We know how to teach reading to poor black, Hispanic and white kids, writes John McWhorter in New Republic. Why aren’t we doing it?
Starting in the late 1960s, the federally funded Project Follow Through studied nine teaching methods: Siegfried Engelmann’s Direct Instruction “was vastly more effective than any of the others for (drum roll, please) poor kids, including black ones.”
DI isn’t exactly complicated: Students are taught to sound out words rather than told to get the hang of recognizing words whole, and they are taught according to scripted drills that emphasize repetition and frequent student participation.
DI has a track record of success in Baltimore, Houston, Milwaukee and elsewhere, writes McWhorter. Yet educators prefer “creativity.”
Indeed, schools of education have long been caught up in an idea that teaching poor kids to read requires something more than, well, teaching them how to sound out words. The poor child, the good-thinking wisdom tells us, needs tutti-frutti approaches bringing in music, rhythm, narrative, Ebonics, and so on.
. . . But the simple fact of how well DI has worked shows that “creativity” is not what poor kids need.
Matt Yglesias warns of overselling DI, but says McWhorter is basically right.
Update: D-Ed Reckoning has more on DI’s effectiveness: It raised cognitive skills as well as basic skills.
About Joanne
Uggg, reading these articles and the comments that go with them is so frustrating. While McWhorter gives a good explanation of DI, many of his commentors obviously have no idea that DI is not just phonics, that it’s a specific, districtive program/strategy.
Yglesias doesn’t even make the distriction between di (direct instruction) and DI (Direct Instruction/SRA Engelmann).
It’s maddening when “informed commentators” don’t understand the basic distinctions. No wonder the public is so confused.
Is that how they teach rich kids? No. So why should they teach poor kids that way?
What’s wrong with phonics? I taught my kids to read with phonics in combination with sight words. Many of the do-it-yourself tutoring programs (such as Hooked on Phonics and Reading-Tutors.com) use phonics, correct? Not only that, but after-school programs (Sylvan, Honors, etc.) use phonics and not DI, right?
Rich kids learn to read in spite of being taught to read via whole language and balanced literacy. Poor kids don’t have the social capital to overcome the s***ty methods being used to teach them.
“So why should they teach poor kids that way?”
Maybe because teaching the poor kids the same way the rich kids are taught doesn’t work?
I think the DI fans would contend that the way rich kids are taught to read is not terribly effective, but that the rich kids come with enough cultural advantages (and Kumon, if necessary) to do well anyway. The poor kids do not. The upside is that the rich kids learn to read less efficiently/effectively than necessary but they still learn to read well (enough) because of their extra advantages. The poor kids, given the same sub-optimal reading instruction, do not.
-Mark Roulo
There is no one method of teaching reading that works for all kids. The excellent teachers use several different methods or a combination of methods to reach each and every student.
At least our local superintendent knows this, but has a hard time getting the message down to the principal and teacher levels–they know what they know and no one’s going to tell them differntly.
My dyslexic kid is a “rich kid” and I would have been thrilled if the public school had taught phonics. They didn’t, so we ended up going to a very expensive private school that used an Orton-Gillingham systematic phonics approach.
Lots of “rich kids” would benefit from phonics. The difference is, when their children’s needs aren’t met, the families have resources to address the problems. Poor kids don’t.
The question was “We know how to teach reading to poor black, Hispanic and white kids…why aren’t we doing it?”
Arguing about methodology’s irrelevant if the question of why effective methods are rejected in favor of ineffective methods isn’t answered.
I think we know the answer to this one: Ideology.
Now *WHY* reading technique should be an ideological issue would make a good question. I have no idea what the answer is.
-Mark Roulo
I’ve taught and am teaching my children to read using Engelmann’s 100 Easy Lessons book. In the school my children attend they focus on a technique called guided reading (Not sure if that is a capitalized term). I’m no expert on guided reading but from the descriptions I’ve heard it seems to have a lot in common with Engelmann’s method. I definitely don’t qualify as low SES and our school receives no title 1 funds. So best I can tell these types of methods are being used and are useful for all kids.
I’d love to see some information about students’ ATTITUDES toward reading after years of “scripted drills that emphasize repetition.”
I’d say that developing a basic mastery of reading is the first step in learning to love reading. Direct instruction techniques seem most useful in achieving that basic mastery. So I see no reason that direct instruction has to be continued for years. It’s also my experience that what appears to be repetition to an accomplished reader does not appear to be repetition to the learner – if it does that’s a good sign they’ve mastered basic reading.
