"I've read Paul Tough's book and seen Angela Duckworth's Ted Talk, and I'm sold that these noncognitive skills are important. What my school needs is a way to build those skills, but we also need another program like a hole in the head. What can we do?" These are the candid words of a busy high school principal.

Search Institute recently released "Don't Forget the Families," a major study that finds that the quality of parent-child relationships is 10 times more powerful than demographics (race, ethnicity, family composition, and family income) in predicting whether children are developing critical character strengths such as being motivated to learn, being responsible, and caring for others.