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“If your students don’t remember what you taught them, did you really teach them?” Many teachers most likely have made the following observation (or something like it) during their careers: “They knew it last week, but they don’t today!” Assuming initial instruction of “it” was effective in the short term, a likely explanation for the failure to accurately and fluently retrieve skills and content in the long term centers on practice. It’s not necessarily that practice did not occur, but rather, the independent practice procedures and activities used were not optimally designed and delivered for a specific purpose. Without use of evidencebased, independent practice procedures and strategies, what is taught can be forgotten, fragmented, or poorly organized. In addition, seeing the results of their efforts dissipate over a short period of time is frustrating for students and their teachers. For this special issue, we use the term independent practice to describe when students practice newly acquired skills (e.g., skills that can be performed with 85% or higher accuracy) with minimal or no support for the specific purpose of long-term retention, fluid retrieval, and generalization. Some independent practice activities may involve other students if doing so makes pedagogical sense; however, students are still expected to complete some practice items independently. Other forms of practice, such as guided practice, are crucial within explicit instruction models; however, guided practice occurs during initial instruction, whereby the teacher provides high levels of initial guidance as students begin to practice and then systematically fades those supports based on student performance (Archer & Hughes, 2011; Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013). Although cognitive scientists and educational psychologists have validated a number of effective independent practice techniques, this information has not consistently trickled down to classrooms, resulting in yet another research-to-practice casualty! This is not surprising given the concept of practice in education is often misunderstood, misused, maligned, and somewhat ignored. For example, some education writers 850067 TECXXX10.1177/0040059919850067Council for Exceptional ChildrenTEACHING Exceptional Children editorial2019