Tag Archive for 'direct instruction'

A Call for Direct Instruction

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 16, 2009 in Education News, Opinion and Research and Reports. 22 Comments

A solution for the achievement gap was discovered four decades ago, writes John McWhorter in The New Republic, and it has nothing to do with raising low expectations, improving parental involvement, or demanding accountability.  Starting in the late 1960s, he writes, Project Follow Through compared nine teaching methods and tracked their results in more than 75,000 children from kindergarten through third grade:

It found that the Direct Instruction (DI) method of teaching reading was vastly more effective than any of the others for (drum roll, please) poor kids, including black ones. DI isn’t exactly complicated: Students are taught to sound out words rather than told to get the hang of recognizing words whole, and they are taught according to scripted drills that emphasize repetition and frequent student participation.

Subsequent studies found similar results, says McWhorter, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Indeed, he notes, ”a search for an occasion where DI was instituted and failed to improve students’ reading performance would be distinctly frustrating.”  So why no discussion of Direct Instruction as a means of addressing the achievement gap?

Schools of education have long been caught up in an idea that teaching poor kids to read requires something more than, well, teaching them how to sound out words. The poor child, the good-thinking wisdom tells us, needs tutti-frutti approaches bringing in music, rhythm, narrative, Ebonics, and so on. Distracted by the hardships in their home lives, surely they cannot be reached by just laying out the facts. That can only work for coddled children of doctors and lawyers. But the simple fact of how well DI has worked shows that “creativity” is not what poor kids need.

Matthew Yglesias describes McWhorter’s piece as “somewhat overblown but essentially correct” and nails an even larger issue:

It’s both strange and unfortunate that the education system is so unresponsive to this research and also strange and unfortunate that “education reform” efforts have so much focus on administrative structure of school systems and so little on these kinds of curriculum issues.”

McWhorter meanwhile urges Arne Duncan, the next Ed Secretary to consider “taking the blinders off and forcing America’s urban school districts to teach poor kids to read with tools that we have known to work since the Nixon Administration.”

 

Vote for Bronze

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 1, 2008 in Curriculum and Education Leadership. 1 Comment

A reader of this blog has come up with an intriguing idea for a Core Knowledge-based afterschool center that uses incentives to motivate reluctant learners–and an unusual funding source.  She’s put her proposal on a website called ideablob.com, and is in the running for a grant, based on users voting for her plan in an open competition.  Think American Idol meets The Apprentice–one idea every month win $10,000 in seed money

Carol Glenn, a 22-year old African American who graduated from Cornell University describes her afterschool center, known as “Bronze, Inc.,” in her business plan:

Bronze is a place for students (particularly older students) to hang out after school. Students are expected to come in and learn something new each day. They will be given assignments that have a point value, and expected to earn a minimum number of points each day. This prevents students from moving on without learning the things they need to. Once the assigned period for study ends and students have met their daily quotas, they will be able to use their points to play video games, watch movies, play indoor miniature golf, use computers, or just grab a hot meal in a cafe (Think Dave & Busters meets the freedom of a college campus). This provides incentives that are more immediate than college or a good job in the future, but not so immediate that they crowd out academic rigor. 

Black and Latino students frequently face the possibility of being ostracized for doing well academically. Bronze helps fix this by creating a large cohort of students who value education, preventing these minority high achievers from having to choose between getting good grades and having a social life.   Finally, Bronze hopes to make systemic change by seeking out the best academic programs (like Core Knowledge and Direct Instruction), repeatedly proving they work, and then explaining these practices to parents and leaders in the community. Instead of parents simply advocating for “better schools” or “better teachers,” they will have clear objectives and results with which to approach school boards and politicians. Since these students will still be a part of the mainstream system, instead of placed in separate charter schools, the results of parental involvement will likely be seen across districts where Bronze operates. 

Vote to support Carol’s idea here.

Right Said Fred

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 9, 2008 in Education Practice and Teaching. 0 Comments

Fred Strine, the veteran Seattle teacher whose Seattle Post-Intelligencer column calling on teachers to, well, teach, set tongues wagging here and over at Joanne Jacobs. He honors us with a visit in the comments section and a correction: He’s not retired, he’s just fed up.