Social psychology has found the more you reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward.

The value of a book about dealing with children is inversely proportional to the number of times it contains the word behavior.

Those who know they're valued irrespective of their accomplishments often end up accomplishing quite a lot. It's the experience of being accepted without conditions that helps people develop a healthy confidence in themselves, a belief that it's safe to take risks and try new things.

Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.

How we feel about our kids isn't as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them.

Some who support [more] coercive strategies assume that children will run wild if they are not controlled. However, the children for whom this is true typically turn out to be those accustomed to being controlled— those who are not trusted, given explanations, encouraged to think for themselves, helped to develop and internalize good values, and so on. Control breeds the need for more control, which is used to justify the use of control.

Standardized testing has swelled and mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our schools whole.