The National Institute for Direct Instruction is a non-profit organization dedicated to...
1. Providing continuous administrative and curricular support to schools and districts as they implement Direct Instruction (DI) programs.
2. Conducting, promoting and publicizing high-quality research on the effects of DI implementations.
NIFDI is uniquely qualified for these tasks as its founding members include the creators of DI. NIFDI's implementation support consultants are experienced teachers with advanced degrees and 5 to 25 years teaching experience in DI. Many of the senior consultants are co-authors of the DI programs. NIFDI's leaders have more than 30 years experience with school and district implementations of DI in all types of environments.
NIFDI has extensive experience providing support for implementing DI in a wide variety of settings. NIFDI has its roots in the University of Oregon Direct Instruction Follow Through model, which was conceived at the University of Illinois in the late 1960's and implemented in schools around the country from 1967 to 1995. NIFDI began as the Accelerated Student Achievement Project (ASAP) in 1993. ASAP negotiated with the state of Utah's State Department of Education and the Utah Learning Resource Center to implement DI in four elementary schools. The positive acceleration of student achievement as a result of the ASAP implementations led to its adoption in Baltimore and elsewhere.
Since its formal creation in 1997, NIFDI has supported DI implementations in 18 states (California, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin), the territory of Guam and Cape York Australia. In Guam, NIFDI implemented the comprehensive Direct Instruction model in 24 elementary schools and all middle schools for several years. In Texas, NIFDI works with IDEA Schools, Inc. to implement the comprehensive Direct Instruction model in 10 elementary schools and a Special Education DI intervention in IDEA high schools.
