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9486 in the collection
Differing Views on Direct Instruction
This Washington Post columnist prints letters by Stephen Krashen and Susan Harman--and then reaches the same conclusions about Direct Instruction that she's always reached.
Reading Program Isn't Letter-Perfect, Some Say
By Karin Chenoweth
December 18, 2003; Page GZ06
Below are some of the letters I've received responding to two columns I wrote (Nov. 27 and Dec. 4) about Direct Instruction, a reading program Montgomery County is putting in some of its lowest-performing schools.
Clearly, the reading wars are still being fought. For the uninitiated, debate has been raging throughout the education world
about how best to teach reading to kids. To vastly oversimplify, the debate has been whether reading is something that kids learn
naturally if they are exposed to a lot of books and other printed material, or whether they need systematic instruction in how to
"decode" letters and sounds -- that is, phonics. Direct Instruction is as explicit an instruction program as you can get, not only in
phonics but also vocabulary and background knowledge.
Ensuring that all children can read well is one of the biggest challenges the county -- and the nation -- faces. So it is important to have this discussion, and I thank everyone who took the time to write.
Dear Homeroom:
As a 30-year veteran in the Montgomery County school system, most of that time functioning as a reading specialist, I find your Nov. 27
column a dangerous piece of slanted journalism. All school systems have a "reading problem," but most would happily trade theirs for
ours.
Reading is getting meaning from text. Word attack skills are useful in decoding, but are only tools we use to unlock the language. All
children need a variety of strategies, including phonics, to decode the printed page.
The Horizons Program/Direct Instruction might be a valid program for those students struggling with beginning reading concepts; but it is not a panacea for teaching reading. Contextual clues are one strategy teachers use to help students derive meaning from the printed word.
The quality of the teaching and the investment of the students are much more important than any one method.
Frank Sanford
Reading specialist
Bradley Hills Elementary School
It is not enough to say that Montgomery's reading problem isn't as big as other places. County schools have been successful with some
kinds of students, but not others --especially, but not only, poor kids. It is worth looking at who is succeeding with the kinds of kids
Montgomery has failed and seeing what makes their success possible.
I consider it good news that the Montgomery school system is starting to do exactly that.
Dear Homeroom:
I have read the published research on the impact of Direct Instruction, and am not as enthusiastic about it as you are. The
usual result is that children who experience Direct Instruction in reading do very well on tests of reading words in isolation, but do
not do nearly as well on tests that involve actual texts. There is, in other words, a "large discrepancy between decoding skills . . . and reading comprehension scores . . . ." (Direct Instruction
advocates Wes Becker and Russell Gersten, in an article published originally in 1982 in the American Educational Research Journal and
reprinted in the Journal of Direct Instruction in 2001).
Also, Direct Instruction has only been compared to other skill-based approaches. A number of studies show that students in programs that
emphasize free, voluntary reading outperform those in traditional skill-based instruction on tests of reading comprehension if the free
reading program is allowed to run for a sufficient length of time (an academic year). Readers do at least as well as traditionally taught students in shorter-term programs. Direct Instruction has never been compared to these kinds of "book flood" programs.
Stephen Krashen
Professor emeritus
University of Southern California
Dear Homeroom:
I've been writing about education in the popular press for 30 years, I'm a charter school principal and a reading expert, and my doctorate is in special education.
As an experienced and successful reading teacher, I think teaching kids the phonics of consonants is probably okay. Vowels are hopeless and just make the teacher sound idiotic, damaging the child's trust. For example, "what" and "cat" should rhyme, but don't. You can think of many other examples because the irregularities are the rule.
I can't tell a child what "sound 'a' makes" with a straight face. But she doesn't need to know it. Children read holistically (until they
get to very long words, by which time they can read); they don't sound words out from left to right. This is why they sometimes confuse words that look alike, like "was" and "saw"; "and" and "said"; and "of," "for" and "from." They're reading them as a chunk, like they identify a face or a car, not piece by piece, but as a
whole.
Probably the best evidence for whole language and teaching reading by reading is the large number of self-taught readers. They learn to
read by being read to, often by age 3. No phonics, just a sympathetic (and affectionate -- don't forget the emotional aspect of all
learning) adult doing what adults do. I call it "the lap method." It's staggeringly successful. I wish we had a grandparent, an easy chair and a box of books in every kindergarten classroom. It would make the difference.
Susan Harman
Principal
Growing Children Charter School
Oakland, Calif.
I am not a reading expert. I'm just a journalist.
But what seems rather obvious to me is that only some kids learn to read by sitting on a nice lap surrounded by a print-rich environment. I know kids like that, and they are lucky indeed. But I also know kids who need -- in addition to lap reading -- explicit, systematic phonics, and without it they will struggle to learn to read.
People are different. They learn differently. A ton of research demonstrates that proposition, but so does common sense.
Certainly, English doesn't have letter-sound correspondences that are as direct and clear as other languages. That's the trouble with such
a rich, multi-source language. But that doesn't mean it isn't possible to teach some of the general rules and have lots of discussion about the many exceptions. That is teaching at its most sophisticated and skilled.
Dear Homeroom:
The Direct Instruction program sounds great, and it should be made available to all students, not just disadvantaged ones. The county needs to recognize that many students who come from more economically or culturally advantaged families can still have learning deficits that interfere with success.
This truism about Montgomery schools is often repeated: "Your child will be fine if he/she is a high achiever, and they will get attention and accommodations if they have serious learning issues. But your 'average' student will fall through the cracks."
The "average" level of academic success will not put them in the "at risk" category that gets the system's attention, unless a concerned
parent has the information, time and fortitude to demand it.
There are all kinds of learning problems that fall short of an acute learning disability, including poor organization and study skills,
lack of reading fluency, math anxiety, milder forms of language processing or memory disabilities, and different kinds of learning
styles. Kids who struggle with those issues have the potential to perform at much higher levels. Imagine how much the achievement gap
would be closed if these average students got the attention they deserve.
Sally Kelly
Chevy Chase
Dear Homeroom:
Your two articles on City Springs Elementary School are flat out the two best on the subject of Direct Instruction that I have seen in
five years.
What is interesting is to think about how it would be if all children were educated using DI, not just the miserably poor and disadvantaged kids, who need it the most. A lot of middle-class kids also do not
get good schooling.
John Shewmaker
Columbia, Mo.
Washington Post
2003-12-18
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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