Since I have written previously with concerns about ITI I am probably one of the McCarthyites Assistant Principal Plauche refers to (Letters, May 26).

So here is a response that should be taken for what it is, one person's opinion. I have had a great interest in education as a parent with three children in Fayette County schools and as a U.S. citizen. If you have any doubts that we as a nation have a full-blown crisis in education, just watch a congressional education committee on C-SPAN. They are watching the education statistics and are in a panic to somehow halt the continuing decline.

A recent study suggested the U.S. is at its highest illiteracy level since 1920. The Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago reported a study that showed that 30 percent of the graduates of a major university tested as functionally illiterate. More and more employers are gearing their operations to accommodate illiterate workers.

Many experts are very alarmed at the fast rate in which colleges are “dumbing down” to accommodate their students. One of the primary reasons, according to some, is the onslaught of “new and improved“ teaching methods.

Since the federal government got into education in the 1960s and funded research into new, innovative ways to teach, education statistics have reversed from a decades long upward trend to a now decades long decline.

Tried and proven methods were tossed out to accommodate the wave of the future. One of the most damaging “innovations” of recent years has been Outcome Based Education which has been implemented in many schools to disastrous results.

In a nutshell, OBE says stop worrying about academics and focus instead on producing good citizens. In a sense it throws in the towel on teaching the basics.

So when I heard that a program that seemed a lot like OBE was being introduced into our school system I decided to investigate. As a parent and a taxpayer (and these being public schools) I felt it was not only my right but also my duty. In my letters to the editor I urged parents to check this out for themselves. The book “ITI: The Model” by Susan Kovalik is available in bookstores or by mail order.

After personally reading the book, investigating ITI websites and listening to pros and cons I still have major problems with the ITI approach. Here are a few:

First, Kovalik presents this as being based on the current brain research. The strong inference is that this is a scientifically developed approach to education.

The problem is that the “research” is really just a collection of theories and, in many instances, opinions. This places her approach squarely into the experimental realm with the laboratory being our schools and the guinea pigs our kids.

Worse, Kovalik is very selective about not using any “brain research” that runs counter to her approach. This is most evident in the area of reading.

Kovalik “discovered” that the reason kids don't read and write well is because our brains “have no built-in wiring for these tasks.” The problem is, this is easily disproved by actual demonstration.

It can be shown, and is being shown every day, that children who are immersed in phonics at an early age consistently become early readers with good comprehension. To the credit of the Fayette school system, programs are being implemented right now to correct this problem in our county and get kids of all ages reading again.

Kovalik calls phonics a passing fad and makes clear by the references she does use that she is squarely in the Whole Language camp as far as reading is concerned. This is a stunning and fundamental error, in my opinion, for an approach that claims to be the savior of American education.

Early in her book Kovalik lays out some underlying premises for her ITI approach. She identifies what she calls “mismemes.” Mismemes are wrong assumptions that have hurt our education system in the past. Mismeme number 4 is “Acquisition of Skills and Knowledge is the Goal of Education.”

In other words most of us, parents and teachers alike, have labored under the misconception that our kids were going to school to acquire skills and knowledge. This is replaced by a meme (correct assumption) that “The Purpose of Education is the Perpetuation of Democracy.”

Kovalik is not ambiguous about this. She identifies her ITI approach as a complete changing of the definition of education and a complete realignment of the purpose of our schools. I give credit to Kovalik for being bold enough to say it, but am perplexed when pro-ITI teachers and administrators deny she says it.

Why would this redefining of education be so easily received and even welcomed by some education experts?

In the 1960s when President John F. Kennedy turned over the keys to our education system to Ivy League psychology departments, there were loud pronouncements of the wonderful things coming for education. Every American child was going to be a rocket scientist because the real experts (the brain experts) were taking over. JFK fueled the launch of this education boom with millions (which quickly became billions) of federal dollars. Ironically, at about the same time, JFK pronounced we were going to the moon and we soon did.

At the time it seemed much more unlikely that we would make it to the moon than we would improve education. What was the difference between the education race and the space race?

