A Study Of The Effectiveness Of The Distar Instructional System In Elementary School Reading Programs

Abstract

This study investigated teacher opinions of the Direct Instruction Systems for Teaching Arithmetic and Reading (Distar Reading only) when used in elementary special education classrooms. A survey was sent to 116 special education teachers employed by small school districts in southeastern Texas. The survey consisted of 21 multiple choice items with space provided for additional comments. The first item asked respondents to state if they had used Distar Reading. If not, they were to return the survey without further responses. In this way a discrimination could be made between "returns " and those not using Distar Reading. If the respondents had ever used Distar Reading I, II, or III they were to complete the survey and return it in the pre-addressed and stamped envelopes. There was an 80% return. Although Distar was developed for disadvantaged or slow learning students, only 17% of the respondents indicated that their slowest students improved. The respondents reported that in general, the students seemed to like and pay attention to Distar Reading instruction, yet the teachers themselves were less satisfied with the program. They showed strong opposition to claims that Distar is easy to teach and requires little daily preparation. Even though 71% of the teachers taught Distar regularly, 71% also modified the program in some way. Results indicated that Distar Reading has not been widely used by the majority of special education teachers although they were aware of its existence. Although the results of this study do not confirm the results reported by the developers of the Distar Reading System, there were too few subjects included to justify generalization. A need for further research is indicated by the current findings to discover why Distar Reading is not more widely used in the public schools in this area of Texas.