There has been perennial interest in personal qualities other than cognitive ability that determine success, including self-control, grit, growth mind-set, and many others. Attempts to measure such qualities for the purposes of educational policy and practice, however, are more recent. In this article, we identify serious challenges to doing so.…

Six deficits of this model are discussed: disparity in proponent prowess, fallible arbiters, excessive confidence in the model's potency, difficulties in framing the proposition in a manner amenable to adversary resolution, "a cat's-paw for biased decision makers," and, excessive costs. (Author/JM)