The Evidence on Teaching

Explore the evidence

8 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
what are these? →
sortconfidencerobustfragileA–Z
domain
verdict
confidence
layer
Your situation · from the applicability layer — absence means “not yet assessed,” never “doesn’t apply”
who's delivering
group / setting
cost
outcome class

Selective CTE high schools raise male graduation 8-10pp and early-career earnings 17-35% on lottery and cutoff designs; test scores, degrees, and every outcome for girls are flat.

moderate supportconf: mediumgc: low
19/1948/48connected:Ability grouping and tracking

Do career and technical education tracks help students — and which students? · practical · ages 14–18

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: medium
16/1625/48connected: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

Life-skills courses reliably teach the content and rarely change the conduct; behaviour moves only where instruction sits close in time to the decision, and driver education is worse than nothing.

mixedconf: mediumgc: low
11/1148/48

Do life-skills courses — money, cooking, driving, health — change what students actually do? · practical · ages 6–18

Sort by what the software replaces: adaptive drill inside the school day buys +0.05-0.20 SD; a device, a connection or the teacher buys zero to negative; LLM tutors have no usable evidence at all.

mixedconf: mediumgc: low
53/5339/48connected:Placement and mastery diagnosisMastery learning (teach → test → rTutoringClass-size reduction

Does educational technology raise learning — CAI, adaptive software, devices, screens, and AI tutors? · edtech · ages 5–18 · structure

Near-zero in primary and almost entirely correlational in secondary. The causal base is three small trials; what the homework IS beats how much of it there is.

mixedconf: mediumgc: medium
16/1629/48

Homework — effects by age and by dosage · homework · ages 5–18 · structure

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

Coaching buys ~0.25 SD of score and has for 42 years — a fraction of what's advertised — and none of it is ability. The score moves; the construct doesn't.

mixedconf: mediumgc: medium
20/2036/48

Test preparation — does coaching raise scores, and does a raised score mean raised ability? · assessment · ages 5–18 · structure

Trust the composite; distrust the breakdown. Subtest strengths-and-weaknesses replicate at chance on retest, and most of what people read off a score report is noise.

mixedconf: mediumgc: low
21/2124/48

What a standardized achievement score does and does not license · assessment · ages 5–18 · structure

The URL is the state — any view you build here is a permalink you can hand to someone mid-argument.