Blind Spots - feat. Kimberly Berens, Ph.D.

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Interview with Leslie Heaney – Episode: "Blind Spots" Featuring Dr. Kimberly Berens, Ph.D.

Overview

In the March 5, 2025 episode of "The Interview with Leslie Heaney," host Leslie Heaney engages in a profound discussion with Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens, a leading expert in education reform and the founder of FIT Learning. The conversation delves into the current state of the U.S. education system, highlighting systemic issues and presenting science-based solutions to enhance student proficiency.

State of the U.S. Education System

Leslie opens the discussion by presenting alarming statistics regarding student proficiency in the United States. She states:

“Today in the US close to 70% of all of our students are below proficiency in math and reading.” ([00:05])

Dr. Behrens elaborates on these figures, emphasizing the disproportionate impact on students from low-income families:

“90% of those students are below proficiency.” ([00:12])

She underscores an ongoing educational crisis, noting that this trend has persisted since the inception of national academic assessments:

“Never once in the entire history of that assessment has a majority of students in the United States scored at the proficient level.” ([12:48])

Direct Instruction vs. Inquiry-Based Learning

A core segment of the podcast contrasts Direct Instruction with the dominant Inquiry-Based (Discovery-Based) Learning model prevalent in U.S. schools. Dr. Behrens critiques the inquiry-based approach, arguing that it is rooted in outdated educational philosophies rather than scientific evidence:

“Asnd that’s how learning works. It’s that’s what schools are designed based on belief systems, not based on science.” ([05:45])

She explains how inquiries-based methods favor students who already possess prior knowledge, leaving behind those who do not:

“It only benefits and reinforces and almost like admire, it allows admiration of the kids who have the opportunity to come from an enriched background and know this stuff already.” ([25:43])

Findings from Project Follow Through

Dr. Behrens references the Project Follow Through, the largest federally funded study on educational methods conducted between the late 1960s and early 1970s. The study's results favored Direct Instruction over progressive, inquiry-based methods:

“The results of the study were undeniable. Direct Instruction outperformed every other method by multiple standard deviations.” ([29:13])

Despite these findings, she points out that systemic inertia and lobbying by proponents of progressive education hinder the adoption of more effective teaching methodologies.

Science-Based Learning Approaches

Dr. Behrens introduces FIT Learning's Technology of Teaching, a synthesis of Direct Instruction, Precision Teaching, and Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM). She explains each component:

1. Direct Instruction:
   Emphasizes active student participation and immediate feedback.

   “Sitting and staring doesn't. Yeah. If kids sitting and staring in a desk half asleep, drooling on themselves, messing with their neighbor, doodling, that they're never going to learn the material.” ([23:48])

2. Precision Teaching:
   Focuses on measuring the rate of correct responses to guide instruction.

   “Precision teaching is a way of measuring learning and evaluating instruction so that powerfully effective instructional, more data-driven instructional decisions can be made.” ([36:54])

3. Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM):
   Provides ongoing assessments to monitor student progress toward grade-level proficiency.

   “CBM was a way to use short assessments designed directly from classroom curricula that teachers can do every single week.” ([43:32])

FIT Learning Methodology

Dr. Behrens details how FIT Learning implements these methodologies to achieve significant academic growth:

• Assessment:
  Identifying specific skill deficits through precise, timed assessments.

  “It's literally the most remarkable process. Parents who've been told, your child has dyslexia, your child has auditory processing disorder... they can see every single component skill involved in being a proficient reader assessed in separate timed practice periods with a fluency measure.” ([48:57])

• Instruction:
  Developing customized fluency-building programs based on assessment data.

• Data-Driven Adjustments:
  Continuously monitoring progress and adjusting instruction to ensure rapid learning gains.

