ABSTRACT
The College of Education of the University of Oregon consistently leads the nation’s institutions of higher education with respect to research dollars per faculty member (2004). The vast majority of those funds are awarded to researchers in the area of direct instruction. Perhaps the most well-known efforts at the University of Oregon are led by researchers Siegfried Engelmann and Douglas Carnine, who have developed a high-profile method of phonics-based reading curriculums, called Direct Instruction (DI). A recent meta-analysis in the Review of Educational Research (Borman, Hewes, Overman, & Brown, 2003) identified DI as one of only three models of comprehensive school reform that is supported by “strongest evidence of effectiveness.”
