This nifty entry by Dan Meyer got me thinking about plotting educational practices at both the school and classroom level to determine relationships between a variety of factors and achievement. For example, is there a relationship between the number of minutes given to independent reading and improvement on reading comprehension, accuracy, and fluency? Is there a relationship between the amount of non-fiction reading and vocabulary learning? Hey, maybe there's a relationship between the number of minutes spent coloring and student satisfaction with school? To be fair we should analyze everybody's theory. Maybe the Crayola Curriculum critique is all wet.
Basically I think we (I mean I) still do a very poor job of proving what instructional practices and school practices are indeed having a positive effect on student learning. Here's another good one. How about the relationship between the number of worksheets completed and student retention of the stated objectives! The rain forests will thank us if we can come up with an answer to that one. If you want to look at a bunch of other nifty and creative relationships, visit Jessica Hagy's blog.
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