DISTAR project rated tops nationally
By SAM RAINEY
Of the Emerald
A national study commissioned by
the U.S. Office of Education has tabbed
an Oregon-based program as the most
successful of the nation's $500 million
"Follow Through” educational projects
for teaching poor children.
To University educators Wesley
Becker and Siegfried Engelmann, the
report that their Direct Instruction Model
(DISTAR) “was largely successful in
assisting disadvantaged children in
catching up with their middle-class
peers in academic skills" demonstrates
that compensatory education can work.
Its success "carries implications for
teacher training and practices, the re
design of curricula, and the redesign of
school-management systems," Becker
says.
Unfortunately, he adds, further de
velopment and wider implementation of
the program is not being supported by
the U.S. Office of Education.
Of nine model “Follow Through"
programs being tested in 139 American
communities, DISTAR rated highest in
achieving improvement in basic and
cognitive skills among some 9,200
third-graders examined.
The evaluation, carried out by Clark
Abt Associates of Cambridge, Mass,
and referred to as “the largest control
led educational experiment ever," fol
lowed the children from kindergarten to
third grade “to provide a broad-range
comparison of educational alternatives
for teaching the disadvantaged and to
find out what works,” according to
Becker.
Measured were progress in basic and
cognitive skills (including math con
cepts and problem solving), and "af
fect,” which is a rating of children's feel
ings about themselves and their school
and the degree to which they take re
sponsibility for the successes and fail
ures.
DISTAR, emphasizing small-group
face-to-face instruction by teachers and
aides using sequenced lessons in read
ing, arithmetic, and language, outper
formed the other “Follow Through"
programs in each category.
Having used modem behavioral prin
ciples and “advanced programming
strategies” in designing the program,
Becker and Engelmann attribute its
success to “the highly specific teacher
training, technological details, and care
ful monitoring of student progress."
DISTAR contrasts with those prog
rams taking a child-centered,
cognitively-focused, open-classroom
approach to teaching.
Such programs “tended to perform
poorly on all measures of academic
progress taken by the study, Becker
says. This, he feels, “implies that other
sponsors (of Follow Through programs)
have not demonstrated expertise in im
proving educational practices."
Cognitively-oriented programs drew
correspondingly low ratings in “affective
measures of a child's academic self
confidence, while behaviorally-based
programs such as Becker's showed re
sults matching higher ratings in improv
ing academic achievement.
“The high corrrelation between
academic and affective outcomes sug
gests a need to re-evaluate some in
terpretations of what turns kids on and
how they leam to feel good about them
selves in school,” Becker says.
The "do-your-own-thing" approach
characterizing cognitively-oriented
programs, he explains, carries the as
sumption that, once a child is comforta
ble with itself and the surroundings, it
will naturally follow its own best in
terests in learning.
This assumption is belied by the re
sults of the study, Becker believes.
“The crux of the matter is really
whether we want to leave development
of teaching methods up to the kids or up
to adults who know something about it,"
he says.
To Becker, the national evaluation
provides only a partial indication of what
could be achieved with the program.
But DISTAR's future involves some
discouraging limitations.
Financial support from the Office of
Education is on the basis of successful
sites rather than the overall success of
a program. “This may be politically
realistic,” aays Becker, “but it is not
likely to produce positive changes in
education.
"The current level of financial support
(of DISTAR) is such that key people can
be hired on only a part-time basis, and
have financial problems staying with
Follow Through. An important resource
is being lost."
Current field efforts, he adds, "rep
resent little more than a losing holding
action, not a concerted push to im
prove."
Another major problem is that "no
ready vehicle is available for the train
ing of new field personnel and students
in DISTAR techniques.”
Except for a "modest teacher train
ing program within the University,
Becker says, at no facility is there a
program equipped to instruct key peo
ple — managers and trainers — neces
sary for implementing the program on a
wider basis
And teachers, says Becker, are not
the only ones who need some instruc
tion.
He explains: "As a 1975 report on
Follow Through implementation indi
cates, administrators, principals, and
college educators are not knowledge
able about implementation (regardless
of the program involved) and yet they
are frequently in position to foul up
programs."
He would like to see a training effort
directed at these people as well as at
teachers and aides.
Becker sees a further need to extend
DISTAR to higher grades.
Compensatory education, he says,
assumes that once poor third-graders
leave Follow Through they enter an
"average" classroom that should
“teach them the important language
skills that are required for entry into
nearly every academic pursuit and most
desirable life pursuits."
Actually 'they go into a system that
does not teach them these skills, says
Becker.
“Middle-class children learn these
skills largely at home from their parents
The opportunities provided for the
middle-class child in language learning
are not available for many poverty chil
dren, which means that the latter are
discriminated against in typical school
programs.
"The remedy for this situation is to
extend DISTAR at least through sixth
grade ' he says.
DISTARs success in 19 cities —
achieved. Becker says, despite the
fact that the program “was-not fully im
plemented in any of the sites — con
vinces its developers that it can be "a
source of expert input for the design of
curricula
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