The Evidence on Teaching

Explore the evidence

7 of 88 decisions · 3 collapse at your settings · 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

domain skill6

Unallocated money is the worst buy in the database; the same dollars as No-Excuses charters buy +0.3–0.4 SD/yr — and the average charter is a precise null.

mixedconf: highgc: low

3/839/48connected:Tutoring Background knowledge and vocabular Teacher quality Math curriculum choice

School spending, charters, and what school-level choices actually move outcomes · school-structure · ages 4–18 · structure

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: medium

2/818/48connected:Does teaching grammar improve chil Does teaching movement transfer to Does sentence combining improve wr Does 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: lowinsufficient at your settings

0/89/48connected:Does teaching grammar improve chil Does teaching movement transfer to Does handwriting and transcription Does teaching spelling work, and w

Does sentence combining improve writing? · writing · ages 5–18

Strategy instruction is writing's best-supported method — at roughly a fifth of its advertised size once measures are independent (d≈0.8 → ~0.15).

moderate supportconf: mediumgc: lowinsufficient at your settings

1/89/48connected:Does teaching spelling work, and w Does teaching grammar improve chil Does handwriting and transcription

Does strategy instruction (SRSD, the writing process) improve writing? · writing · 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: lowinsufficient at your settings

1/79/48connected:Does teaching grammar improve chil Does sentence combining improve wr Systematic/explicit phonics vs who Explicit instruction vs discovery/+3

Does teaching spelling work, and what does it transfer to? · writing · ages 5–18

Capitalisation and punctuation move when directly taught and directly measured, and don't move when embedded in writing programmes. A teachable subject, not a writing lever.

mixedconf: mediumgc: medium

4/2821/48connected:Does teaching grammar improve chil

Can capitalisation, punctuation and usage be taught directly as their own subject? · writing · ages 5–18

Teaching grammar does not improve writing at any age tested — and it displaces the things that do.

negativeconf: mediumgc: low

2/1227/48connected:Comprehensible input or explicit g Does sentence combining improve wr Does teaching spelling work, and w Does handwriting and transcription+4

Does teaching grammar improve children's writing? · writing · ages 5–18

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