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provides the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected think tank publications. Reviewers for the project apply academic peer review standards to reports from think tanks and write brief reviews for the project website. They are asked to examine the reports for the validity of assumptions, methodology, results, and strength of links between results and policy recommendations.

The Think Twice Think Tank Review Project provides the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected think tank publications.  Reviewers for the project apply academic peer review standards to reports from think tanks and write brief reviews for the project website. They are asked to examine the reports for the validity of assumptions, methodology, results, and strength of links between results and policy recommendations. The reviews, written in non-academic language, are intended to help policy makers, reporters, and others assess the merits of the reviewed reports. 

"Academic Optimism" - impacts student achievement while controlling for SES 3 specific concepts: Faculty Efficacy, Faculty trust of students/families, Focus on academics

Conceptual and Methodological Problems in Research on College Undermatch "Access to the nation's most selective colleges remains starkly unequal, with students in the lowest income quartile constituting less than 4% of enrollment," say Michael Bastedo and Allyson Flaster (University of Michigan/Ann Arbor) in this article in Educational Researcher. "Students in the top SES quartile comprise 69% of enrollment at institutions that admit fewer than a third of their applicants…" One increasingly popular explanation for this enrollment gap is undermatching - academically able low-income students not applying to selective colleges for which they are qualified, settling instead for lower-tier institutions. Bastedo and Flaster are skeptical about this theory for three reasons First, they don't believe there is good evidence about the life benefits of attending different tiers of college, and most measures of college "quality" are quite unscientific. Life advantages might accrue at the extremes - going to a highly selective college versus a low-quality community college - but the evidence about the whole middle range is "quite muddy," say Bastedo and Flaster. Among the factors that need to be looked at more carefully are a college's graduation rate, students' debt burden, placement in graduate or professional schools, and post-graduate earnings. Second, the authors question whether it's possible for researchers to predict which low-income students will get into selective colleges to which they haven't yet applied. Competition for seats in these colleges has become much more intense in recent years, and extra-curricular activities, alumni parents, athletic prowess, and other intangibles play an increasingly important part. In many of these areas, higher-SES students have great advantages. Third, even if we look only at SAT scores and GPAs, high-achieving disadvantaged students are still not as competitive as the undermatching advocate

Social and Emotional Techniques That Help Students Focus on Academic Progress

Students who have teachers who make them "feel excited about the future" and who attend schools that they see as committed to building their individual strengths are 30 times more likely than other students to show other signs of engagement in the classroom-a key predictor of academic success, according to a report released Wednesday by

Giving students a much-needed brain break-and academic boost-with exercises in class

A free world-class education for anyone anywhere.

A free world-class education for anyone anywhere.

A free world-class education for anyone anywhere. Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere. All of the site's resources are available to anyone. It doesn't matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. Khan Academy's materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.