Mark Roulo wrote:
> Now *WHY* reading technique should be an ideological issue would make a good question. I have no idea what the answer is.
Oh heck, that’s actually easy: there’s no direct, measured, institutionalized responsibility to teach reading in public education.
By default it becomes an ideological issue. The technical considerations, like whether a methodology actually works, are professionally irrelevant. Hence ideology becomes the axis upon which the issue rotates.
A teacher, or more likely a principal or a higher administrator, couldn’t achieve professional success by raising reading scores – remember, not being measured? – but they could achieve professional recognition by using impenetrable jargon and the latest fad to float out of ed schools. It’s sort of an educational Gresham’s law at work: bad praxis (jargon alert!) driving out good praxis. The analogy isn’t really accurate but the outcome’s roughly the same.
What’s tough to overcome is the “Emperor’s New Clothes” effect; the unexamined assumptions that preclude the appreciation of what ought to be obvious.
Allen said “Oh heck, that’s actually easy: there’s no direct, measured, institutionalized responsibility to teach reading in public education.”
I hope this and the rest of your comments were said with tongue in cheek. The challenge with NCLB (which I like the disaggregation of data part) is it complete emphasis on reading and math. This leave little time in the day for many students for science, history, art, music, etc.
Surely you jest —
Clix-
‘I’d love to see some information about students’ ATTITUDES toward reading after years of “scripted drills that emphasize repetition.”’
From my personal experience as a student, my attitude towards reading is one of enjoyment because I can, well, actually read. As a high school science teacher little seems to discourage students more than being faced with a reading passage that they can’t read.
I think part of the problem with many of the faddish instructional techniques is not one necessarily of misguided ideology, but one of classroom management.
There are many less teachers now who can hold the attention of a classroom of students using a scripted teacher-centered approach. Administrators consistently express surprise after my observations that I can keep kids focused during lectures or individual quiet work… and I have seen many teachers crash and burn when attempting the same thing.
Many of these new “techniques” are valued not becase they improve learning, but because they make the class easier for the teacher to manage. Teachers have become nothing more than babysitters.
> The challenge with NCLB (which I like the disaggregation of data part) is it complete emphasis on reading and math. This leave little time in the day for many students for science, history, art, music, etc.
If students are competent at reading and math, there’s time for other things. If they’re not competent in reading and math, is it appropriate to spend time on other things? Which things are as important? (I can think of one, but the above lists others.)
DI may or may not be the ultimate solution to the teaching of reading. So far as I know there’s still no way around the fact that the measures that show successful outcomes for DI fall heavily on the decoding side, not so much on the comprehension side. We also have all the lessons from Reading Recovery–which includes frequent measures, continuous regrouping and early and intensive intervention. We know (I think) that text rich environments are supportive, as are the things that build positive associations with reading (ie: being read to).
In short, we know quite a bit.
I am not entirely certain what hampers us in the full application of all that we know. Certainly there are human/institutional factors (who’s in charge, the administrators, the teachers or the union) that tend to keep efforts swinging from one extreme to another without ever finding balance. There are also the beliefs–that either grow from multiple failed attempts, or some other factor–that poor kids just can’t learn. There may be some reality to differences in cognitive development based on early environment. But when knowing that becomes an excuse rather than a reason to look further for solutions (how to compensate, how to prevent), then we need to suspect that something is systemically wrong.
I think allen is only partly tongue in cheek when he suggests that teaching kids to read has not been an expectation (if it was, how come it wasn’t measured, no one held accountable?). NCLB has introduced this expectation–but over the loud protestations of all those people who might be expected to be responsible: teachers, principals, superintendents, etc. Instead of moving towards solutions that result in better learning, there has been a rush towards solutions to the symptom of the problem (low test scores). Instead of looking at the teaching of reading and how to improve, too many have chosen to teach test taking skills to “the bubble kids.” This gives a short-term change to the symptom, but when there is no lasting improvement, the suspicion that “those kids” just can’t learn (as well or as fast at others) is reinforced, and morale suffers because of the effort invested in the symptomatic solution.
Andy got there a bit ahead me but save your hopes for something a bit more likely.
