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A possible breakthrough in teaching reading
There’s an interesting column in the New York Daily News about a three-year experiment comparing primary students at 20 demographically-matched schools. At 10 of the schools, the students are being taught to read using the Core Knowledge Language Arts Program (systematic phonics and emphasis on word and world knowledge), while at the other 10 schools, the students are receiving the dominant “Balanced Literacy” approach. After the first year, the kindergarten students in the Core Knowledge group had achieved reading gains five times greater than the students in the Balanced Literacy group, while after the second year they continued to outstrip the control group with gains twice as great. The third-year results will be announced this fall, and they are likely to show that the Core Knowledge students have pulled even further ahead of the control group.
It will be interesting to see if the city opts to extend the experiment, especially in light of the fact that it costs only an additional $30,000 per school each year - small price to pay if it leads to a breakthrough in teaching literacy.