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Useful article running down some of the research which is demonstrating what many suspected, "grit" was not a magic bullet for education. hechingerreport.org/research-schol…
I give Angela Duckworth credit for acknowledging the limitations and shortcomings of her research and accepting these additional perspectives. She is not particularly defensive about these challenges and accepts them in the spirit of scientific inquiry.
The article outlines how grit as an encompassing theory for achievement in general and education in specific was not ready for prime time when it hit the mainstream. How Children Succeed did a disservice in hyping something so unvetted.
Duckworth has been solid in pushing back against some of the misuses of grit in schools (she's quoted in the article), but this speaks to the power of hype and the thirst for magical solutions to large, seemingly intractable problems in education.
What happened with grit is part of an endlessly repeating "hype cycle" in education. I have a chapter on this in Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities. amazon.com/Why-They-Cant-… 
The current hype cycle is "personalized learning" as mediated through software. Even as the big money philanthropists are upping their investments, the research is puncturing the hype. There is no magic bullet solution for education. We will probably never learn.
