A suburban school district's five year experience with the initial teaching alphabet

Abstract

Abstract The i.t.a. (Initial Teaching Alphabet) was introduced experimentally in the West Genesee Central Schools in suburban Syracuse, New York in the Fall of 1964. The control groups for the first year of the study consisted of the three groups in the U.S.O.E. First Grade Study conducted by Dr. William D. Sheldon. Local control groups were used for comparison purposes for the second and subsequent years of the project. The i.t.a. instructed children made more rapid progress than the traditional control groups in first grade. The reading skills of i.t.a. instructed second and third graders improved over the three year comparisons of these groups. Spelling was not “damaged” by i.t.a. instruction. Some of the initial advantages of the i.t.a. groups dissipated after first grade. The decision to initiate i.t.a. instruction must be a local decision based on individual school characteristics and considering the data presented in this paper.