When was the Follow Through educational program introduced?
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In President Lyndon B. Johnson's 1967 state of the union address, he proposed $120 million for the program, to serve approximately 200,000 children from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, when funding for the project was approved by the United States Congress, a fraction of that amount—merely $15 million—was authorized. This necessitated a change in strategy by the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), the government agency charged with oversight of the program Instead, program administrators made the "brilliant decision... (to) convert "Follow Through" from a service program to a research and development 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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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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The Fletcher Johnson Educational Center, a charter school with 1,500 students in Washington, D.C., introduced the TM program for schools in 1994. Its principal, George H. Rutherford, is a member of the DLF's Board of Advisors. The Ideal Academy Public Charter School began its program with the approval of the Washington, D.C. Board of Education in 1997. The 2005–2006 pilot project at Ideal Academy was conducted along with research to document the effects of the program. The Nataki Talibah Schoolhouse] in Detroit began using the program for students in the fifth through eighth grade in 1996 and was featured on the Today Show in 2003. The school has since been classified by the Skillman Foundation as a "High-Performing Middle School". Over the years, the program at Nitaki Talibah has been funded by various foundations including General Motors, Daimler Chrysler, the Liebler Foundation and the DLF. The program at the school has been researched by Rita Benn of the University of Michigan's Complementary and Alternative Medicine Research Center.
Transcendental Meditation in education
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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
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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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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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Graduate students and faculty from U.C. Berkeley soon joined Johntz in other Berkeley schools. The program spread through presentations for school districts, corporations and conferences, and became a component of the Miller Mathematics Improvement Program, a program funded statewide in California from 1968 to 1970. Many of the early instructors were university faculty, graduate students, and corporate volunteers.
Project SEED became a non-profit, tax-exempt corporation in Michigan in 1970 where state funding brought the program to ten different cities between 1970 and 1975. When it was founded in 1963, the name Project S.E.E.D. was an acronym for “Special Elementary Education for the Disadvantaged.” The program was reincorporated in California in 1987 as Project SEED, Inc. dropping the acronym. This was done primarily to avoid confusion with “Special Education” which had taken on a specific meaning.
Project SEED
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Because "Follow Through" came into existence because of executive and not legislative action, overall control for the program rested in Johnson's Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), which spearheaded Johnson's War on Poverty policy. A major component of the policy was community involvement. The Community Action Program (CAP) was charged with fulfilling this function through the establishment of local agencies and programs that carried out various federally sponsored initiatives for disadvantaged populations. However, CAP (and, to some extent, OEO) fell into disrepute among legislators and others, because "it resulted in the political mobilization of the poor and the undermining of local government agencies". "Follow Through" was intended to be an extension of the "Head Start" community action program. Since "Head Start" was politically popular, a program associated with "Head Start" would put the OEO "back in the good graces of Congress". Although "Follow Through", like "Head Start", was initially intended as a social action program, the decision to transform "Follow Through" from a social action program to a social experiment was not correspondingly changed in the congressional legislation.
Follow Through (project)
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Operation Breakthrough, an anti-poverty movement, was established in Durham, North Carolina in August 1964. It played a prominent and influential role in the expansion of the Civil Rights movement in Durham. Terry Sanford, its founder, managed to develop that through the help and involvement of the North Carolina Fund. A Member of the Democratic Party, Sanford was the former governor of North Carolina and was highly respected for his intervention in the improvement of public education. Indeed, in the 1960s, the education system in place in North Carolina was very poor as one quarter of the adults above 25 years old had received an education inferior to sixth grade, making most of them illiterate. Because of the high success of the program, the concept developed through the North Carolina Fund was mimicked throughout the nation, transforming what initially was a state wide program to a national program. Throughout this movement, activism played a fundamental role as the main aim of the program consisted in changing the economic situation of a state through the use of political and social power.
Operation Breakthrough (program)