i:\doc\web\98\05\openct.txt Date sent: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 06:10:29 +0000 To: DWahl82749 , Education-Consumers@tricon.net From: Jimmy Kilpatrick Subject: Re: Open Court Reading Open Court is better then most and is the only one of the publishers that has any NICHD research done on it. The writers which include Marilyn Jager Adams have included the necessary but not sufficient components of phonemic awareness, systematic phonics, with connecting decodable texts. There is a good selection of literature books that is included and the program is laid out very well. My I mention a word of caution. Barbara Foorman and her NICHD team researched Open Court along with several others in the Alief Study (outside district from Houston) and are currently studying these programs again in Houston. The long term data has not been gather because the study is too new. Just how effective Open Court or these other programs have been by the time these students reach fourth and fifth grade is not known. There have been comments that Open Court will reduced reading failure to around 4% of the student population. Comments like these are far fetched to say the least. I question these comments and have seen no supporting replicated research that will back-up these statements. I have been speaking out about this for sometime now and people are starting to listen. We are going to have to do more to insure that all children receive the adequate amount of instruction in the areas of need for EACH student. The feeling the Open Court or programs as such will fix the reading problems is over stated. Open Court is better then most if you have to have a program. The concern I have spoken to the folks in Sacramento has been the 15-20% of the students that will not do well in Open Court or any other shelf program. The question is teacher training and intensity of instruction. Estimates of 40-80+ hours of one to one or four to five instruction will be necessary of this lower percent of children. Let's all remember that reading is very complex for a hugh number of children and just teaching them on-set and rime, deletion, and substituting (these are some phonemic awareness actitives: what do you have when you take the /c/ sound off cat; put a /b/ before at, what do you have?) and reading rhymes along with phonics will not get the job down. Please contact me if there are further questions. Regards, Jimmy At 12:11 AM 4/24/98 -0400, you wrote: >Our district is adopting Open Court for the upcoming year. Some quick incisive >thoughts about this program would be greatly appreciated. Hewlett Packard has >been holding out a carrot(financial grants) for its adoption. What am I to >think?........ >EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE > Jimmy Kilpatrick Consultant and Policy Advisor Reading and Reading Disabilities http://www.readbygrade3.com 713 520-9715 EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE