There is no silver bullet in education, and a site that claimed to be one would deserve the skepticism it got. This site covers one thing well: how students learn, and what teaching does with that. Here is where that ends.
What the evidence here can change
- How much students remember of what they were taught.
- Whether beginning readers can read the words, and whether older readers know enough to understand them.
- Whether students who fall behind catch up, when the help is frequent, structured and tracked.
- Whether a curriculum helps or gets in the way.
- How much a teacher can see of who is learning, during the lesson.
What it can't
Attendance. A student who isn't there isn't taught. No practice on this site works on an empty seat. Chronic absence is a family, community and policy problem first.
Poverty and what comes with it. Hunger, housing, health and stress all shape learning before the lesson starts. Good teaching narrows gaps; the lottery study on this site shows it can close one at one school. It doesn't remove the causes.
Staffing. Most practices here need a trained adult in the room every day, and the tutoring evidence is strongest with teachers and aides, not volunteers or software. A school that can't fill its positions has a problem this site can't solve.
Behavior, mostly. Routines and clear procedures prevent a lot of disruption, and the behavior page covers what's known. But a school where instruction keeps getting interrupted has a leadership problem, not a teaching-method problem.
Motivation on its own. Students work harder when they succeed, and the practices here produce success. There is no separate trick that makes students care, and we don't list one.
What has to be true for any of it to work
- Time. Reading, math, science and social studies have protected blocks that actually happen.
- Adults who know the content. A worked example written by someone who doesn't understand the math is a worked example of the wrong thing.
- Follow-through. The practices here work when they're done most days for a year, not demonstrated once in a workshop. The EEF's own review found that programs tested at scale often showed small effects, usually because the practice faded.
- Honesty about results. Schools that look only at state scores can't tell which part worked. Visit data and quiz data tell them.
Why we say this
Two reasons. The first is that overpromising is how every previous reform lost credibility. The second is that leaders who know the limits spend their effort where it counts, instead of buying a program and waiting.