The Evidence on Teaching

Explore the evidence

8 of 88 decisions · clear everything

Survives the gold standard Independent, durable, rigorous The debunked shelf Cheap wins For parents at home Famous numbers, deflated Where we admit ignorance The terrain

evidenceall drop D A–B A only

evaluatorany no dev-led independent

durabilityany follow-up ≥1yr ≥2yr

what are these? →

Your situation · from the applicability layer — absence means “not yet assessed,” never “doesn’t apply”

who's delivering

group / setting

cost

outcome class

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

mixedconf: highgc: low

18/1812/48connected:Retrieval practice (the testing ef Does teaching music produce musica Placement and mastery diagnosis

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

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

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

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 diagnosis Mastery learning (teach → test → r Tutoring Class-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 trainability Can executive function be trained,Should a school buy a social and e Are self-control and grit teachabl

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

Taking time away hurts measurably; adding it back buys almost nothing. The return per hour is ~0.02-0.03 SD, concave, and near zero in disorderly classrooms.

mixedconf: mediumgc: low

23/2338/48

Length of the school day and year, time-on-task, extended time, and summer · time · ages 4–18 · structure

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