The Evidence on Teaching

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
evidencealldrop DA–BA only
evaluatoranyno dev-ledindependent
durabilityanyfollow-up≥1yr≥2yr
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Your situation · from the applicability layer — absence means “not yet assessed,” never “doesn’t apply”
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Teacher quality is the largest within-school lever — 1 SD of teacher ≈ 0.10–0.15 SD/yr, worth more than ten fewer students — and credentials predict none of it. Select; don't workshop.

strong supportconf: highgc: low
11/1136/48connected:School spending, charters, and whaClass-size reduction

Teacher quality — selection over credentials and workshops · teachers · ages 4–18 · structure

Feedback on the task helps modestly; feedback on the person backfires — a stable third of measured effects reverse. The famous 0.4–0.7 number has no computed source.

mixedconf: highgc: low
18/1821/48connected:Retrieval practice (the testing efDoes teaching music produce musicaPlacement and mastery diagnosis

Feedback and formative assessment · feedback · ages 5–18 · method

Later bells buy adolescents 40+ measured minutes of sleep — the best-identified positive effect in the archive; the achievement payoff is real but far smaller.

strong supportconf: mediumgc: low
18/1836/48

Do later school start times increase adolescent sleep, and does that raise achievement? · health · ages 11–18 · input

Correcting a real deficiency moves cognition (iron in anaemic children: 0.79 SD); supplementing already-fed children moves nothing (35 RCTs, 19,343 children).

mixedconf: mediumgc: low
20/2018/48connected:Does teaching movement transfer to

Breakfast, school meals, and micronutrients — what feeding children actually buys · health · ages 4–18 · input

A missed day costs little (~0.005 SD); interventions reliably buy days back cheaply, but nobody has shown the recovered days move achievement.

mixedconf: mediumgc: medium
14/1439/48

Chronic absenteeism — does raising attendance raise achievement? · time · ages 4–18 · input

Classroom order is causally worth a great deal — one disruptive peer costs classmates 3% of adult earnings — yet no branded behaviour programme reliably delivers it and exclusion makes things worse.

mixedconf: mediumgc: low
25/2536/48connected:Talent and trainabilityCan executive function be trained,Should a school buy a social and eAre self-control and grit teachabl

How should a school run its classrooms and its discipline system? · behavior · ages 4–18 · structure

What parents are asked to DO is the whole effect: tutoring a skill d≈1.15, listening to reading 0.51, reading aloud ~0.18 — same parent, same child. All deflate under better designs.

mixedconf: mediumgc: medium
33/3336/48connected:Homeschool socialisationDoes homeschooling raise achievemeThe early home environmentTutoring

The parent as instructor — what survives when the person teaching is the person who raised the child · homeschool · ages 4–18 · method

Not yet assessed for this question · 4

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