How long did the Follow Through educational program last?
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Follow Through was the largest and most expensive experimental project in education funded by the U.S. federal government that has ever been conducted. The most extensive evaluation of "Follow Through" data covers the years 1968–1977; however, the program continued to receive funding from the government until 1995. "Follow Through" was originally intended to be an extension of the federal "Head Start" program, which delivered educational, health, and social services to typically disadvantaged preschool children and their families. The function of "Follow Through", therefore, was to provide a continuation of these services to students in their early elementary years.
Follow Through (project)
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Issues of local control. The planned variation aspect of "Follow Through" was thought to be beneficial—perhaps superior—to other forms of experimentation (e.g., selection of sites based on randomized assignment) because it would give local communities and schools an element of ownership integral to the successful implementation of the models. Despite the planned variation design, local communities in many sites were nevertheless deeply critical of the program. In some ways, criticism of "Follow Through" had preceded directly from Head Start. Ostensibly, the social service purpose and goals of the Head Start program were clearer than those of the "Follow Through" evaluation. Nevertheless, community leaders had felt that Head Start did not give enough decision-making responsibility to parents and community members. Local interests wanted to make curricular decisions, including the changing of facets of some program models Evans cautioned that "educational communities and contexts vary", which can have a direct effect on the implementation of a model. More problematic, however, is Elmore's and Hill's assertions that the "Follow Through" models interfered with local teaching methods and practices. As Elmore writes, "for "Follow Through", the problem was how to implement program variations in a system where most day-to-day decisions about program content are made at the school or classroom level". Rhine "et al." suggest that it is difficult to get teachers to modify their behavior. And if the objective of changing behavior is achieved, teachers feel little ownership on the model—a decidedly dubious investment. What inevitably seems to happen is that teachers reject programs outright, while others "surrender to the program".
Follow Through (project)
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Was "Follow Through" a social or scientific program? After an initial period, new regulations mandated that 80 percent of "Follow Through" funding was to be allocated to the provision of service while 20 percent was to be used for knowledge production. The regulations themselves suggest that "Follow Through" was principally "a federally funded education program which contained a built-in research component". An inevitable conflict exists when one attempts to operationalize a federal program in education that possesses both service delivery and research and development objectives. Rivlin "et al." point out that "the byzantine complexity of the public policymaking process makes the conduct of social experiments extremely difficult". Given the reduction in funding, the decision to engage in an effort to evaluate the effectiveness of various interventions in an empirical experiment appears appropriate and straightforward. However, if the change is not reflected in Congressional legislation or communicated clearly at the local level, issues of implementation and conflict with deeply held values inevitably result. There is much evidence that indicates confusion about the intent of the "Follow Through" evaluation at the administrative level.
Follow Through (project)
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Wisler "et al", in their review of the "Follow Through" experience, wrote that it was likely that no other educational data has been examined more extensively, excepting the Equality of Educational Opportunity Survey. At least three major reevaluations of the "Follow Through" data exist in the literature: House, "et al." (1978); Bereiter and Kurland (1981); and Kennedy (1981). All largely confirm the original statistical analysis conducted by Abt Associates. Generally, the consensus among most researchers is that structured models tended to perform better than unstructured ones, and that the Direct Instruction and Behavior Analysis models performed better on the instruments employed than did the other models.) Most critiques of the "Follow Through" experiment have tended to focus on the operational and design problems that plagued the experiment. In particular, these critiques note that there was more variation within a particular model than there was from model to model. This problem has largely been attributed to the problem of how to measure the effectiveness of a particular implementation; the measures used were largely qualitative and anecdotal. In some instances, sites were included in the analysis that had ceased to implement specific models, or the model sponsors had serious reservations about the way particular models were implemented.
Follow Through (project)
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"Follow Through" planners felt that they were responding to an important challenge in the education of disadvantaged students. It was generally hypothesized that the mere provision of specific supports in the form of federal compensatory programs—such as "Head Start" and Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—would result in increased academic achievement for disadvantaged children, if implemented faithfully by committed teachers. However, studies had shown that despite its successes, in general any gains that children made from "Head Start" (in measures of academic achievement) "faded out" during the first few years of elementary school. It was unclear to policy makers and others if the elementary school experience itself caused this phenomenon, or if specific approaches to instruction within schools were the problem. "Follow Through" intended to solve the problem by identifying what whole-school approaches to curriculum and instruction worked, and what did not. Subsequently, effective models were to be promulgated by the government as exemplars of innovative and proven methods of raising the academic achievement of historically disadvantaged students.
