Explore the evidence
7 of 88 decisions · clear everything
Survives the gold standardIndependent, durable, rigorousThe debunked shelfCheap winsFor parents at homeFamous numbers, deflatedWhere we admit ignoranceThe terrain
domain
Your situation · from the applicability layer — absence means “not yet assessed,” never “doesn’t apply”
Immersion costs nothing in English and buys a little — a lottery puts English reading 0.13-0.22 SD ahead by grades 5 and 8 — but no lottery has ever measured how much of the second language students actually learn.
moderate supportconf: mediumgc: low8/824/48
Does dual-language immersion work, and is the gain in the second language or in English? · foreign-language · ages 4–18
Teaching handwriting works and transfers: freeing the hand frees composition, with gains still present at six months — even taught in groups of three.
moderate supportconf: mediumgc: medium8/818/48connected:Does teaching grammar improve chilDoes teaching movement transfer toDoes sentence combining improve wrDoes teaching spelling work, and w+1
Does handwriting and transcription instruction matter, and should young children type instead? · writing · ages 5–12
Sentence combining improves writing where grammar teaching fails — the same meta-analyses score them +0.50 and −0.32.
moderate supportconf: mediumgc: low8/89/48connected:Does teaching grammar improve chilDoes teaching movement transfer toDoes handwriting and transcriptionDoes teaching spelling work, and w
Does sentence combining improve writing? · writing · ages 5–18
Teaching coding teaches coding: the one clean school RCT gives g=0.47-0.68. Which approach you pick barely matters, and almost every effect size rests on an instrument the developers built.
moderate supportconf: mediumgc: lowDoes teaching programming actually teach programming — and does the method matter? · computer-science · ages 5–18
Formal spelling instruction works (ES 0.54) and more formal beats less formal — explicit wins again, and it transfers beyond spelling itself.
moderate supportconf: mediumgc: low7/79/48connected:Does teaching grammar improve chilDoes sentence combining improve wrSystematic/explicit phonics vs whoExplicit instruction vs discovery/+3
Does teaching spelling work, and what does it transfer to? · writing · ages 5–18
Diagnose what a child already knows: teachers cut 40–50% of curriculum for high-ability children and achievement ROSE. The payoff is skipping, not monitoring.
moderate supportconf: mediumgc: medium16/1625/48connected:Does educational technology raise Feedback and formative assessmentMastery learning (teach → test → r
Placement and mastery diagnosis — deciding what to teach next from evidence of current skill · assessment · ages 5–18 · structure
Content-rich history teaching raises history knowledge (g 0.19-0.46) but not standardized reading in under three years; generic 'historical thinking' has no adequately controlled positive result.
moderate supportconf: mediumgc: lowShould history be built on content knowledge or on generic historical-thinking skills? · history-civics · ages 5–18
Not yet assessed for this question · 20
- Acceleration and gifted programs — the label vs the content
- Background knowledge and vocabulary as drivers of reading comprehension
- Explicit instruction vs discovery/inquiry — how much guidance?
- Explicit vs reform/constructivist math instruction
- Fadeout — why early gains disappear, and what actually persists
- Ability grouping and tracking — four practices, four verdicts
- Interleaving (mixing problem types vs blocking)
- Manipulatives and concrete-representational-abstract (CRA) sequences
- Math-fact fluency and timed practice (and the anti-timed-test claims)
- Phonemic awareness training (and whether it needs letters)
- Systematic/explicit phonics vs whole language and balanced literacy
- Reading fluency — guided repeated oral reading, and whether repetition matters
- Retrieval practice (the testing effect)
- Spaced (distributed) practice
- Talent and trainability — what is heritable, and what that does not license
- Teacher quality — selection over credentials and workshops
- Tutoring — the honest effect, the Bloom 2-sigma myth, and what survives scale
- Vision — outdoor time against myopia, and screening and correction for achievement
- Word problems, schema instruction, and the conceptual-vs-procedural question
- Worked examples (studying solutions vs solving problems)
The URL is the state — any view you build here is a permalink you can hand to someone mid-argument.