Beyond the 'Good Start' Mentality

By Stanley Pogrow

Virtually the entire focus of school reform for improving learning, other than standards, is on grades K-3. The ingrained belief is that the most important thing is to get kids off to a good start, and that the best guarantee of their doing well later is to get them reading on grade level by the end of grade 3. As a result, huge amounts of money are pouring into kindergarten through the 3rd grade to reduce class sizes and pay for other special efforts to help students get off to a good start.

Clearly, getting students off to the right start is important. However, primary reliance on early intervention does not provide the hoped-for long-term benefits. Research generally shows little or no impact from early intervention beyond the 3rd grade. Early gains are usually not sustained in later grades. Even in the few cases where there is a sustained effect beyond the 3rd grade (studies where experimental students continue to do better than comparison groups), this does not mean that the early-intervention students are doing well or making progress after the 3rd grade.

For example, the claims of the very popular and expensive Success for All schoolwide program are based on research showing that gains in the early grades are sustained in the upper-elementary grades. But as I have shown ( Educational Researcher, October 1998 and November 1999), use of the "sustained gains" statistic masked the reality that SFA students made few gains after the 1st grade and entered the 6th grade reading three years below grade level. This is not success, but the same trajectory of failure we have always seen. The same problem exists for the most influential study supporting early intervention, the Tennessee STAR experiments with early class-size reduction. It, too,...