READING DRILLS SHOW RESULTS IN CLASSROOM : TEST PROGRAM.

Byline: Jeff Gammage Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Consider it a kind of reading boot camp for grade school students.

Scripted lessons. Rapid drills. Constant repetition.

Children who might try to slip into the background have nowhere to hide - the groups are small and the teachers are in their faces, insisting they answer and answer correctly.

``Read the first sentence,'' teacher Joanne Dietz said to four second-graders seated before her recently as they went over a new word.

``He has no feet,'' they answered.

``What word?''

``Feet.''

``What word?''

``Feet.''

``What does he not have?''

``Feet!''

It isn't pretty, but it has one thing going for it: It works.

At least so far, at least here, in a midsize elementary school ringed by public-housing projects in a crumbling neighborhood, 10 blocks and a world away from the sparkle of Baltimore's touristy Inner Harbor. Here at City Springs School, where the program is in its first stages, students who were unable to read when they began the school year now are reading at or above grade level, administrators say.

``This is making our children soar,'' said Bernice Whelchel, the school's second-year principal.

The change, she said, is the result of ``Direct Instruction,'' a highly regimented form of phonics-based teaching. The particular reading program used here is called ``Reading Mastery.'' Children learn letters as sounds, then fuse those sounds into words, repeating them over and over. The new words are then studied in short stories.

It's an experiment being tried in schools from Chicago to Camden, N.J., as academicians answer President Clinton's call for a better-educated America by embracing a back-to-basics curriculum. Baltimore, which has long promoted itself as ``The City That Reads,'' is a main laboratory, with six elementary schools enlisted in a five-year test program.

Direct instruction has plenty of critics - including some who say it turns teachers into robots, blankly reciting lessons from workbooks. Others worry the rigid routine turns off students.

``Nobody can script instruction for children that's really going to meet the needs of all kids,'' said John Pikulski, president-elect of the International Reading Association, a 95,000-member literacy organization based in Delaware. He said he worries that the regimented approach precludes a teacher's making decisions about what an individual child or special group needs.

Some students doubtless will be helped, he said, but he said reading also must be fun if youngsters are to continue once they leave the classroom. Teachers need the flexibility to respond to different children in different ways, Pikulski said.

There's not much flexibility here. Nearly every word spoken by teachers is scripted. All use the same textbooks, recite the same questions and, if their students perform properly, receive the same answers.

Some teachers say it can get boring. Student opinion varies. ``It's easy, and it's hard,'' said a fifth-grader named Denea.

Extraordinary results

But administrators say the early results are extraordinary.

At City Springs, 60 percent of second-graders began the year unable to read. By January, 62 percent were reading at or above grade level.

Supporters say the program has one overriding benefit: Whatever else a student does or does not know upon graduation, he or she is going to know how to read.

Reading classes begin at City Springs at 8:40 a.m. not a minute before or after.

Uniformity is mandatory, down to the way teachers correct students - for every negative statement about a child's progress, a teacher must make four positive ones.

Students are grouped first by testing and then by achievement; faster students advance more rapidly. Reading groups have been cut to a maximum of 12 children, though the number often is lower.

The teacher dominates the group, continually asserting leadership through hand signals, finger snaps and explicit voice commands. Errors are corrected immediately.

``All eyes on me,'' Dietz says to her students. The kids read together, then one at a time. If someone gets a word wrong, the teacher says, ``Stop,'' and the sentence is repeated. The pace is brisk; no time for distractions.

``He is not a cow,'' Steve reads aloud.

``Read it again,'' Dietz says.

``He is not a cow.''

``Wonderful reading.''

Students progress through a series of exercises, learning words and writing sentences, then hand in their books. ``All my students are progressing,'' Dietz said.

It wasn't always that way. Until recently, City Springs' academic performance was so bad that state authorities put the school on ``warning'' - threatening a takeover.

Today the 467-student school is clean and neat. Students get to class quietly and on time. Signs hang in hallways and offices that say, ``School is cool when you follow the rules.''

Many attribute the calmer atmosphere to direct instruction, saying the program is so intensive that students have no chance to misbehave. And they say children have grown more interested in learning because they have a foundation to build on.