Should teachers praise their students as often as possible? Although praise sounds like a good idea, in reality praise is often misinterpreted. It is more important to praise effectively than to praise often.

Is it a good practice to retain students in the fourth grade if they have failed to master the instructional objectives for the year? Intuitively, it seems obvious to many people that "social promotion" is a bad idea, but there is not a shred of research evidence to suggest that retention benefits students who fail. Actually, the best idea appears to be to promote them with a prescription for remediation.

Likewise, it seems intuitively obvious to many people that the most efficient way to educate students is to "track" them - group them on the basis of general ability and work with these homogeneous groups. Again, research evidence does not support generalized homogeneous grouping.