Teaching phonemic awareness and phonics systematically for 30 minutes a day led to significantly higher literacy skills for kindergarten and first-grade students, reports a new study.
After a year of UFLI Foundations, students' scores were more than a standard deviation above similar students who received "business-as-usual" instruction, University of Florida and WestEd researchers report. "Students of teachers who taught with greater adherence to the UFLI Foundations program had larger effects."
Atticus Lugo is a UFLI student in Leon County, Florida.
Kindergarteners who were considered "at risk" at the start of the year tested as "minimal risk" by year's end, if they received UFLI instruction, the study reports. That signifies no need for special help in reading. Those who in the control group remained "at risk."
On average, UFLI first graders started at the border between "at risk" and "some risk" and ended at the border between "some risk" and "minimal risk." The control group remained at the at risk/some risk level.
The program was tested in a district in which 80 percent of students come from lower-income families: 40 percent are black, 12 percent Hispanic and 35 percent white.
The Whole Language fraud lasted decades. The "discovery Math' anti-drill fraud persists. Massive educational malpractice by professors of Education has cost the US billions.
Please read Diane Ravitch, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reform.
"What works?" is an empirical question to which an experiment will deliver more valid and reliable information than will Divine (bureaucratic) Inspiration. In public policy, "experiment" means federalism (subsidiarity, many local policy regimes) and/or competitive markets in goods and services. A State-monopoly supplier is an experiment with one treatment and no controls, a foolish experimental design.
Surprising only those who choose to be surprised.