What truly helps students learn?

For the last half century, higher spending and many modern reforms have failed to raise the achievement of students in the United States to economically advanced countries. The central explanation, says Herbert Walberg, is that much current education theory is ill informed about scientific psychology, often drawing on fads and pop psychology, and contradicting well-evidenced behavioral insights. In Advancing Student Achievement, Walberg draws on both psychological and economic research to describe how students actually learn and how family, classroom, and school practices can help them learn more effectively.

The author debunks many of the myths of modern education and presents research showing that young learners thrive when teachers have clear goals, plan effective activities to attain them, and measure student progress. He discusses the powerful influence of parents on what students learn within and outside school and how choice programs give parents a stronger role in their children's education. And he presents evidence to reveal why teachers' classroom practices--not their credentials or experience--are what makes a true difference in student learning.

Herbert J. Walberg, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, taught for thirty-five years at Harvard and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Author or editor of more than sixty books, he has written extensively for educational and psychological scholarly journals on measuring and raising student achievement and human accomplishments. His most recent book is Tests, Testing, and Genuine School Reform (Hoover Institution Press, 2011). He was appointed a member of the National Assessment Governing Board and the National Board for Educational Sciences and a fellow of several scholarly groups, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Academy of Education, and the Royal Statistical Society. He chairs the Beck Foundation and the Heartland Institute.