Sold a Story Season 2, Episode 3 looks at Project Follow Through, The Forgotten Experiment:
The idea was to “follow through” on the promise of Head Start.
The study began in 1968. And lasted nearly a decade. It was one of the largest educational experiments in the history of the world. Nearly 60 years later, that’s still the case.
And Project Follow Through ended up providing some answers. Some information that could have influenced the direction of American education.
But it didn’t.
[…]
The government initially focused its data collection on basic academic skills. That worried the developers of some of the other programs. They thought it would give Direct Instruction an unfair advantage.
[…]
In response to complaints, the government added other measures. There were tests that looked beyond basic skills to things like abstract reasoning and problem solving. And there were measures to assess things like self-confidence and attitudes about school and learning.
[…]
The first year of data arrived on their desks. And it did not look good. In fact, it looked so bad that they decided — we can’t let people see this.
[…]
It showed that students in the Follow Through models were not doing better than students in traditional classrooms. Some of them were doing worse. That was bad news for the government because the goal was to find better approaches.
[…]
The government collected data for nearly 10 years. It had test scores and other information about more than 350,000 students in thousands of classrooms all over the country.
[…]
The government’s evaluation showed that Direct Instruction had outperformed all the other models.
It had done especially well compared to the other models when it came to math, reading and spelling skills. Exactly what Direct Instruction was trying to do.
But it had also done well when it came to things like abstract reasoning and problem-solving.
And perhaps the biggest surprise? Direct Instruction performed the best on those measures of self-confidence and how kids felt about school and learning.
[…]
The data showed that Direct Instruction was the only model that had positive results in every category that was measured. In all the other models, the kids did worse — on average — on at least one set of measures.
[…]
According to the government’s evaluation, the models that didn’t succeed — on average — had some schools that did relatively well. The teachers, the coaches, the principals — they made it work.
And the models that did succeed — on average — didn’t succeed everywhere. Even Direct Instruction had schools where things did not go well, where kids did not do better.
And that’s what Ernest House and his group focused on in their critique of the government’s evaluation.
[…]
Project Follow Through had not revealed a program that worked equally well everywhere, every time it was implemented. And for that reason, Ernest House and his group concluded that there was no Project Follow Through winner. There couldn’t be a victor.
[…]
After the critique by Gene Glass and Ernest House, the government did two things.
Number one: It started giving more money to the Follow Through models that had not done well. The rationale was that those models needed more support, more time to prove themselves.
And number two: The Office of Education shifted its focus from highlighting successful Follow Through models to highlighting successful Follow Through schools.
By doing this, it was possible for the government to showcase many of the Follow Through models because most of them had a school somewhere that was doing reasonably well.
[…]
The model that did the best — after nearly a decade with lots of kids in lots of schools in one of the largest education studies of all time — was a highly structured program that relied on carefully sequenced lessons and didn’t expect students to discover things on their own.
It was an answer. But it was not an answer a lot of people wanted to hear.