Follow Through (project)
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In 1972, the OE created the Joint Dissemination Review Panel (JDRP) and the National Diffusion Network (NDN) to disseminate information about effective models to schools and districts nationwide. JDRP reviewed programs for effectiveness according to a mixture of empirical and holistic criteria. NDN was responsible for disseminating the results based on the recommendations of JDRP. Watkins (1997) criticizes the dissemination criteria for two reasons. First, the organizations identified programs for dissemination that had not been part of the "Follow Through" experiment and for which there was no empirical validation. Second, JDRP and NDN endorsed programs that showed improvement in areas "such as self-concept, attitude, and mental or physical health (of students) ... (or) if it has a positive impact on individuals other than students, for example if it results in improved instructional behavior of teachers" (p. 47), but did not raise students' academic achievement. Thus, programs "that had been incapable of demonstrating improved academic performance in the "Follow Through" evaluation" were recommended for adoption by schools and districts. Watkins cites the former Commissioner of Education, Ernest Boyer, who wrote with dismay that "Since only one of the sponsors (Direct Instruction) was found to produce positive results more consistently than any of the others, it would be inappropriate and irresponsible to disseminate information on all of the models".
Follow Through (project)
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Hill writes: "There is seldom anyone at the local level whose commitment to an externally-imposed curricular innovation, planning process, or financial management scheme springs spontaneously from deeply held personal values." House argues that all decision-making that stems from evaluations in education is the result of a compromise. Watkins argues that "Follow Through" resulted in a clash over values based on different beliefs about how children learn, which can be boiled down to "natural growth" or "unfolding" theories versus. theories of "changing behavior". Watkins asserts that most education experts today do not judge programs by their relative effectiveness with different student populations, but rather by their "congruence with prevailing philosophies of education".
Follow Through (project)
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Because of the range of models, a broad range of instruments and analytical methods was selected in order to measure the targeted outcomes of basic skills, affective behavior, and cognitive behavior. Adams and Engelmann wrote, "while critics have complained about test selection and have usually suggested more testing, the assessment effort in this study went well beyond any other educational study conducted before, or since". In all, 14 instruments were selected and administered at various times throughout a student's participation in "Follow Through". Three groups of students, known as Cohorts (i.e., Cohorts I, II, and III) were followed longitudinally from the time they entered "Follow Through" (e.g., Kindergarten or Grade 1) until they exited the program (Grade 3). While the authors of the "Follow Through" report rated the instruments as having high reliability, some sponsors questioned the validity of the instruments in measuring the varied orientations of the models. Other critics, such as House "et al." in a Ford Foundation-funded and widely disseminated analysis, also criticized the instruments. However, the evaluators believed that the instrument battery represented the "best compromise" given the range of models. Despite the relatively large number of students who participated in "Follow Through", the evaluators imposed rigorous restrictions on the sample that was actually in the statistical analysis. The comparison group—students from the community identified as not participating in "Follow Through"—was not subject to precisely the same restrictions as the control group, as long as they entered and exited school in the same districts and at the same time as "Follow Through" students.
Follow Through (project)
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Selection of "Follow Through" implementation sites proceeded in concert with the selection of models. With the assistance of various state and federal education agencies, 100 communities were invited to apply to the program, based on criteria established by the OEO. According to Egbert, 90 districts applied, of which 30 were chosen for participation in "Follow Through". However, due to pressure from influential politicians, additional sites were later added. Not coincidentally, the inclusion of several additional districts appears to have been an attempt to satisfy a number of local political figures by including their communities in the program.
Follow Through (project)
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Since the late 1960s, Engelmann has authored more than 100 curricular programs, based on the principles that were discovered in the preschool. The first programs, written from 1968 through 1970 were called DISTAR, for Direct Instruction System for Teaching and Remediation, and were designed to teach reading, math, and language to children in kindergarten through second grade. The DISTAR materials were used in some locations that participated in "Project Follow Through", the largest educational experiment in the history of the United States. "Follow Through", which was sponsored by the U.S. Office of Education, began in 1968 and continued into the 1970s. The project targeted primary school children in communities with high levels of poverty. In subsequent years, the original DISTAR programs were expanded from the original three levels to include six levels. These programs are currently called "Reading Mastery" and "Connecting Math Concepts". He also developed a multilevel reading program for students beyond the primary level, including adults, who performed lower than others (Corrective Reading Decoding and Corrective Reading Comprehension), programs to teach writing and spelling ("Reasoning and Writing and Spelling Mastery"), and a videodisk series to teach math and science to middle school students (including Chemistry and Energy and Elementary Earth Science). Programs were also written for parents to use with their children, "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" and "Give your Child a Superior Mind". Most recently he has developed computer-based programs that parents and others can use to teach young children reading and math skills ("Funnix Beginning Reading" and "Funnix Beginning Math"), as well as programs to teach English speaking skills to non-native English speakers at third grade or older ("Direct Instruction Spoken English").
Siegfried Engelmann