Here is what he told me is this: Barbara Foorman, a faculty member at the
University of Houston did a federally funded 1 year study in a middle class
suburb of Houston. She had four groups: 1. An Open Court published basal with
a strong direct instruction phonics program. 2. A program that is somehow
related to Elfrieda Hiebert which includes a phonemic awareness modullr. 3. A
whole language program. 4. What I call brand x the pre-existing program in the
district.
The results using a single outcome measure- scores on the Woodcock-Johnson
reading test favored the Open Court phonics. The mean percentile for those in
that group was in the low 40's, The other three groups clustered in the mid-
twenties.
Responding to what he told me I said I wasn't surprised by the results. When
a single outcome measure is used, the group whose instruction most matches the
test will do best. He could not describe for me the staff development each
group got other than to quote Foorman is saying it came from a whole language
person. I said that if I were to participate in such a study I would insist
that a number of measures significant to the objectives of whole language be
included such as: amount of reading and writing children did in the year,
productivity and learning in social studies, science , math , and other subjectsin each group,
attitudes toward reading and writing, library use by each group, attendance and
tardiness, self-esteem- and many others.
There have been many such studies- some people call them race-horse studies
over the past 50 years including the well known first grade studies of the
sixties. These are often quoted to show that whole language has been proven
to fail- though many different programs are identified has whole language and
like whole language.
On the other hand the meta studies that Virginia Collier and Wayne Thomas have
done on bilingual programs show a substantial superiority for whole language
and meaning based programs.
It appears from Colvins article that he was called by Open Court because he
includes a visit to an LA area school in the article. I should have asked
him but didn't if Foorman has any connection to Open Court. I did ask why
a committee of the state legislature in California invited a Houston professor
to testify and who else they are hearing. I fear that this will be another
case of executive and legislative bodies on state and national level mandating
how, what, and with what materials teachers will teach reading.
Let all on xmca be warned- no research is politically neutral and none of us
can claim innocense if uor research is misrepresented or misused.
Ken Goodman