With regard to NCLB, how was success in the achievement of professional goals measured prior to the enactment of NCLB? If you’re going to determine whether one methodology, or one teacher, is better then another how will that determination be made absent some examination of the results, i.e. testing?
With regard to that well-rounded education that consists of science, history, art, music, etc., education shouldn’t be so well rounded that it has no point.
If a kid can’t read they can’t read about science, history, art or music so the first thing that had damned well better happen is that kids learn to read. You figure illiterate kids are going to appreciate the Michaelson-Morley experiment or the importance of perspective to Renaissance artists? There’s a hierarchy of skills that have to be mastered and failure to master a foundation skill obviously makes mastering of a dependent skill impossible. You won’t win the Indy 500 until you get that gas-fast-brake-slow thing figured out.
Oh, and in the way of ironic jests, guess which other group of people who spend a lot of time in school buildings get screwed over by the failure to determine if standards are being met?
Stephen,
Rich kids don’t know how to read all that well, either.
Clix,
Plenty of DI kids are now adults and have given honest reflections on their experiences.
“I’d love to see some information about students’ ATTITUDES toward reading after years of “scripted drills that emphasize repetition.””
Since when does it take years to learn to read? In my experience, reading as a basic skill can be picked up in less than a year unless there are special issues with the child. Readers become more advanced readers by reading more advanced material, not from further reading instruction.
Catherine — no, there are techniques that need to be taught as students face more complex reading tasks (skimming, chunking, predicting, clarifying, etc.). I don’t have any opinion on DI since I don’t teach elementary, but I do teach reading to below level high school students, and I use a lot of small d direct small i instruction with them. We test all 9th and 10th graders and have a small number (about 1- 2% of the population) who still read significantly below grade level who go into my class. I’m retesting next week and hoping to see a bump in the lexile scores.
A lot of reading issues are really vision problems that go uncorrected, especially in children who live in poverty. Malnutrition affects eyesight. I made the connection years ago when I noticed my kids who came in from the city under deseg or who I knew lived in rough conditions all needed glasses.
It’s also amazing how much better my struggling students read when I simply show them how to use an index card to keep their eyes from jumping lines (my own daughter, whose lexile was in the college range in 6th grade, has to do this). I’ve gotten in the habit of making them custom bookmarks for every book we read with questioning techniques, their name, etc. on them so they can use them for eye tracking.
And what exactly are “skimming, chunking, predicting, clarifying, etc.”? I’ve never heard of these terms, let alone been taught them. Yet I read, analyze, and write for a living (I’m a patent attorney). And still have time for leisure reading; approximately 2-3 books per week.
Lightly Seasoned, I agree with you that children with vision problems and other special issues are handicapped in learning to read quickly. Also, I agree that children should be learning to clarify, predict, etc. as you mentioned above.
When I say “reading”, I’m thinking of the basic skill of decoding the written word into speech. I know in schools they often group other skills under the subject “reading”, but in my mind those other skills fall more properly under logic and analysis and speed reading. Learning what sounds letters generally make and applying that to figure out what a collection of letters says (as well as learning about the irregular words that English throws at them) seems to be something that lends itself well to DI. I don’t think that DI would be so great at teaching children to analyze literature, though, since that is often a very subjective process.
The problem with skimming, chunking, predicting and clarifying is that they involve comprehension, and you are not going to get comprehension until the decoding has happened.
Jumping ahead to comprehension skills (and expecting mastery of them) when kids are struggling with decoding may be what’s causing a lot of the problems. And it looks like a lot of decoding problems are hidden because many teachers still like whole word techniques and dismiss phonics and DI. They may not realize what the source of the problem is until very late.
Creativity is overvalued in education.
Rex: I’m going to make a wild assumption and assume you have never been a struggling reader. There are those of us to whom these skills come very naturally; generally, we’re not the ones who fall under the “Why Johnny can’t read” umbrella.
I thought I was pretty clear that I was talking about struggling readers who already know how to decode (in fact, they often can read aloud beautifully without comprehending very much).
Catherine: the problem is vision issues, etc. are unaddressed and widespread in urban districts. I have no opinion on DI, but it seems to me all the research-based, data-driven curriculum in the world isn’t going to do a bit of good if the kid just can’t see the words on the page. I think there’s also a lot of confusion as to what we mean by being able to read. Certainly most kids can do some simple 1st grade decoding (and WHO defines literacy as about a 3rd grade reading level). But when you define reading as being able to comprehend a newspaper or college level text, the game changes up a bit.
