Teach Effectively!

I have finally gotten around to reading Jean Stockard’s rejoinder to the August 2008 analysis from the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), which reported that the WWC failed to find sufficient evidence meeting its standards to merit identifying Reading Master, the Direct Instruction early literacy program. Professor Stockard’s analysis is instructive, both for what it says about Reading Master (and Direct Instruction) and what it says about the WWC.

The What Works Clearinghouse is a federally funded program established in 2002 that
evaluates educational interventions on the basis of the “rigor of research evidence” and provides
summary ratings on its website. Ratings have appeared only since 2007, and some of the work of
the Clearinghouse has already been subjected to harsh criticism. This paper adds to the body of
critiques.

Direct Instruction’s Reading Mastery curriculum is a comprehensive core reading
program that has been found, in decades of research, to be highly effective. Yet, the WWC’s
recent review of Reading Mastery concluded that no studies met their evidence standards and
they were “unable to draw any conclusions based on research” regarding its effectiveness.

A careful examination of the research cited by the WWC found that this conclusion was
not well founded. The WWC failed to examine close to 100 research studies that were cited in
other well-known reviews of the literature. In addition, reviews of studies that were included
were flawed. For instance, one large, well-regarded study was rejected because training of
teachers to use the curriculum was considered a “confound” to the use of the curriculum itself.
Other studies were dismissed because the treatment (Reading Mastery) and control groups were
unequal at baseline. Yet, these differences were statistically controlled and, in two cases, the
treatment groups had lower pretest scores but equal and higher posttest scores.

Examination of reviews of other curricula indicates that at least some of the material
posted on the website is misleading. Summaries do not reflect the conclusions of the articles and,
in at least one case, are exactly opposite to the published conclusions.

Download a copy of the review directly, or go to the Web site for the National Institute for Direct Instruction (NIFDI) and find the link there. (Note that NIFDI is over in the Web resources section of links and that I am honored to be a member of the NIFDI board of directors.)