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8 of 88 decisions · clear everything
Survives the gold standardIndependent, durable, rigorousThe debunked shelfCheap winsFor parents at homeFamous numbers, deflatedWhere we admit ignoranceThe terrain
domain
Your situation · from the applicability layer — absence means “not yet assessed,” never “doesn’t apply”
group / setting
Yes, on their own terms: lottery-assigned museum and theatre trips move blind-rated analysis of art, plot knowledge and tolerance by 0.08-0.18 SD weeks later, and a film of the same play moves nothing.
moderate supportconf: mediumgc: lowAre museum and theatre trips worth the day out of school? · arts · ages 8–18
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: lowDo career and technical education tracks help students — and which students? · practical · ages 14–18
Immersion costs nothing in English and buys a little — a lottery puts English reading 0.13-0.22 SD ahead by grades 5 and 8 — but no lottery has ever measured how much of the second language students actually learn.
moderate supportconf: mediumgc: low8/824/48
Does dual-language immersion work, and is the gain in the second language or in English? · foreign-language · ages 4–18
Civics teaching buys civic knowledge (d = 0.49) that fades to the control mean in two years and moves neither attitudes nor validated turnout; what moves voting is school quality and noncognitive skill.
mixedconf: mediumgc: low19/1936/48
Does civic education produce civic knowledge, and does civic knowledge produce civic behaviour? · history-civics · ages 5–18
The received wisdom that retention is harmful was two measurement errors, not a finding. Fix them and the achievement effect is zero — but the grade at which you hold a child back decides everything.
mixedconf: mediumgc: low19/1936/48
Grade retention — holding a child back versus promoting, and test-based promotion policies · retention · 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: low25/2536/48connected: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
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: low23/2338/48
Length of the school day and year, time-on-task, extended time, and summer · time · ages 4–18 · structure
No trial has ever varied the sequence of science content and measured the result. The one quasi-experimental test of course order found nothing, and depth-over-breadth is a retrospective survey worth 0.08-0.13 SD.
insufficientconf: mediumgc: medium15/1515/48connected:Background knowledge and vocabularInterleaving (mixing problem typesExplicit instruction vs discovery/Inquiry-based science teaching vs +1
Science content sequencing — coherence, prerequisites, and course order · science · ages 5–18
Not yet assessed for this question · 27
- Acceleration and gifted programs — the label vs the content
- Algebra timing — acceleration mandates, delay mandates, and readiness-based placement
- Does arts education raise academic achievement?
- Background knowledge and vocabulary as drivers of reading comprehension
- Class-size reduction
- Curriculum choice as a school-level lever
- Explicit vs reform/constructivist math instruction
- Fadeout — why early gains disappear, and what actually persists
- Ability grouping and tracking — four practices, four verdicts
- Manipulatives and concrete-representational-abstract (CRA) sequences
- Math curriculum choice — how much does the textbook matter?
- Math-fact fluency and timed practice (and the anti-timed-test claims)
- Does teaching movement transfer to cognition, achievement, or lifelong activity?
- Feedback frequency and mental practice in motor learning
- Practice scheduling for motor skills — varied vs blocked, spaced vs massed
- Phonemic awareness training (and whether it needs letters)
- Systematic/explicit phonics vs whole language and balanced literacy
- Preschool at scale — Head Start, state pre-K, and what universal provision delivers
- Perry Preschool and Abecedarian — what the famous studies actually establish
- Reading-comprehension strategy instruction (reciprocal teaching, summarizing, questioning)
- Reading fluency — guided repeated oral reading, and whether repetition matters
- Reading Recovery and Tier-2 1:1 early-literacy tutoring
- School spending, charters, and what school-level choices actually move outcomes
- School starting age, relative age, and academic redshirting
- Teacher quality — selection over credentials and workshops
- Word problems, schema instruction, and the conceptual-vs-procedural question
- Early sport specialization, talent selection, and the relative age effect
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