A lot of today's "teaching" is a result of the failure of GW Bush's "No Child Left Behind."
That is, in fact, not correct, Rick.
The 2001 No Child Left Behind" law (NCLB) mandates that only "scientifically based" educational programs are eligible for federal funding. The NCLB statute uses the term "scientifically based research" more than one hundred times. To qualify as scientifically based," research must "draw on observation or experiment" and "involve rigorous data analyses that are adequate to rest the stated hypotheses." This is the kind of stuff that would make any Super Cruncher salivate. Finally a fair fight, where the education model that teaches the best would prevail.
Bush's education advisors have taken the mandate quite seriously. . . .. As Fahrenheit 9/11 shows, Bush is personally flogging the effectiveness of Direct Instruction.
Super Crunchers, Ian Ayres, Bantam Books, New York, New York, 2007, p. 165.
Teachers HATE DI, not because it works, but because it effectively negates all of their education. Quite literally, anyone who can read aloud legibly can use DI to successfully teach children at any grade level. The lessons are completely scripted.
BUT! you say, that makes the kids into automatons. Not so, sayeth Ayres. A major study of teacing methods was undertaken y the Office of Education and the Office of Economic Opportunity beginning back in 1967. Project Follow Through studied 79,000 children in 180 low-income communities for twenty years. One of the teaching methods studied was DI.
Direct Instruction won hands down. Education writer Richard Nadler summed it up this way: "When the testing was over, students in DI classrooms had placed first in reading, first in math, first in spelling, and first in language. No other model came close." And DI's dominance wasn't just in basic skill acquisition. Di students could also more easily answer questions that required higher-order thinking. For example, DI students performed better on tests evaluation their ability to determine the meaning of an unfamiliar word from the surrounding context. DI students were also able to identify the most appropriate pieces to finn in gaps left in mathematical and visual paters. DI even did better in promoting studesnts' self-estem than several child-centered approaches. This is particularly striking because a central purpose of child-centered teaching is to promote self-esteem by engaging children and making them he authors of their own education.
ibid. p. 161.
The Lord knows I am not one to praise G. W. Bush overmuch, but he got it right on this one. Our educational system suffers in this case because of a failure to recognize that carefully engineered instruction can be the best thing for our children, and because of a failure to recognize success where it exists because the livelihood and egos of the teachers is threatened.
I have asked several teachers in elementary and middle schools what they think of DI and, to a person, they all got nervous, clammed up, and in one case just asked me to leave. They KNOW it works on many levels, but they will not admit it because it negates their reason for being and proves that a degree in education is not necessary to teach well.
NCLB is not failing you, your teachers are.
