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

Group within classes or across grades by subject: modest, nearly free wins. Whole-school streaming does nothing, and early between-school tracking harms the bottom.

moderate supportconf: highgc: low
12/1236/48connected:Do career and technical education

Ability grouping and tracking — four practices, four verdicts · grouping · ages 5–18 · structure

Accelerate ready kids: they keep pace with older classmates, bank a year, and show no social-emotional harm at 50. The gifted label itself does nothing; the content does.

moderate supportconf: highgc: medium
8/833/48connected:Algebra timing

Acceleration and gifted programs — the label vs the content · grouping · ages 5–18 · structure

Minimal-guidance math trailed every rival in the one multi-curriculum RCT; explicit instruction for strugglers is math's most replicated result.

moderate supportconf: highgc: low
10/1021/48connected:Explicit instruction vs discovery/

Explicit vs reform/constructivist math instruction · math · ages 5–18

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

Mixing problem types helps where confusion is the enemy — discriminating similar categories, mixed math practice — and is useless or worse for facts and prose.

moderate supportconf: mediumgc: low
7/718/48connected:Spaced (distributed) practiceScience content sequencing

Interleaving (mixing problem types vs blocking) · practice · ages 10–18 · method

Manipulatives help when bland, guided, and aged ~7–11 — a guided-representation effect, not 'hands-on learning.' Rich, toy-like objects hurt transfer.

moderate supportconf: mediumgc: low
3/36/48

Manipulatives and concrete-representational-abstract (CRA) sequences · math · ages 5–14

Word-problem solving is its own skill: computation fluency doesn't produce it. Teaching problem schemas explicitly does (~0.25–0.45 SD on trained content).

moderate supportconf: mediumgc: low
7/78/48connected:Math-fact fluency and timed practiWorked examples (studying solution

Word problems, schema instruction, and the conceptual-vs-procedural question · math · ages 6–14

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