In recent years, the Common Core State Standards have become a universal language for schools across our nation and play a significant role in instructional decisions made in schools, including curriculum selections. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were developed with the intent to provide a clear framework of what students are expected to learn and to ensure consistent standards, regardless of where students attend school. The documents in this section are provided to assist educators with understanding how Direct Instruction programs align with the Common Core State Standards.

NIFDI is interested in supporting community organizations and other groups advocating for effective instruction. Specifically, our goal is to assist these groups in their efforts of promoting the implementation of Direct Instruction (DI) and assisting with building understanding and awareness of DI. The documents in this section are provided to assist with these efforts.

Monitoring and recording student progress in the Direct Instruction programs is a key element to ensuring students are mastering materials and achieving success. The forms and tools found in this section will help teachers document students' progress in the programs and provide a basis to evaluate individual and group progress. Additional data collection forms specific to each program can be found by title in the Folder "Programs" folder .

Direct Instruction periodically appears in news articles published for the general public and in education-related publications. In this section, you will find recent articles that feature DI - from newspapers to magazines to online news outlets. Also included are Letters to the Editor.

Direct Instruction News was first published in the fall of 1981 with the intent of promoting school practices that had been validated as effective through the use of the scientific method in education research. Beginning in the winter of 1993, Direct Instruction News was renamed Effective School Practices. The publication returned to the original title of Direct Instruction News in the spring of 2001. Both Direct Instruction News and Effective School Practices have focused on publishing recent efficacy studies on Direct Instruction (DI), reflections from educators on implementing and administering DI programs, and news related to DI.

Dr. Kerry Hempenstall blogs about a variety of Direct Instruction and education-related topics. The files found in this section are the documents referenced in Dr. Hempenstall's blog posts.

Open positions currently accepting applications.

The Journal of Direct Instruction (JODI) was established with the intent of publishing current research on Direct Instruction so that members of the DI community could keep abreast of the current research that is most relevant to the practice of DI. The first issue was published in the winter of 2001 and continued through 2012. Here, you will find an archive of this publication available for free download.

Are you considering using Direct Instruction programs and/or contracting with the National Institute for Direct Instruction for training and support services? Review the documents in this section to learn more about the essential elements of a successful implementation and to prepare for an initial phone call with NIFDI to discuss implementation options.

The National Institute for Direct Instruction produces a regular e-publication with information on current news, messages, and announcements regarding DI. Archives of past issues are housed in this section. If you would like to receive these notices in your inbox, join our mailing list.

Administrators, Instructional Coaches, Reading Specialists and others responsible for instructional support will want to review the observation forms available in this section. Whether you have 2 minutes, 5 minutes or an hour to observe instruction, learn what the key elements of effective instruction looks like and record it on these observation forms.

Staff from the National Institute for Direct Instruction regularly present at a variety of speaking engagements, including conferences, trainings and organizational meetings. Copies of the PowerPoints and associated documents shared by the speaker(s) can be found in this section.

There are a number of resources and informational pieces available for each program title. In this section, users will find resources for each program, including data collection forms, supplements and standards alignments. For more information on each program, visit the program's homepage (found on the main menu under "The Programs" >Subject Area>Program title).

The research base for Direct Instruction is broad, spanning over 40 years. The National Institute for Direct Instruction maintains an Office of Research and Evaluation that compiles, expands and analyzes research on DI. Find research-related documents in this section, including NIFDI Technical Reports, the DI Bibliography, white papers and more.

NIFDI has extensive experience providing support for implementing Direct Instruction in a wide variety of settings. The documents in this section are the stories of some of the schools NIFDI has worked with and the success they achieved through the implementation of DI with NIFDI support.

A variety of books and other publications have been written on Direct Instruction -- from introductions on the subject to research-related works to instructional theory and more. In this section, you will find resources related non-curricular publications (i.e. not actual programs) such as white papers by Siegfried Engelmann and Shep Barbash's book Clear Teaching.

The materials in this section are designed as supplements to the free online videos offered by NIFDI. Feel free to copy these materials for educational and instructional purposes, such as inservices or staff study groups.

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) was established in 2002 with funding from the U.S. Department of Education. The Clearinghouse was charged with producing user-friendly guides for educators on effective instructional practices in order to understand what instructional programs have been shown to be effective. Unfortunately, the WWC has failed to live up to its promise. The WWC's reports promote curricula that the scientific community has found to be ineffective and inefficient and denigrate those that the scientific community has found to be highly effective. Some of the major problems are documented in the resources in this section.