misguided to focus on test scores all this time. Schools that boost test scores also tend to be the ones that boost social-emotional skills. But the overlap isn’t perfect. An exemplar school for boosting test scores at the 95th percentile might only be 75th percentile for building soft skills, according to the Chicago high school data. Importantly, Jackson is noticing outliers: schools that are sensational at building soft skills but terrible at boosting test scores, and vice versa.

Related: Research scholars to air problems with using ‘grit’ at school

Jackson declined to identify strong or weak schools by name because the research is in early stages. The study, “School effects on socio-emotional development, school-based arrests and educational attainment,” is still a working paper, which means it has not yet been peer-reviewed and may still undergo revisions. In February 2020, Jackson presented these early findings at conference of the National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) and the paper was circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Along with Jackson, there are four co-authors from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, Northwestern University and the Mindset Scholars Network.

Measuring squishy soft skills is controversial and complicated. Scholars have found many problems in measuring “grit,” a popular social-emotional trend in schools, for example.

Jackson and his research colleagues relied on students’ responses to a social-emotional survey given to Chicago public school students from 2008 onward. Students answered a range of questions about their own perceptions of their interpersonal skills, social well-being and hard work. For example, students said how much they agree with a statement like, “If I need to study, I don’t go out with my friends.” (For a more examples of survey questions, I typed up a bunch here.)

To tease out how much of these skills could be credited to a student’s high school, the researchers factored in students’ prior academic achievement and how they responded to the surveys in middle school. They also adjusted students’ responses for gender, race/ethnicity, family income and the socio-economic status of the student’s home neighborhood, down to the census block. All these adjustments are important because a student’s context matters in how he or she answers a question. Kids are more likely to say “I’m a hard worker” if they’re surrounded by kids who don’t work hard, Jackson explained.

In the end, the researchers had an estimate of how much each high school boosted soft skills, based on how ninth graders answered surveys from 2011 to 2017. And they found that the students’ self-reported answers had a significant correlation with school grades and attendance in ninth grade. The students who went to the high schools that were good at developing soft skills also had fewer disciplinary incidents.

For the older students in the study, the ones who entered ninth grade between 2011 and 2014, researchers saw that students who attended these soft-skills high schools had fewer arrests throughout their high school years and graduated high school in greater numbers. After high school, these students attended college, both two-year and four-year institutions, in higher numbers and persisted in college in higher rates. It’s too early to see college graduation rates for these students.

To check their findings, the researchers compared siblings who attended different high schools and the ones that attended to schools that were better at boosting soft skills had better outcomes.

Related: Should taxpayers and schools invest in ‘growth mindset’ programs?

The study is making several important contributions to educational research. It’s more proof that students are self-aware and honest enough to give survey answers that can actually measure social-emotional skills. It also indicates that increases in students’ soft skills matter for the educational outcomes that we care about like better grades and college attendance.

There’s a debate in the research community about whether interventions to boost “grit” or  “growth mindset”  actually cause students to learn a lot more or do better in school. Those trendy social-emotional concepts weren’t tested in this study. But schools that improved social well-being had larger effects on attendance and behavioral infractions while those that promoted hard work, which is closely related to the concepts of grit and growth mindset, had bigger impacts on grades. Jackson’s research is making a case that some schools are able to develop these soft skills much better than other schools.

A big question is what the schools are doing to achieve that result. Further research is needed to learn if the above-average schools had adopted a social-emotional curriculum or trained their teachers to foster these skills. Jackson told me he wasn’t aware of a particular social-emotional curriculum that was in widespread use. It’s also possible that successful schools weren’t doing anything special but were staffed by adults who treated students with respect, fostered a sense of community and inspired students to study hard.

What do we do with this research? Should we start surveying every high school student in America and rank schools based on how well they’re boosting soft skills? Jackson said that kind of ranking would be “misguided.”

“Anything can be gamed,” said Jackson. “If you say, ‘We’re going to reward you if you have students who say they are gritty,’ you’re going to have schools training students to report that they’re gritty. That’s not going to be very helpful.”

Jackson’s goal is to go into the schools that are at the top and learn what the grownups are doing in the building to promote social-emotional skills and see if those things can be replicated at other schools.

“Once we figure out what those are, maybe we can attach stakes to those behaviors,” said Jackson. “We can use the self reports [student surveys] as a way to figure out which practices we want to promote in professional development or teacher evaluation.”

This story about social-emotional development was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.