Project Follow-Through: A lesson in cultivating orchids, not dandelions.

  

Image: ChatGPT

Regardless of what people have to say about the methodological imperfections of Project Follow-Through (PFT; see also here and here), it was, and remains, the largest education experiment ever conducted. Yes, it had its resource wings clipped by a redirection of funding as a result of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, and no, it was not a randomised controlled trial (RCT). While RCTs are the most rigorous research design for establishing cause and effect (see here and here) they are not always feasible for a range of reasons. PFT is probably best described then, as a large-scale, longitudinal quasi-experimental evaluation of multiple educational models using non-equivalent comparison groups. That, by the way, makes it considerably higher-up the evidence hierarchy than many of the education research studies conducted since. Stockard et al. (2018, p. 482) observed of the PFT analysis that:

"External evaluators gathered and analyzed outcome data using a variety of comparison groups and analysis techniques. The final results indicated that DI was the only intervention that had significantly positive impacts on all of the outcome measures (Adams, 1996; Barbash, 2012; Bereiter & Kurland, 1996; Engelmann 2007; Engelmann, Becker, Carnine, & Gersten, 1988; Kennedy, 1978)". 

Notably, however, the (re-)analysis and dissemination process after PFT was heavily contaminated by partisan naysayers, such as Dr Gene Glass, who is heard in Episode 3 of SaS, Season 2 saying:

I grant them nothing. Nothing. I find no evidence in the entire Follow Through evaluation that they have anything special or worthy of wide distribution. It's a terrible way to organize teaching and learning. The best education starts with the interests, the motivations, the curiosity of the children. Sit down with the child, find out what the child is interested in. Let the child bring his own book, the book he loves. You know, see if he can read, see if he understands.

There’s (at least) two obvious problems with Glass’ position: its emphatic and complete rejection of Direct Instruction is glaringly at odds with the findings of volumes of research in the intervening decades, and it declares the kind of cognitive bias that undergraduate students in research methods 101 classes are taught to identify at 20 paces.

Consider, for example, the findings reported by Stockard and her colleagues in their 2018 meta-analysis of 50 years of research on Direct Instruction:

"The findings of this meta-analysis reinforce the conclusions of earlier meta analyses and reviews of the literature regarding DI. Yet, despite the very large body of research supporting its effectiveness, DI has not been widely embraced or implemented. In part this avoidance of DI may be fueled by the current popularity of constructivism and misconceptions of the theory that underlies DI. As explained in the first part of this article, DI shares with constructivism the important basic understanding that students interpret and make sense of information with which they are presented. The difference lies in the nature of the information given to students, with DI theorists stressing the importance of very carefully choosing and structuring examples so they are as clear and unambiguous as possible. Without such clarity students will waste valuable time and, even worse, potentially reach faulty conclusions that harm future progress and learning" (p. 502).

Something that has always intrigued (but not overly surprised) me, is the fact that so few practising teachers are aware of PFT and virtually none of them learnt about it in their pre-service teacher education. Of course, the naysayers can chime in here with any and all versions of “pre-service education can’t cover everything”; “it wasn’t a properly conducted experiment”; “it happened decades ago, so is irrelevant now” and countless other thinly-disguised versions of “move on, nothing to see here”.  Notwithstanding its significant budget cuts and methodological limitations, PFT was for its time, and remains today, a significant educational research study, from which interested policy makers, education academics, school leaders, and classroom teachers can learn a great deal. This learning applies not only to students’ academic achievement, but also to their wellbeing: outcomes we are still unfortunately prone to disconnect from each other. As noted by Watkins three decades ago (1997, p. 58), however,

"The Follow Through evaluation provides clear evidence that no such trade off is necessary. The Direct Instruction and Behavior Analysis models not only resulted in superior performance on achievement measures, they were ranked first and second, respectively, on measures of affective development. It appears that the way to improve the self concept of children is to provide them with successful experiences by programming instruction in such a way that the child can see evidence that he or she is learning".

I was especially pleased, therefore, when I learned that Season 2 of Emily Hanford’s Sold a Story (SaS) podcast does a deep-dive into PFT, building on her highly impactful and influential investigation into reading instruction, in Season 1. This is no small undertaking, given the six decades that have elapsed since PFT commenced in the mid-1960s and the mix of methodological and analytical obfuscation, goal-post shifting, and zeitgeist overshadowing that has occurred in recent decades.

I imagine that most readers of this blog will be following Season 2 of SaS and will have had a similar visceral reaction to mine, on listening to Episode 4, What can you do for my black children? I am not American, but the achievement gradient that is aligned to race in that country is familiar to me and also bears out, albeit in different ways, in my own country, Australia.

