‘What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.’ Ecclesiastes 1:9 A tired argument has begun patrolling the highways and byways of social media once more: “Low variance” versus “autonomy”. It is partly linked to the incessant yet pointless “explicit teaching” versus “inquiry learning” bickering, alongside outrage in some quarters that explicit teaching has been mandated (it hasn’t). The binary thinking of course is that autonomy is...

Suggested readings Barrett, C. A., Johnson, L. J., Truckenmiller, A. J., & VanDerHeyden, A. M. (2024). Comparing the cost–accuracy ratios of multiple approaches to reading screening in elementary schools. Remedial and Special Education , 45 (2), 71-84. Parker, D. C., Zaslofsky, A. F., Burns, M. K., Kanive, R., Hodgson, J., Scholin, S. E., & Klingbeil, D. A. (2015). A brief report of the diagnostic accuracy of oral reading fluency and reading inventory levels for reading failure risk among...

What I perpetually wrestle with, whether it has been implementation in my own school, the schools I partner with, or the systems I...