Bridging the Chasm Between Research and Practice: A Guide to Major Educational Research

Bridging the Chasm Between Research and Practice: A Guide to Major Educational Research is written for anyone concerned about the education of the 48 million children in elementary and secondary schools in the United States. Obviously, a large number of parents, teachers, legislators, school board members, and taxpayers have a keen interest in these children's education since it costs $8,000 per year to educate a single child in the U.S. Unfortunately, there is a chasm between the educational researchers who do the science and the general public. The chasm exists because educational researchers publish their findings in low circulation, stuffy, academic journals that are rarely read by anyone outside the research community. Bridging the Chasm Between Research and Practice is a bridge across the research-practice chasm. It is the first serious effort to thoroughly explain education science to the layperson in an understandable and conversational manner. The accumulated body of knowledge on the following critical topics is simply and thoughtfully explained: grade retention, dropouts, radical differences in children rearing practices, remedial programs that work, class size, school size, high stakes testing, and graduation tests. The vast implications of this research are also discussed.