Scientific evidence is regularly invoked in defense of one classroom practice or another. Yet teachers, for the most part, ignore these studies. Why? First, teachers may view research as somewhat removed from the classroom, with further translation needed for the practice to be ready to implement in a live setting. Second, teachers may judge a…

The new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), envisions a powerful role for states in managing the evidence base behind school improvement efforts. Not only must they certify that interventions meet the "evidence-based" requirements spelled out in the law, they also must monitor and evaluate federally funded…

In the half century since James Coleman and his colleagues first documented racial gaps in student achievement, education researchers have done little to help close those gaps. At the dawn of the War on Poverty, it was necessary for Coleman and his colleagues to document and describe the racial gaps in achievement they were intending to address.…

The Coleman report, "Equality of Educational Opportunity," is the fountainhead for those committed to evidence-based education policy. Remarkably, this 737-page tome, prepared 50 years ago by seven authors under the leadership of James S. Coleman, still gets a steady 600 Google Scholar citations per year. But since its publication, views…