Episode 4 tells the simultaneously uplifting and demoralising story of what happened when a man named Thaddeus Lott became the principal of Wesley Elementary, in a poor, black neighbourhood of Austin Texas. Essentially, Thaddeus led a natural experiment. In the words of Emily Hanford, “…..he defied school district officials. He got rid of whole language. And replaced it with Direct Instruction”.

Put simply, this means Thaddeus abandoned romantic and ill-founded ideas that students can “absorb” reading and writing by being in text-rich environments. By adopting Direct Instruction, he showed that not only could poor black children succeed academically, but that they could outperform white counterparts in more affluent neighbourhoods. As those of you who have listened to the episode will know, this prompted a mix of disbelief and outrage among local officials, such that Thaddeus and his staff were accused of facilitating “cheating” by their students. The underlying assumption of course was that poor black children, with their poor black brains, should be expected, as a reflection of world-order, to under-perform relative to white peers.

Thaddeus was ahead of his time in so many ways, including his pushback against what President George W. Bush Jnr later referred to as “the soft bigotry of low expectations”. Now that we’ve heard the story of Wesley Elementary, it’s perhaps time for us to call this mindset what it really is: the hard bigotry of low expectations.

The educational attainment of children in disadvantaged communities was of course, one of the driving forces behind PFT. It is also where we need to navigate the often-murky discourse of the socio-political waters in which education policy is framed. The fact that “poor children perform poorly at school” is simultaneously accepted as an article of faith by many in education and met with a remarkable lack of so-called twenty-first century skills on the part of education leaders. You know the ones I’m referring to, I’m sure – critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication. Even if we only got as far as (genuine) critical thinking, we would hopefully have a conversation about the fact that the single most important influence on children’s academic achievement should be the type of instruction they are exposed to at school. Assuming adequate attendance (which granted, can be challenging in some contexts), instructional experiences should be conceptualised and designed to counter the known effects of the home language and literacy environment. Indeed, this is what Thaddeus Lott demonstrated in the 1970s at Wesley Elementary. In an ironic twist, a few years after his departure, the cessation of his instructional model and reversal of student achievement was an inadvertent A-B-A natural experiment.

For reasons I find unfathomable, it remains unpalatable, however, to many in education, that instruction is the first rock we should be turning over when students’ academic progress falls short of expected levels. Many in education will talk endlessly about poverty and disadvantage, expressing grand but only vaguely-articulated ideas about governments needing to “fix" these as a prerequisite to improving the academic performance of poor students. (They do so, of course, from their own position of enormous privilege, having completed secondary school, a university degree, and a postgraduate qualification such as a PhD). This is as good as admitting the natural order of instruction not being the primary driver of student achievement. It is true that instruction does play second fiddle to parental income and education level, but I find it perplexing that so few education academics and influencers are actively campaigning to reverse this.

What would it mean for education academics to accept the evidence that low-variance direct instruction / Direct Instruction / explicit instruction / explicit direct instruction is more effective at scale than more eclectic, variable, project / inquiry-based models of instruction?

It would mean that education would divest itself of its self-proclaimed but misappropriated “special standing” as a human service and instead, take its place alongside other human service fields, such as medicine, nursing, psychology, criminology, and many more, that work with multiple, complex and unpredictable variables, in multiple, complex and adaptable ways, and are accountable for the outcomes of their protocols and practices.

Developmental psychologists Thomas Boyce and Bruce Ellis proposed in 2005 that children’s sensitivity to context places them on a notional continuum from “orchids” to “dandelions”. Dandelions are hardy and survive in a range of environments and climates. Orchids, on the other hand, are relatively easy to keep alive, but require quite specific and tailored care in order to flower. Thaddeus Lott treated the children in his school like orchids. He didn’t think it was enough for them to survive. Under his considered and deliberate care, they thrived, but when the careful and considered care ceased, so too, did the blooming of the children at Wesley Elementary.

Thaddeus Lott’s natural experiment was not enough to disturb the complacent slumber of education leaders in his state and shift the instructional needle. Stockard et al.’s 2018 meta-analysis of 50 years’ research on Direct Instruction was also met with indifference and an averted gaze from education academics.

Let’s hope that the “outing” of Project Follow Through via Sold a Story Season 2 stimulates vigorous discussion among teachers and school leaders about ways in which they can shift their pedagogical models closer to the explicit / direct instruction end of the continuum when working with novices. Education academics need to be on notice, because teachers and school leaders are now “in the know” about the evidence on what works at scale.

Arguing the toss about the 1970s analysis of Project Follow Through is a minor distraction in 2026. There’s the more awkward matter, now, of an additional 50-plus years of affirming evidence for Direct Instruction's effectiveness to wrangle. 

© Pamela Snow (2026)