Success Stories

877.485.1973 | 541.485.1973
Info@NIFDI.org

877.485.1973 | Info@NIFDI.org

Section I – Context

In December of 2025, I was asked by the National Institute for Direct Instruction (NIFDI) to visit Dixons Manningham Primary School in Bradford. This was an exciting opportunity to visit a school that had chosen to implement the primary Direct Instruction (DI) programme Reading Mastery: Signature Edition in the earliest years. Reading Mastery has shown vast gains in student performance in several schools in the US, but had not been used in the UK prior to 2019, when the Manningham implementation began. I was keen to see if the spectacular student success observed in the US could be replicated in the UK, or if there was something inherent in the regional difference that had made this impossible.

Dixons Manningham Primary is a large primary school with 430 students. It is in one of the most deprived wards in the UK: 29% are on free school meals (FSM). On entry to Reception, the earliest grade level, most students are already two years behind age-expected attainment. Language is the biggest barrier to student success: many students have English as an additional language (EaL), with 33 different languages spoken in the school. 98% of students are from an ethnic minority group. 13% of students have special educational needs (SEND).

Student Taking DISTAR Mastery Test
Nearly 100 pre-k students in Texas have reason to be proud of their newfound reading and language skills. IDEA Pharr Academy in Pharr, Texas introduced a pre-kindergarten pilot program in the fall of 2014 featuring Direct Instruction programs with the goal of reducing the achievement gap and ensuring students begin kindergarten on grade level. 80% of Pharr Academy’s students speak Spanish as their first language, and nearly all students, 97.3%, come from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

The year began with eight groups of students in Español to English and four more groups in DISTAR Language. Pharr’s goal for the half-day pilot program was for all students to complete Español to English or DISTAR by the end of the year and be primed for starting Reading Mastery Signature Edition (RMSE) language and reading programs in the fall. With over 30 instructional days remaining until year’s end, 66 of the 99 pre-k pilot program students had already started RMSE K – some had completed over 60 lessons! The other 33 students were finishing up Español to English and were a few lessons away from being ready to placement test for RMSE.

The Battle of City Springs Epilogue tells the story of a school in a high-poverty area of a large U.S. city that experienced years of failure before implementing the full immersion model of Direct Instruction. Until Baltimore’s City Springs Elementary started implementing the full immersion model of Direct Instruction in 1996, the school was considered to be the epitome of failure. Over 90 percent of the students were (and still are) eligible for free or reduced lunch. Academic performance was at sub-basement levels. No students in the 3^rd grade or the 5^th grade passed the Maryland state test, the MSPAP, in either mathematics or writing. The Abell Foundation rated City Springs as the 2^nd lowest performing school in the city of Baltimore.

Gering Public Schools, a small district in northwest Nebraska, used to suffer from an achievement gap in reading. In 2004, 36 percent of all Hispanic students in second grade met fluency benchmarks compared to 59 percent of all white students in the district's three elementary schools. Low literacy performance was also a problem at the district's sole junior high school.

That was before the district implemented the comprehensive Direct Instruction model with the support of the National Institute for Direct Instruction (NIFDI). Now the achievement gap in reading has been closed. Over three-fourths of all students meet second grade fluency benchmarks, with a higher percentage of Hispanic students meeting benchmarks than white students! At the junior high school, the need for remedial reading programs has declined drastically as students are much more able to comprehend content area texts.

Direct Instruction (DI) is often used to help students who are struggling academically. DI can be used to accelerate the learning of higher performing students, too. The 16-minute DVD, Helping Kids Soar: Children Reaching Their Full Potential with Direct Instruction, portrays two schools in different parts of the country that have used DI successfully with all children, including high performing students: Emerson Elementary in Alliance, Nebraska and Fickett Elementary in Atlanta, Georgia.