The bottom line is that dropping the non-tutored children does not alter the pattern of results or the conclusions reached in the study. This assertion is not correct and was addressed in our previous response. As we stated, there was no difference in the amount of instructional time provided in the three research conditions. The doubling of lessons was done because the second graders couldn't read and had to start in the first grade Open Court lessons. Foorman and her colleagues make no attempt to falsify their hypotheses or refute their theory that training of phonological awareness and direct instruction is effective in improving beginning reading instruction.
Falsification is a characteristic of the experimental design.
There was every opportunity for children in the other conditions to out perform children in the explicit instruction condition. Not only do they reflect an inaccurate representation of the data in the study, they ignore the fact that the article was reviewed and published in a major peer reviewed, archival publication. None of these differences were statistically significant in the original data set. Moreover, these potential problems were identified by the reviewers, and resulted in the re-analysis of the data including only the tutored children. We feel that we have provided a thorough analysis of the data and have examined numerous possible explanations for the effects other than the curriculum.