Do not think about, write about or deal with human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.
“David Boulton: And how our ongoing assessment allows us to tune our responses to them so that we’re actually meeting what they need along the way in those steps.
Siegfried Engelmann: Right. I agree totally. That, translated into this stair-step program idea, simply means that you can use every single lesson, every single task in every lesson as a test—if you have appropriate criteria.
The rules for how you use the program as a tool for ongoing and absolutely accurate assessment goes something like this: if you have a properly designed program, the kids have to be 70 percent correct on anything that is introduced for the first time on that lesson. The kids have to be 90 percent correct on anything introduced in the past three lessons, from the beginning of the program. At the end of the lesson, the kid has to be 100 percent firm on everything. Another rule is that you have to have the program designed so that the teacher can complete it in a reasonable period of time.
Now, if you use all of the criteria I mentioned, it doesn’t matter what mistake a kid makes. We’ve found, empirically, when we work with kids, in Special Education for instance, we have to move the kids back something like an average of eighty lessons! In other words, for those kids the starting stair is very low because their teachers are so far from being able to teach to mastery. They’re not even in the ballpark. So, the teachers could go through that lesson three or four times and it would do nothing for their students, because teachers are not evaluating or seriously looking at the skill level of those kids.
Part of the reason is largely because of prejudice. Teachers think that you have to move them along when they’re not getting it, because they are Special Ed kids, “they can’t learn this stuff!” Wrong! If you place them properly, they will progress just like anybody else. They may go a little slowly at first, because they have to learn the skills of how to learn from you, or how to learn from adults.
David Boulton: And they may have confusion brought about by a fragmentary exposure to the things that are downstream from where they really ought to be.
Siegfried Engelmann: Oh, absolutely. Like when you take the kids back to earlier steps in the lessons—now you’re not just dealing with virgin subjects anymore; you’re dealing with kids who have been contaminated, so they’re going to require more practice. Relearning takes anywhere from three to fourteen or fifteen times as much exposure. So, when we design a program, we design it according to whom we’re dealing with.”
Again, the key is the philosophy of instruction leading to the details of the instruction. Find out the problem and fix it. This is the classic switch from “he is” (learning disabled) to “how to” teach the student.
“For example, if you go through a simple story in which the kids can read three out of four words correctly, so it’s within their ballpark, and you give corrections for the words they miss. "No, that’s not ‘said’, it’s ‘was’." "What word?" "Okay. Read that sentence again." You just go through it low-key, giving corrections like that. Then, you have them read the story again. They will virtually always make more mistakes on the second reading than the first. Why? Because they can’t take the information you’ve given. Why can’t they take it? Because they have a history of not being able to take information from teachers.
Teachers have told them things like, "Look at the first part of a word and guess what word that could be." Teachers have told them, "Read the context, think of the context. What could that word be?" The reason why kids have great excitation in their language areas, poor readers anyway, is because they’re trying to treat the reading task as a verbal task! They’re trying to figure out the meaning before they read the words!”
How often I’ve seen this. Fixing what’s wrong in the context of teaching what’s right.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies
