Direct Instruction making wavesElizabeth DuffrinLast school year, Chief Executive Officer Paul Vallas talked of mandating Direct Instruction (DI), a scripted, phonics-based reading program. His unofficial word spread through the Chicago Public Schools like the flu. Now the official word is out: low-performing elementary schools are "strongly encouraged," not required, to adopt DI. But that queasy feeling hasn't subsided, and the controversy won't die down.
Critique of Direct Instruction
In April, the Chicago Metropolitan Association for the Education of Young Children, fired off a letter to Vallas stating that... > Read More |
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Parent talk can make kids school smartElizabeth DuffrinWhen Malcolm X College tested kindergartners and 1st-graders at six Chicago elementary schools it was working with, it found that half were unable to comprehend at least some prepositions. Words denoting sequence, such as before, now, later, yesterday and today, also were unfamiliar to most of the 1,500 youngsters.
Low language skills persist into the upper grades and interfere with reading comprehension, according to Joe Layng, Direct Instruction project manager at Malcolm X College. "They call out the words, but they don't understand what they're reading."
Similarly, a... > Read More |
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Snapshots from the different campsElizabeth DuffrinProgressive preschool
The Approach: Adults engage in constant conversation with children as they play with educational toys, eat nutritious meals and take trips to the park or the zoo. Vocabulary is thus "taught" in the context of engaging activities, much as it is in a typical middle-class home.
The Setting: Carnegie Elementary School serves some 385 pupils in Woodlawn; about 97 percent come from low-income homes. In 1995, about 20 percent of Carnegie's 3rd-graders scored above the national average in reading comprehension. A year ago, Carnegie's state pre-... > Read More |
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What it takes to make a program succeedElizabeth DuffrinIt's not magic, says Jerry Silbert, manager of Direct Instruction implementation at Malcolm X College. "If it isn't used well, it's just another book."
Silbert is talking about DI, of course. However, the same can be said for any educational program: if it's not done well, it won't amount to much.
Both Direct Instruction and whole language are working well at some Chicago schools and poorly at others. And in some places where they're working well, there still are problems.
At the close of the 1995-96 school year, enthusiasm for Direct Instruction was running high at... > Read More |
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Little testing of basalsElizabeth DuffrinThe vast majority of schools use a basal reading program—a "reader," a teacher's guide and assorted workbooks—to teach reading.
The most widely used programs are written largely by publishing house staffers, not the education professors listed as authors. And field testing plays a minor role.
In most field tests, teachers try out material in their classrooms and write evaluations. Since that is time-consuming and the cost of printing expensive, a major publisher might send out only a few units per grade level, according to a longtime industry executive, who asked not to be... > Read More |
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Built on the basics, Wesley now striving for moreElizabeth DuffrinWesley Elementary, a large school in a poverty-stricken section of Houston, Tex., had been using Direct Instruction to teach reading since the early 1970s, with success from the start. But it was not until 1991, when scandal struck, that Wesley became a star.
Over the years, Wesley regularly outscored some schools in wealthier Houston neighborhoods, leading some skeptics to suspect cheating. At one point, the central administration called a teacher downtown for a grilling but found nothing amiss.
The tension increased in 1991, however, when the district mandated a literature... > Read More |
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