Direct Instruction news Effective School Practices
SARA G. TARVER, Editor, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Much Ado About Testing: But the Real Story Is About Instruction This issue of Direct Instruction News begins with Bob Dixon’s on-the-mark satire on state testing. He destroys the myth that state tests are divinely inspired by laying bare the fallacies in the test construction process itself. A process that begins with the creation of state standards (which, in most cases, defy measurement of any kind) by “democratic” committees under the influence of education professors (who, in nearly all cases, know nothing of or have little respect for the technical qualities of tests), and ends with worthless tests that can destroy rather than facilitate the accountability movement. Thank goodness, Bob goes on to point out, that there are some technically sound standardized tests and that criterion-referenced tests, if technically sound, can provide more direct ways of evaluating instruction. His advocacy of technically sound tests that can promote true accountability should not be confused with some currently popular anti-testing views. As the reader will see when reading George Clowes’ interview with Zig, Zig’s views on testing complement Bob’s. In his usual succinct style, Zig tells how real performance testing (please don’t confuse this with what is commonly being touted as performance testing) is inherent in effective instruction. He starts by stating, “If you want to know what you taught, you have to
look at what the children learned.” Then he adds “. . . you would not wait to test the children. You would design the instruction so that you were testing them all the time.” He then goes on to explain how the test part of the Model-Lead-Test instructional paradigm ensures that the teacher gets feedback about what the children have or have not learned. Like Bob, Zig does not take an antistandardized testing stance. Instead, he suggests that we obtain performance measures by randomly testing one out of five students (say, on the reading of passages aloud) and then comparing their performance to their achievement test scores. In other words, we need measures of performance on routine academic tasks AND measures of achievement on standardized tests. Most importantly, both types of measures must be valid, reliable, and sensible.
used, while Direct Instruction is not. Why? Zig:: The answer is really simple, but it’s very difficult for most people to accept: Outcomes have never been a priority in public education, from its inception. That’s the way the public education system is. The system is more concerned with the experience of the child: “Let the child explore,” “Let the child be his or her self,” “Don’t interfere with the natural learning process,” and so on. continued on page 3 FALL 2001, Volume 1, Number 2
In this issue Your State Test Was Not Divinely Inspired
Zig’s interview provides other jewels of wisdom also. The following question is one that I have been asked often and Zig’s response to it is right-on. It bears repeating here:
4 5 9 16 17
Clowes:: So Project Follow Through confirmed what you had already found about the ineffectiveness of those other programs. Yet those programs still are being promoted in teacher colleges and they still are widely
22 23 32
How to Achieve Excellence
“If the Children Aren’t Learning, We’re Not Teaching” 2001 ADI Awards Teaching Method Makes the Grade A Dozen Suggestions for Successful Reading Implementations
A Study of DI with Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Arkansas School for the Blind Adopts DI