Lightly Seasoned,
Are they near-sighted or far-sighted? I’d be interested in more information on this subject. Can you point me to some?
Thanks!
I had a reading class from an elderly retired professor. She had studied local students with reading problems and reached the conclusion that 95% had some kind of vision problem. Of the remaing 5%, 80% of those had a hearing problem.
I don’t know if she ever published her results. This was pre-Internet days.
I’ve seen a number of studies in ERIC, but I believe you need to access the database through a library that subscribes.
Children in poverty rarely have access to fresh fruits and veggies. Two years ago I had a student — 16 years old — who was ineligible to play football because of hypertension. In that same class I had a girl who had obviously suffered from rickets. When one of the girls gets pregnant, I suddenly start “rewarding” the class with a lot of milk and oatmeal cookie days.
I teach 5th grade in a district where almost all of my students receive free/reduced price lunch, many come in to us (we start at 5th grade) well below grade level in reading and math, etc. In my 5 years teaching 5th grade, I have only had 1 or 2 kids who really couldn’t decode beyond a few words – and we provided intensive phonics support for them. The vast majority of my students who are not “on grade level” and will not pass the state reading test can decode just fine. They can read aloud and pronounce words well, and they therefore feel “Hey, I’m reading fine!” However, after they read a passage with few or no mistakes, I can ask them “So tell me what you just read” and I will often get a blank stare or the child will start reciting phrases they read. If you aren’t making meaning, you aren’t reading.
The whole “reading wars” thing has been going on for years and years and John McWhorter isn’t saying anything that has not been said before. I, along with most other effective teachers I know, use a balance of phonics when necessary, guided reading, independent reading at individual students’ levels, vocabulary instruction, etc. I have a child this year who is reading at a high school level in the 5th grade. I also have children reading on about a 2nd/3rd grade level. Does it really make sense for me to spend all my class time with these kids running them through phonics drills as a whole class, with no thought to the fact that each child is a person who comes in with different skills?
Cuba claims to have a literacy rate of 99.8%.
Maybe we ought to see how they teach reading in Cuba.
K,
Can the children you speak of decode words as fast as children who can understand the meaning?
pm,
Probably not, on the whole. I don’t want to be misleading since I don’t have this data in particular, but that’s my guess. With a few exceptions, though, most of my students can decode fast enough to keep up a good reading pace, whether they understand the meaning or not. There are definitely some exceptions to that, though, and I’m not in any way disputing the effectiveness of phonics instruction for many, many kids. And at the lower grade levels (I teach 5th so in most cases, whole-class phonics programs are not designed for 5th grade) I see phonics as a critical component of teaching kids to read. I just want to point out that there are a lot of elements of reading, and more importantly, there are kids who badly need phonics instruction (in 5th grade and much, much higher) and there are kids who don’t need it at all, for whatever reason. Those kids should not be wasting their time (too much, I know the reality that sometimes we all waste time on things that we don’t absolutely need!) on mandated whole-class direct instruction when they can decode with accuracy and need badly to be taught the higher-level comprehension skills that will allow them to compete with kids whose schools are not dealing with vast numbers of below-grade-level students.
K,
I think differentiated instruction is a great idea too!
Reading K’s comments and having two children who suffered in mixed-ability classrooms in grades K-8, I still do not understand the resistance against achievement grouping in many of our public schools. I suspect it’s a social justice issue for many, but it seems to hurt children situated at all points along the spectrum of income and ability. This is yet another ideology issue where the children come out losing.
In my experience, differentiated instruction is a band-aid that barely addresses the problem.
I’m hoping that hard economic times may cause some school districts to return to ability grouping, when they realize that grouping students is the better option when class sizes must be increased because of forced belt-tightening.
The Direct Instruction reading lessons include teaching comprehension, as well as decoding skills. Take this sample lesson at http://www.specialconnections.ku.edu/~specconn/page/instruction/di/pdf/reading_sample_lesson_b.pdf
On page 2 by the pdf count (page 109 by the source material), the class reads a story about a woman called Emma Branch who runs the ranch. After reading the story, the class is asked comprehension questions (page 3), ranging from simple descriptions, eg
“What was the name of the rancher?”
to ones requiring a bit of inference, eg
“What kind of animals did she have on her ranch?” (The story didn’t explicitly list the animals on the ranch, but it did list what the workers on the ranch did – and that consisted of activities involving animals. To answer this question the children would have to infer that because the workers worked with sheep and goats and milked cows the ranch therefore had sheep, goats and cows. Not quite Sherlock-Holmes-level deductions, but then Sherlock Holmes when we first meet him was rather past his school days).
