I did this for the last college programming course I taught (2025) as an anti-LLM measure. Every class started with a very short closed-book auto-graded multiple-choice test on the reading. I was careful to specify which was the core reading needed to learn the material (on the quiz) and which was extra (not on the quiz - I think many professors assign this extra reading to everyone, thinking of their strongest students). I think this developed an expectation in the students that doing the reading was easier than finding a way not to.

It's especially hard when multiple subjects try to do it, because it can add enormous amounts of home-time expectations. And many families can't dedicate that much time.

I do like it though, and I like that college generally leaned that way more (and was better balanced, as it had substantially less time in classrooms, so you could study during the day).

Popular yes; based on good quality research… no, not really. It’s really pretty unfortunate timing with the AI boom, because the field of education research is not very high on the science quality totem pole. And the field as a whole was and is also slow to incorporate neuroscience findings, too.

I taught a flipped classroom online. Students had to successful pass a quiz on the before class materials to get the join link to the session.

I experienced this method in accelerated class context, decades ago

Although obvious, I think it's worth stating that this method mostly (only?) makes sense for higher education, where students are conscious, involved and engaged in their curriculum.

Yes! I didn't know it had a name but a quick googling confirms what you said.

This was probably middle school.