DIRECT INSTRUCTION: AN EDUCATORS' GUIDE AND A PLEA FOR ACTION

The achievement gap between minority youth and the majority population in the United States is well documented (Johnston & Viadero, 2000). In order to reduce this gap and avail children of poverty of the most effective educational techniques, Project Follow Through was conducted in the 1960's. The research that compared a variety of educational approaches found Direct Instruction techniques to be the most effective along all measures. Since that time there have been numerous studies that have demonstrated the great benefit of Direct Instruction procedures for the education of minority youth. Yet, few school systems use the procedures. The article discusses arguments for and against the adoption of Direct Instruction techniques and makes a plea for minority educators to lead a movement that will lead to widespread espousal of the procedures. Key words: direct instruction, academic achievement, dissemination, inner - city students. THE SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM Since the 1970's the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)--also popularly known as the Nation's Report Card--has been assessing K-12 students throughout the U.S. in their skills across common academic disciplines. These scores are then differentiated by subgroups such as age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender to show comparative trends in academic performance. From the time these and other similar assessments have been enacted, a significant disparity has been apparent between the academic achievement of White students and students in minority groups--Black, Latino, and Native American, specifically. This "achievement gap" has been well-documented and tracked carefully over the years; the 1970's and 80's showed marked progress in narrowing the gap in several important subject areas, but this relative progress has since stalled (Johnston & Viadero, 2000; National Center for Education Statistics, NCES, 2001). Kober's (2001) analysis of the achievement gap points out that the 1999 NAEP statistics in both trend assessments and main assessments reveal a persistent disparity between the academic achievement of White majority students and Black, Latino, and Native American minority students. At every age and subject level, Black and Latino students trailed White students--sometimes by several equivalent academic years or grade levels. In the 1998 NAEP main writing assessment, 8% of Black 4th graders and 10% of Latino 4th graders scored at a Proficient level, compared to the 27% of White 4th graders. Similarly, the NCES reported in 2001 that Black students overall had lower math and reading scores than White students at every grade level. Even within integrated, middle-class suburbs the Black-White achievement gap has been documented to persist (Johnston & Viadero, 2000). At the same time, Black and Latino students are making up a larger and larger percentage of the school-age population. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Black and Latino children will make up 34% of the school-age population in 2010. In many urban school districts, these groups already comprise more than 80% of the student population (Kober, 2001). Furthermore, elementary and high school academic achievement scores have been shown to correlate strongly with high school completion, college enrollment, and labor market outcomes (Jencks & Phillips, 1998; Johnston & Viadero, 2000; NCES, 2001). Recent studies have found that the academic achievement gap between Blacks and Whites could statistically account for most of the eventual wage differential between the two groups (NCES, 2001). Johnston & Viadero cite data compiled by the RAND Corp. that found Latino children will be 2.6 times more likely to grow up in poverty than White children in the year 2015, a ratio that has steadily increased over the past decade. These repercussions are compounded by the changing marketplace, which demands more educated workers for a society revolutionized by technological changes and worldwide globalization. …