This is VERY SAD. DI does not take development into account at all.

Rote recitation is just that - rote. DI may promote memory skills, but only rote memory and NOT working memory. It has its place as "part" of a program, but NEVER the ONLY strategy for young children.

The author needs to spend some time reading the work of neuroscientist Adele Diamond from British Columbia and her work with 4-year-olds on higher mental functions. Mature Play, in which children create scenarios in their minds, shows statistically significant prefrontal cortex improvement in the area of inhibitory control and working memory, compared to four-year-olds who do not experience these kinds of activities.

Brilliant! Barbash has it down cold, not just for pre-school education and compensatory programs, but for the entire pre-K-through-12 education industry. He's got it right for the "regular" education crowd, the bilingual education crowd and, especially, the special education claque. These refuse to acknowledge, much less adopt, the little decent research from their respective sub-industries that is out there. When it comes to research from allied and obviously related fields - psychology (cognition; behavior); neuroscience; psychiatry; pediatrics - fuggedaboudit!

I have finally discovered one - exactly one - graduate special ed. school which thoroughly trains some of its special ed. students in one research-validated program of reading remediation. I have yet to find even one graduate school of ed. which thoroughly trains any of its students in one research-validated program of behavior management or modification. When it comes to training in research-validated programs of counseling ... nada! As a result, these places produce fully-certified "experts" who are, in fact, functional incompetents.

It's time to stop wasting the precious lives of children by humoring under-knowledged, under-trained and under-supervised adults and bring in real experts, mostly from other fields, who are empowered to tell those who have failed what they must do in order to succeed. And it is time - it was time 30 years ago - to stop blaming the victims (the children) for adults' abject failures.

If the American education industry can't do what it is supposed to do, i.e., educate all of the children who walk through schoolhouse doors to a decent level of objective proficiency, then it's time to start being up front and telling it like it is about the adults.

The American education industry is incompetent. I repeat: The American education industry is incompetent. If you start with this proposition, the likelihood of getting to real remedies moves light years ahead. We may have fully certified adult "experts" who are highly insulted in the process of getting there, but what's more important: happy but incompetent adults who think they are experts, or well-educated children of all economic strata and colors?

Dee Alpert, Publisher
The Special Education Muckraker