The "state of the craft" of instruction within the context of the mastery learning model is discussed. Little has been said in the past about specific instructional strategies that are applicable to particular instructional units or objectives, or to the daily classroom life of teachers. This paper is organized into six major sections. The first…

The Chicago Public Schools have been developing and implementing a citywide instructional program of continuous progress/mastery learning in reading. It includes the delineation of a K-8 continuum of instructional objectives; a criterion-referenced testing program which serves as the basis for instruction, promotion, and administrative monitoring;…

Describes the instructional materials and features that distinguish the Chicago model of mastery learning instruction from other models of mastery learning. Also describes innovative ways to examine the effects of mastery learning instruction, given that school data often are limited to norm referenced tests and are lacking in controls. (Author/GC)

In the first part of the paper, some realistic expectations about schools and curriculum development, the conditions which preclude applying the standards of basic research to evaluate a program of instruction in large school systems, and some new research paradigms which have emerged from practice are defined. In the second part, an effort is…

This paper offers a detailed discussion of materials developed for the Chicago Mastery Learning Reading with Learning Strategies (CMLR/LS) program, an upper elementary program in which appropriate learning strategy instructions are embedded within the text for each assigned task. Its purpose is to provide researchers and educators with a…

Reading improvement programs that have focused on additional staff for teaching, tutoring, and counseling; prescriptive, self-paced learning methods; unstructured open-education strategies; and intensive reading have often been successful in small towns and middle sized cities, but none has made a major impact on the reading achievement of…