‘We know how to teach black kids’
We know how to teach black kids – and other disadvantaged students — but we don’t do it, writes John McWhorter in The Root.
Starting in 1968, a huge federal study called Project Follow Through compared different methods of teaching at-risk K-3 children: Direct Instruction (DI), a scripted phonics program using repetition and student participation, worked much better than anything else for all students, but especially low-income black students. DI has continued to work where ever it’s been used, McWhorter writes.
In 2001, students in the mostly black Richmond district in Virginia were scoring abysmally in