The Hechinger Report

OCTOBER 17, 2020

On a frigid Thursday in February, math teacher Marietta Gibb was warming up her sixth graders at DeWitt Middle School with some algebraic expressions. This is the look of the Ithaca City School District’s new effort to limit tracking — or separating students by perceived ability — in middle school math.

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A Principal's Reflections

MAY 23, 2021

We all first learned of idioms probably during the middle school years in English class. In his meta-analysis of over 300 research studies, John Hattie found that direct instruction has above-average gains when it comes to student results, specifically an effect size of 0.59. Review of Educational Research: 88(4).

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Mr and Mrs Social Studies

NOVEMBER 15, 2022

President’s Day Activities President’s Day is coming up soon, but how should you celebrate it with your middle school students? Students could research their candidate, create campaign posters and speeches, and hold debates to decide who will be the class president. Constitution here.

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A Principal's Reflections

MAY 9, 2021

Recently I received a text message from Nathan Hall, the principal of Corinth Middle School, where I have been coaching for the past two years. It has been incredible watching Betty, and her colleagues at Corinth Middle School grow over the past couple of years. Research in Organizational Behavior 27 (2006): 41–79.

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The Hechinger Report

APRIL 15, 2022

Middle school science teacher Kent Heckenlively has spent part of his time teaching, well, not science. Heckenlively works at Gale Ranch Middle School in San Ramon, California. middle-school science teachers have no scientific background. This story also appeared in USA Today. Department of Education.

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The Hechinger Report

MAY 10, 2022

we clearly aren’t doing enough, especially for girls and students from lower-income and minority backgrounds who, research tells us, tend to limit their aspirations. Each year, West-MEC allocates a significant amount of money to our two elementary school districts. Even though career planning has long been promoted in the U.S.,

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The Hechinger Report

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

The exercise is part of a new program that encourages learning middle school math through real world problem-solving, now in use in 190 school districts across 36 states. The concept caught my attention during a demonstration at HolonIQ’s ‘Back to School ’ summit in New York City earlier this month.

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A Principal's Reflections

AUGUST 8, 2021

Recently I was working with the leadership team at Moanalua Middle School (MMS) in Hawaii. Below is a quick summary of the RTI components: Tier 1 – Teacher provides research-based instruction to the entire class using extensive checks for understanding as a means of formative assessment.

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The Hechinger Report

DECEMBER 3, 2023

BUGS, one of hundreds of “themed” middle schools spread across New York City and the nation, fully embodies the “Green” school concept. Students take a weekly sustainability class and participate in monthly field study days that send them into the community to conduct research on topics like land use, pollution and food equity.

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The Hechinger Report

MARCH 10, 2025

Since then, reading researchers have come up with many ideas to foster comprehension. Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms. In some of the studies, researchers recorded hours of instruction and analyzed transcripts. Some kids naturally got it. Some didnt.

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The Hechinger Report

FEBRUARY 20, 2023

Before the pandemic, middle school students’ test scores in math tended to decline as they moved through each grade. Middle school math teachers need something more tailored to them. In the best of circumstances, middle school math is uniquely difficult. Middle school math is uniquely difficult.

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Mr and Mrs Social Studies

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

A research study conducted by Tasha Keyes in 2019 found that students determined more successful teachers by choosing the ones that demonstrated care and respect for them by taking the time to get to know them and then using that information to relate to them in class (Keyes, 2019).

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The Hechinger Report

JANUARY 1, 2025

That replicates what most of the studies have found, said Scott Peters, senior research scientist at educational assessment nonprofit NWEA. This whole idea is a very naive belief that if we just kind of make it for everybody, everyone will learn, Brookings education researcher Tom Loveless told the Twin Cities Pioneer Press in 2008.

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ED Surge

OCTOBER 22, 2024

Angela Fleck says this was the typical scene last year in the sixth grade social studies classes she teaches at Glover Middle School in Spokane, Washington: Nearly every student had a smartphone, and many of them would regularly sneak glances at the devices, which they kept tucked behind a book or just under their desks.

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A Principal's Reflections

SEPTEMBER 22, 2019

The fact remains that anticipatory sets not only matter for the reasons already outlined above but also for the fact that inclusion in lessons is supported by research. Jennifer Gonzalez highlighted four separate pieces of research that link to achievement gains. Creating an anticipatory set is not labor-intensive.

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The Hechinger Report

JANUARY 6, 2025

More recent research, however, suggests that prediction may have been overly optimistic. Stanford University researchers have been studying Washington, D.C.s $33 When researchers looked at these students test scores, they found minimal to modest improvements in reading or math. For one student, 1.3

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A Principal's Reflections

SEPTEMBER 23, 2018

Not only did Elisabeth Trambley (2017) do a fantastic literature review of these, but she also conducted her own research study to determine the impact of brain breaks on behavior. I have seen this firsthand in schools across the globe. Science and research compel all educators to integrate more movement into the school day.

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A Principal's Reflections

APRIL 7, 2019

Below are three questions that kids should be able to answer if learning is relevant : What they learned Why they learned it How they will use what they learned outside of school Image credit: Erik Francis To dig a little deeper Robin Roberson discusses two fundamental ways to provide relevance to students aligned to research.

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ED Surge

MARCH 29, 2023

In some ways, middle school is very much the same as it was a decade ago. In my own classroom, I recognize some of the hallmarks of the middle school years — changing voices, students spurting up three inches by the time May rolls around, and the awkwardness of being surrounded by so many developmental stages at once.

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The Hechinger Report

MARCH 15, 2021

Proposals are circulating for summer school, afterschool, remedial instruction, giving students an extra year of school and a somewhat fuzzy concept of “acceleration.”. Yet some of the strongest research evidence points to an intensive type of tutoring as a way to help children catch up. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletters.

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The Hechinger Report

FEBRUARY 28, 2022

In a 2016 survey by Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research, 94 percent of middle school math teachers said they analyzed student performance on tests in the prior year, and 15 percent said they spent over 40 hours on this kind of data analysis. The emerging answer from education researchers is no.

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A Principal's Reflections

MARCH 15, 2020

Throughout this school year, I have had the honor of working with all the K-12 schools in the Corinth School District in Mississippi. They are a 1:1 district who have really begun to hit their stride and push the envelope when it comes to the purposeful use of technology aligned to research-based pedagogy.

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The Hechinger Report

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022

It’s been years since I was a Los Angeles middle school teacher, but I still remember my students as if they were in my classroom yesterday. The post OPINION: Former middle school teacher says older students aren’t getting the reading help they need appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

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The Hechinger Report

FEBRUARY 10, 2025

A ‘Knowledge Revival’ A 2025 book by 10 education researchers in Europe and Australia, Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival , makes the case that students cannot learn the skills of comprehension and critical thinking unless they know a lot of stuff first. Weve all been there.

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A Principal's Reflections

NOVEMBER 4, 2018

By looking at the rapid pace of change due in large part to advances in technology, past and present research on what actually works, and evidence of the impact that purposeful innovation can have on learning outcomes, has given me valuable insight on what learners genuinely need. Then there is my parent lens.

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The Hechinger Report

JUNE 3, 2024

Researchers from the University of California, Irvine, and Arizona State University found that human feedback was generally a bit better than AI feedback, but AI was surprisingly good. On a five-point scale that the researchers used to rate feedback quality, with a 5 being the highest quality feedback, ChatGPT averaged a 3.6

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ED Surge

JANUARY 16, 2025

Hardwired to Like Likes One of the reasons young people have a tough time unplugging from social media is that their brains are driven by dopamine, says researcher Laura Marciano. Marciano is a research associate at the Harvard T.H. Theyre not allowed at all on elementary and middle school campuses.

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The Hechinger Report

JUNE 10, 2024

LIFO is not very good for kids,” said Dan Goldhaber, a labor economist at the American Institutes for Research, speaking to journalists about expected teacher layoffs at the 2024 annual meeting of the Education Writers Association in Las Vegas. Losing promising new talent is painful. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

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The Hechinger Report

MARCH 11, 2025

Our CivxNow research shows that students performed demonstrably better on NAEP civics when they had stand-alone eighth grade civics courses, when they studied the Constitution quite a bit or a lot and when civics was a primary responsibility for their teachers. Civics is a full-year high school course in only seven states.

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ED Surge

FEBRUARY 13, 2025

Thats according to a survey of 700 elementary and middle school teachers by Study.com, an online learning platform, that queried educators in January about student achievement. Forty-six percent of teachers surveyed named lack of family prioritization of academics as the primary reason some students have fallen behind.

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TeachThought

MARCH 23, 2024

Let’s look at a sample lesson used in middle school science. After choosing an issue related to oceans, students research the topic more deeply. Level Three: Students choose an issue, either one identified in class or another based on their research (a minimum of three appropriate sources).

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ED Surge

MARCH 19, 2024

Research shows that everybody finds things like that annoying, but if you're a first-generation college student, those start to trigger worries about belonging, because there's a belonging uncertainty there,” he says. Walton has spent decades researching how to foster a stronger sense of belonging in education settings.

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ED Surge

MARCH 10, 2025

According to new research from Project Tomorrow and Thorndike Press from Gale, part of Cengage Group, large print books can improve students reading achievement levels and attitudes toward reading. She said, Students were more comfortable with large print and would do their homework more often.

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The Hechinger Report

MAY 1, 2023

One of the few replicated findings in education research is that daily, individualized tutoring during the school day really helps kids catch up academically. The problem is that this kind of frequent tutoring is very expensive and it’s impossible to hire enough tutors for the millions of American public school students who need help.

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ED Surge

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

While the edtech market continues to grow with innovative ways to engage students, not many companies provide products rooted in three decades of cognitive research that continue to provide solid returns on investment. So research, data and learning science have always been at the core of what we do. I am very proud of that fact.

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ED Surge

MAY 10, 2022

But you wouldn’t know it by looking at the makeup of public-school teachers, who are overwhelmingly white. To learn more about the research, and about the new approaches they surfaced, we sat down with Smith for this week’s EdSurge Podcast. Or read a partial transcript below, lightly edited for clarity. What are some of your findings?

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ED Surge

APRIL 29, 2022

And plenty of schools and colleges are wondering: Will this new realm work for education? A new study co-authored by one of the world’s most prominent researchers on the effectiveness of edtech, Richard Mayer, offers some answers to that question.

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