Grit, Achievement and Achievement Gaps: A Sociological Assessment

Are student differences in “grit” a key to explaining achievement gaps in the United States? Despite the widespread persistence of policies that promote academic perseverance and related traits in American schools, to date, there has been no formal assessment of grit using data from a nationally representative longitudinal cohort. Using the ECLS-K 2011, we document the size of socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities in math and reading achievement in 5th grade and examine whether self-reported grit and related skills meaningfully account for these gaps. We find that grit has only modest links to academic performance and does not attenuate socioeconomic and racial/ethnic achievement gaps. Instead, we find evidence that other related factors—approaches to learning and attentional skills—may account for a nontrivial portion of these gaps, but urge caution in how these findings are interpreted.