Learning progressions detail the incremental steps that students take as they learn to master a skill. These progressions are based on developmental research about how students learn and how their thinking develops as a result of instruction. A typical progression not only describes the stages that students must master, but it also shows what…

Interviews Bob Slavin, a research director at Johns Hopkins Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools. Explains Success for All, an early intervention strategy to ensure that students reach third grade with adequate skills. Critical of Madeline Hunter's mastery learning model, Slavin urges practitioners to demand research-based trials…

Describes Baltimore County (Maryland) Public Schools' integration of a mastery learning project for third and fourth graders begun in 1980 with a subsequent thinking skills project. The basic premises of each program (that students will learn well, given time and appropriate instruction) were similar. A sidebar illustrates the divergent…