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The fifth chapter of Engelmann's most recent book, Teaching Needy Kids in Our Backward System, is posted at zigsite.
Chapter 5 discusses the evaluation of Project Follow Through. Most educators are not familiar with it, and it is all but unknown outside the educational community. That is ironic because Follow Through was the largest educational experiment ever conducted. It involved over 200,000 students and 22 sponsors of different approaches for how to teach at-risk children in grades kindergarten through 3. The 178 communities that implemented the different approaches spanned the full range of demographic variables (geographic distribution and community size), ethnic composition (white, black, Hispanic, Native American) and poverty level (economically disadvantaged and economically advantaged).
[snip]
The project began in 1968 and was evaluated nine years later, after the various sponsors had a reasonable time period to de-bug their operation. Direct Instruction was one of the sponsors. Chapter 5 picks up the story from there.
While Teaching Needy Kids has had me shaking my head in disbelief and frustrated to the point of having to put the book down for a moment to take a deep breath, it records a significant moment in educational history. It should be read by every person involved in education be they parents, teachers, or administrators if only because it is the untold story that deserves to be heard. If we can learn from our past mistakes and find a way to repair them, all the better.
Teaching Needy Kids in Our Backward System
Siegfried "Zig" Englemann
Chapter 5
Follow Through Evaluation
5 comments:
Check this out:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/488387-hilarious-excuse-why-us-students-compare-so-poorly-foreigners.html
Ester
Seeing that Direct Instruction trounced the other methods and was indeed proved to be the "best method", why has the information in this study been ignored by curriculum authors and school curriculum directs? The answer can be found on pg. 14 of Chapter 5. I will bring an excerpt here:
It was more palatable for educators to accept that their favored
approach failed than it was to admit that an approach in disfavor succeeded.
The educators’ feelings and prejudices were functionally more important to
them than evidence that there was a successful method for teaching at-risk
children. Stated differently, these people showed that their beliefs were more
important than the millions of failed children who could benefit from effec-
tive instruction.
As a teacher who has been successful for years using Direct Instruction methods before I really even knew what I was doing, I am becoming frustated by "higherups" doing their best to force fuzzy math methods into my teaching. Yes, I am losing my Saxon 6/5 with its beautiful incremental steps. It is being replaced by a curriculum series which throws so much at students all at once in one chapter.
I am currently tutoring a student I taught last year. He had no trouble making A's. This year he has been failing with the new series, failing all tests. After only two tutoring sessions with my using DI and drill, drill drill, his next test grade was 82. We pulled his average up and he passed the 9-weeks.
Now, starting a new chapter (Geometry), I am amazed at all of the formulas thrown at these 6th graders one day after the next after the next after the next. The students are given no guided practice directed by the teacher to help them learn how to apply the formulas to each problem. Students are on their own to "get it". But no time to get comfortable because the next day along comes another formula or two -- volume, surface area, volume, surface area -- you name the shape, it's all there -- bam, bam, bam. Yes, let's make them smart all at once, all in one year, all in one chapter. Then, it will not be seen, at least not by the book's design, for the rest of the year. Hopefully, a good teacher would know to review this often.
I dread the thought of using this book's approach in my 5th grade class. I know I won't be able to make myself do it. A room full of children in distress is not my idea of a pleasant classroom.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Hi, Concerned Teacher here. I couldn't remember my password and had to post that long comment as from "annonymous", but I've got it now and wanted to make one more comment.
I've experienced first-hand people caring more about their beliefs than helping children learn Math. My curriculum director knows how successful I've been with Saxon, yet she would rather ignore the struggles the kids are having with her curriculum choices than have to admit the "hated" curriculum (Saxon) is better. She's seen the test scores, she's heard the complaints of parents, she's even heard the pleas to use Saxon, and it all falls on deaf ears.
She used to praise the work I did while teaching our 5th graders Saxon 6/5. I still haven't seen the new 5th grade text I'm going to have to use, but I've seen first hand the devastation the 6th grade math is having on this student whom I'm tutoring and on other students. The stories are running rampant.
What do you know about Printice-Hall Math Curriculum at the 5th-8th grade levels?
this should make a clickable link to the discussion Ester referenced:
http://tinyurl.com/5zeczt
Thanks for publicizing the book. It should indeed be publicized as much as possible! Per your earlier recommendation, I ordered it a couple of weeks ago. I'm finding it so compelling that I've put aside the Elmore Leonard novel I'd started so I can more quickly get to the punchline--however depressing I know it will be.
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