JFK used people who knew how to build rockets to get us to the moon. They built on tested and proven methods to achieve landing on the moon. Unfortunately, he found people who knew nothing about teaching to lead the education race.

Tried and proven methods were tossed out willy-nilly. True experts (the teachers of the time) and their methods were pushed aside and pronounced outdated and ineffective. Teachers were then assailed with an endless parade of wonderful new methods, all theoretical and unproven.

There have been dozens of ways to learn to read and hundreds of ways to learn math. Now 30-plus years later with hundreds of new “education rockets” having “blown up on the pad” it is not surprising that education experts stand in the ruins and say, “You know it really was a mistake to say our goal was the moon.”

And very convenient that they are backed by a science which has now discovered, “It's not our methods at fault, it's how their brains are wired.”

[Fayette School Superintendent] Dr. [John] DeCotis was kind enough to allow my wife and me to participate in a committee of parents and educators on ITI. Right now we are in the early phases of finding out to what extent ITI is used in Fayette County, leading toward an eventual administrative decision on ITI.

One thing that seems apparent to me, but is disputed by some pro-ITI educators, is that full implementation of ITI would be a sweeping reform involving curriculum, textbooks, and a great deal of teacher training.

ITI, if implemented as Kovalik intended, would affect every minute of our children's school day, down to the color of the walls of the rooms.

For this reason I would urge every curious parent to simply read the book. In fact, any school that implements ITI should encourage this since Kovalik identifies indoctrination of parents into the new approach as being essential to its success.

Let me acknowledge that there some methods in ITI that are obviously effective and I understand and agree with the teachers that use the methods. As a taxpayer and parent I have as my primary criteria, does it work? Does it teach kids to read, write, and do math and science? Additionally, is it proven by actual use in a classroom over an extended time frame?

I'll bet I'm not the only parent that would just as soon see the experiments done on someone else's kids. I have visited a school (it is not local) that operates a very successful tutoring program for public school children. They make no excuses and get consistent results. Their pamphlet says, among other things: “A long time ago (before 1960) students learned to how to read, write and spell. Then the school systems began experimenting which resulted in catastrophic crashes in reading skills. Our methods are those used prior to 1960 and they still get results!”

There are many proven methods that date back decades but which applied today get results exceeding “modern” methods. If being in favor of stepping back to be successful is “anachronistic,” then guilty as charged.

One of the greatest myths of modern education (and wholeheartedly embraced by Kovalik) is the idea that “all children are different and require different approaches.” This is an inevitable conclusion in an education system that hasn't firmly established effective methods and constantly changes its approaches as new experts parade the “latest innovations.”

The truth is that effective methods, applied consistently, produce consistent results. No long-term successful business changes its fundamental approach without being very sure that the new method will improve the operation. Businesses that change with the wind inevitably fail.

In public education it is considered a badge of honor to be open-minded and to dabble in every new method. Everyone can judge for himself or herself how successful this has been.

I don't mind being accused of being anachronistic or not progressive. The record is pretty clear to me that any failures of modern education have not been due to a lack of new approaches, but because proven and effective methods have been discarded.

As to McCarthy-like tactics, it is not easy to go public about school concerns. I believe teachers are the greatest resource we have and are the only reason education has performed as well as it has under the onslaught of the “experts.”

Many teachers have told me of the times they've ignored the latest fads handed to them to stick with what they knew worked. We'd be in a much bigger mess if not for good teachers.

Inevitably, when criticizing a curriculum or method, one is accused of attacking teachers. It is gratifying, then, when teachers contact me or others who have spoken up and thank us for being their voice. There are teachers and administrators firmly and absolutely opposed to ITI and approaches like it and I respect that many of them do not feel they can safely go public.

That doesn't make me right but at least I know I'm not one critical parent standing alone, even if others think so. So those are my opinions as one parent and my McCarthy-like approach would be to encourage any concerned parent to simply get the book and read it.

Dave Akeman

Fayetteville

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