Somewhere deep in a federal office building, the staff of the Institute of Education Sciences toils away to publish "Practice Guides" for teachers (17 in all) that are among the most useful resources we've found on research-based instructional strategies.  (They're highly readable guides to principles culled from real research -- a pretty rare commodity in education.)  

But we suspect that the field hasn't taken to the guides in a big way. For example, we have never seen even one of them cited in the required reading lists or bibliographies of any of the hundreds of teacher preparation coursework syllabi we've reviewed. 

Another clue: the IES staff was so pleased to see that NCTQ had cited the practice guide on Reducing Behavior Problems in the Elementary School Classrooms as an important source for our recent report on how prospective teachers should be prepared in classroom management that they tweeted about it. Twice.

Imagine how happy the IES staff must be now, with that same practice guide on classroom management cited as a resource for the new federal "Guiding Principles" on school discipline. (See p. 20 of the guide.)

Our plan is to give the authors of these valuable guides even more to celebrate in the near future: we will prominently feature more of their practice guides in upcoming reports on areas of teacher preparation for which we are developing new standards. As discussed more fully elsewhere, teacher preparation should involve rigorous training and that training, at its foundation, must have practices that are supported by the strongest research.