This is a list of education practices (sometimes called fads) which have been replaced or abandoned by newer (or older) practices. To maintain a balanced point of view, each example should provide a source showing that the practice was abandoned or replaced. A practice abandoned by one school, for example reform mathematics

Reform mathematics

Reform mathematics is an approach to mathematics education, particularly in North America. It is based on principles explained in 1989 by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics . The NCTM document, Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics, attempted to set forth a vision...

 may still be in adoption by other schools, so opposing methods may both appear on this list at different times or locations.

• New Math
  New math
  New Mathematics or New Math was a brief, dramatic change in the way mathematics was taught in American grade schools, and to a lesser extent in European countries, during the 1960s. The name is commonly given to a set of teaching practices introduced in the U.S...
  
  : abandoned and discredited by the late 1960s. The 1989 NCTM standards have been called the "new new math".
• Reform mathematics: created in 1989 to elevate equity as a central goal of teaching mathematics, using a contructivist model. Some texts such as TERC's Investigations in Numbers, Data, and Space
  Investigations in Numbers, Data, and Space
  Investigations in Number, Data, and Space is a K-5 mathematics curriculum, developed at in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The curriculum is often referred to as Investigations or simply TERC. Patterned after the NCTM standards for mathematics, it is among the most widely used of the new reform...
  
   contained little or no instruction of traditional arithmetic methods. While as of 2006, the 1989 NCTM standards were still widely accepted and schools were still adopting aligned curricula, many schools and states have effectively rejected the standards, changing to or adopting texts such as Saxon math in Tacoma WA, and the California mathematics standards have switched back to traditional rigorous fact-based standards, citing low math test scores.
• Open classroom
  Open classroom
  An open classroom is a student-centered classroom design format popular in the United States in the 1970s. In its most extreme form, entire schools were built without interior walls, which made teaching loud and disruptive in worst case scenarios - for most schools this has not been as big a...
  
  : some schools still use this model, but no longer as predominant as it was in the 1960s and 1970s.