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"As both a teacher and administrator, I often heard from parents whose children were exceptionally good at math. "My daughter already knows how to multiply four-digit numbers, so third grade math is too easy for her. She needs to be accelerated." There's lots of research to support acceleration as a strategy for gifted learners. The Acceleration Institute, part of the Belin-Blank Center at the University of Iowa, recently produced a report entitled "A Nation Empowered" which details the enormous benefits to accelerating a student when he or she is performing well above grade level. Researcher Jonathan Wei of Duke University says, "All students deserve to learn something new each day." In math, the obvious way to learn something new is to accelerate the instruction, letting the student go on to the next topic or grade level. But "learn something new" is not the same as "learn the next thing on the district's scope and sequence.""

Find a video from Stanford, UC Berkeley, Duke, or UCLA, look at the lower left-hand corner of the video, click the "Download this video" link, and you should be good to go.

""There is no evidence that any amount of homework improves the academic performance of elementary students." This statement, by homework research guru Harris Cooper, of Duke University, is startling to hear, no matter which side of the homework debate you're on. Can it be true that the hours of lost playtime, power struggles and tears are all for naught? That millions of families go through a nightly ritual that doesn't help? Homework is such an accepted practice, it's hard for most adults to even question its value. When you look at the facts, however, here's what you find: Homework has benefits, but its benefits are age dependent."

"A recent report  from Adrian F. Ward, Kristen Duke, Ayelet Gneezy, and Maarten W. Bos at the University of Texas at Austin has me questioning my professional decision last year to allow students to bring their cell phones to my classroom."

"With math equations that analyze brush strokes, new discoveries about the world's greatest art are possible. It took X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and a painting algorithm to reveal the hidden portrait of a peasant underneath the painting of Vincent Van Gogh's "Patch of Grass." And that feat, accomplished in 2008, was just the beginning."