Finally, one question requires quite a bit of comprehension, in the story it’s said that the workers liked working for Emma Branch and in particular that it is good to have Emma on their side, and the final reading question asks students “Why did the workers think that it was good to have Emma on their side?” (There’s no single right answer for this question, the instruction to the teacher is to accept reasonable answers).
Any student who can answer the questions about the story is not merely decoding words but comprehending them. Direct Instruction is not just about teaching decoding and phonics.
Clix: I’d love to see some information about students’ ATTITUDES toward reading after years of “scripted drills that emphasize repetition.”
Clix, look at the sample reading lessons, at http://www.specialconnections.ku.edu/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/specconn/main.php?cat=instruction§ion=main&subsection=di/reading.
The effect of drilling and repetition on motivation depends on how the drilling and repetition is done. The drills in the Direct Instruction lessons consist of practising old skills on new material, or repetition such as teaching a new word (meaning, spelling and pronounciation), and then repeating it in a short story immediately. Eg in the sample lesson, the second part of the lesson is practising sounds in words like “ranch”, “goats”, “horses”, and then shortly there’s a story using those words, and questions about the story using those words over again. So the children keep hearing those sounds, but in slightly different contexts. This should have quite a different impact on motivation and retention relative to just practising those words again and again in exactly the same drill for years on end.
Clix,
If you want to know how DI students feel about reading (and learning in general), take a look at the chart “Comparison of Achievement Outcomes” at http://mathematicallycorrect.com/honestft.htm. Not only does DI do a superior job of building basic and cognitive skills, but the kids have a more positive view of learning as seen on the affective scale.
Maybe the problem with how reading is taught is that there’s so little interest in studying how it’s done when, and where, it’s done well.
And I don’t mean you have to go to Cuba to observe how reading ought to be taught either.
The basic problem is that in so many venues the way reading is taught is an academic exercise for the professionals. Since there’s no performance requirement as condition of employment, i.e. if you stink at the teaching of reading as measured by the percentage of kids who escape your grasp illiterate you’re history, reading instruction can be treated as a consequence-free thought experiment.
There’s also no penalty for the exchange of silly observations about kids who can read a passage but not understand it. Other professionals, similarly insulated from the usual penalty for incompetence, nod sagely in agreement.
Fortunately, President-elect Obama plans to go boldly where no politician has gone before by opening the funding taps a bit wider to public education.
This will help solve the problem of too little whining about the funding levels for public education since the one thing that inevitably attends any funding increase is an increase in the amount of whining about how little is being spent.
I’m not sure where you are getting the idea that there is no performance requirement for teachers. Yes, we all hear stories about terrible teachers that stay in the classroom forever, changing nothing. And they’re true, and there are a lot of culprits in those situations. However, I feel entirely accountable for my students’ literacy – my school (along with many others) uses quarterly benchmark assessments to gauge progress in reading as well as math, and we meet with supervisors to analyze the data. Teachers whose classes do not make progress have requirements for improvement. Further, under NCLB, my school will be at risk of being closed and my job eliminated if we do not meet the requirements. I know and accept that my employment is based on my making progress with students. On the other hand, I also hold myself to the standard that while all my students should leave me literate, I also should be accountable for improving the literacy skills of my students who already decode and comprehend well – not just accept that since they will undoubtedly pass any state reading test given to them, they are good enough and therefore not a problem. DI is not going to be effective for those students, and I definitely agree with the commenter above that differentiated instruction is critical to accomplish this. DI is not a bad program – I’m not against anything that helps students! – but it is not the ONLY way to teach ALL students, ALL the time.
Furthermore, I was under the impression that capable professionals in all fields could exchange whatever opinions and observations they had, in the name of discussion, without incurring a “penalty” for their supposed silliness. I don’t claim to have scads of data, but I am in the classroom with live students every day and while my observations may not dictate all the choices I make day to day (one student’s struggle might not necessitate a changed curriculum), that doesn’t change the validity of the observation. Observations are what they are. It is then up to us to interpret them and determine courses of action – which may be silly – but the observations themselves are not inherently silly.
On the other hand, I also hold myself to the standard that while all my students should leave me literate, I also should be accountable for improving the literacy skills of my students who already decode and comprehend well … DI is not going to be effective for those students, and I definitely agree with the commenter above that differentiated instruction is critical to accomplish this.
This depends on what you mean by DI, and by how advanced your students are. For example, there are at least 3 DI programs that goes beyond basic decoding and comprehension, “Language for Learning”, “Language for Thinking” and “Reasoning and Writing”.
http://www.mcgraw-hill.co.uk/sra/languageforlearning.htm
http://www.mcgraw-hill.co.uk/sra/languageforthinking.htm
http://www.mcgraw-hill.co.uk/sra/reasoningwriting.htm
The developer of DI has also produce a rubric for identifying authentic DI programs, available at http://www.zigsite.com/PDFs/rubric.pdf. This rubric could also be used as a rubric for designing DI programmes, combined of course with proper field-testing. Eg if you want to improve the literary skills of your students who can already decode and comprehend well, so they can decode and comprehend the metaphysical poets (or whatever is a massively difficult skill for reading and comprehension), then you can use this rubric to figure out how to teach “comprehending the metaphysical poets” to students who normally would have trouble comprehending them.
I’m beginning to think Tracy is getting a kickback for mentioning DI. I looked at the rubric.
What is the verb in this sentence? Batter. Who batters? God batters. What does god batter? My heart. Now, underline the apostrophes once, the metaphysical conceit twice.
If I taught the metaphysical poets this way I’m pretty sure my students would attempt to murder me in my sleep.
K wrote:
> I’m not sure where you are getting the idea that there is no performance requirement for teachers.
Because there are no performance requirements for teachers?
> However, I feel entirely accountable for my students’ literacy – my school (along with many others) uses quarterly benchmark assessments to gauge progress in reading as well as math, and we meet with supervisors to analyze the data.
I’m glad you feel a sense of personal responsibility but as you say, there are terrible teachers and one can assume that they aren’t burdened with a sense of personal responsibility. Does your sense of professional responsibility extend to a desire that fellow practitioners demonstrate some minimal level of competence?
Now that we’ve agreed that there’s a range of professional competence is it important to you to know where you stand on that range? Would it be worthwhile to know with some reasonable degree of certainty who the best practitioner was in your state?
With regard to the assessments and progress indicators used in your school, that’s purely a local measure. In the next district over, or even in the next school over, the same measurements could mean a great deal or nothing or might not be used at all. The best reading instructor in the state could be working in a classroom a mile and a half down the road and you have no way of finding that person. Or, you could be that instructor and no one else would be able to find you.
In any case, as I observed up the thread, Cuba claims a 99.8% literacy rate. Shouldn’t that revelation excite the interest of anyone who teaches reading professionally? You can bet if there’s a Cuban baseball player who’s hitting .400 that there aren’t many pro coaches who don’t know about him.
Of course, the US claims to have a 99% literacy rate, too
(both numbers from the CIA world factbook). If we have a
99% literacy rate here, I’m not going to get too worked up
over the last 0.8%.
One other possibility, though, is that both numbers are bogus.
-Mark Roulo
Lightly Seasoned: I’m beginning to think Tracy is getting a kickback for mentioning DI.
Sadly I don’t.
As for your lesson design, if you want to teach your students how to identify verbs then that’s a first stab at a lesson. I suspect though that if K plans to teach the metaphysical poets, K’s students can already identify verbs reliably. It would therefore make sense to design the exercises around skills such as identifying themes in metaphysical poems, or teaching archaic vocabulary, rather than getting them to identify verbs and apostrophes. Also, in your course outline, you haven’t taught how to identify the metaphysical conceit, so I am doubtful that students would be able to underline it?
(I picked the metaphysical poets as an example because they strike me as a demanding reading comprehension task, if I am miles off-base here, feel free to substitute whatever you or K do want to teach your more skilled students to comprehend).
> One other possibility, though, is that both numbers are bogus.
I’d be slightly inclined to credit the Cuban figures just because, due to the inevitable economic lunar landscape that results from a communist dictatorship, they just don’t have the money to indulge in the sorts of educational frippery that we here in the U.S. enjoy.
Poverty may, at least in the case of public education, tend to focus the mind on education there being too little money to engage in self-indulgent, educational flights of fancy.