  “We make instructional decisions to ensure that rapid gains are being made, and it's transformative.” ([41:20])

Implementation and Outreach

Dr. Behrens discusses FIT Learning's expansion, including its online division launched during COVID-19, which ensures accessibility for students regardless of geographic location. She highlights partnerships with schools, such as the recent collaboration with a Bronx principal to provide high-impact literacy interventions:

“We just started a high impact literacy intervention for their junior and seniors who are graduating and are functionally illiterate.” ([53:02])

Impact and Testimonials

The effectiveness of FIT Learning's approach is evident in the transformative outcomes for students. Dr. Behrens shares personal anecdotes, including her own experiences as a parent, to illustrate the program's success in improving both academic skills and self-esteem among students:

“It's not subjectively, like the tutor's making up what they're going to work on every day... it is a systematic, unbelievably precise, data-driven method of instruction that transforms kids' lives every single time. We never fail.” ([61:52])

Conclusion and Final Remarks

The episode concludes with a call to action for parents to advocate for scientifically-backed instructional methods in their children's education. Dr. Behrens emphasizes the importance of understanding how children learn and the necessity of changing instructional strategies to ensure student success:

“Give your kid the benefit of the doubt. Give yourself a break. You're not supposed to be a math teacher at night.” ([60:18])

Leslie expresses her gratitude and admiration for Dr. Behrens' work, highlighting the significant role of FIT Learning in addressing educational blind spots and fostering a more effective learning environment for students.

Notable Quotes

• Leslie Heaney:
  “With an overwhelming majority of students in our country graduating below proficiency in all academic subjects, I think it's fair to say that the US is in the middle of an educational crisis.” ([00:05])

• Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens:
  “Learning occurs only through the repeated reinforcement of behavior over time.” ([23:48])

• Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens:
  “Our education system should be transformed and designed according to science, according to what we know works, dictated by how learning works.” ([35:29])

• Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens:
  “We are 100% accountable for the learning gains we produce and our failure to produce them.” ([61:53])

Conclusion

This episode of "The Interview with Leslie Heaney" offers a critical examination of the American education system's shortcomings and presents FIT Learning's evidence-based methodologies as a viable solution to enhance student proficiency. Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens' insights provide listeners with a comprehensive understanding of how targeted, scientifically grounded instructional strategies can address pervasive educational challenges.

Transcript

[Leslie Heaney]

Today in the US close to 70% of all of our students are below proficiency in math and reading.

[Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens]

And the statistics are even worse for.

[Leslie Heaney]

Students from low income families. 90% of those students are below proficiency. So with an overwhelming majority of students in our country graduating below proficiency in all academic subjects, I think it's fair to say that the US Is in the middle of an educational crisis. Thankfully though, there are people like my next guest, Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens, who is working to address that. Dr. Behrens is the author of why Students Fail and the Science that Can Save Them. She's also the founder of FIT Learning. FIT Learning is a system of instruction. It's based in science, so the behavioral science and the technology of teaching and it basically teaches kids in the way that they actually learn. FIT Learning is a powerful system of instruction that's based in behavioral science and the technology of teaching. It has literally transformed the learning abilities of thousands of children worldwide. For more than 20 years, Dr. Behrens has been using her system of instruction which is produced one year's worth of academic growth for students and only 40 hours of training. She's helped to grow fit learning to more than 30 locations worldwide. In this episode, I talk with Dr. Behrens about the state of the US education system today and about the science that shows how children actually learn and how our education system could be changed to have better outcomes for our kids. We talk about her learning instruction method, specifically what she uses at FIT Learning, and about how with the right instruction, a child that has been labeled as having learning differences or even ADHD may actually just be a child who's being taught in the wrong way. I personally learned so much from my conversation with Dr. Behrens. It was so helpful for me as a parent. I think this episode is really a must listen for every parent out there who really wants to understand more about how kids learn and what we can do as parents to help support our children through their academic journey. Before I turn it over to Dr. Behrens, this episode is brought to you by the Scout guide. Back in 2014, a very good friend of mine and mother of three, Susie Matheson, along with her business partner Christy Ford, saw how big box stores and online shopping behemoths were suffocating their local businesses in Charlottesville, Virginia and they wanted to find out a way to spotlight the amazing entrepreneurs in their community through a beautiful local guidebook. So from that, the Scout Guide was born and the Scout Guide has gone.

[Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens]

On to build a network of over.

[Leslie Heaney]

90 women owned franchises from coast to coast. These are franchises that are run by extraordinary women who are building their own businesses while supporting the small businesses in their local cities and towns. The Scout Guide is always looking, though, to expand their franchise family to find other women who are interested in building their own businesses. So if you're a woman who's looking to get back to work, but you want to have your own schedule or you're ready for a career shift and you have some, let's say, marketing or sales experience and you're interested in supporting your local stores and local businesses, the Scout Guide franchise is just the opportunity you are looking for. I happened to look at the 90 different locations the Scout Guide currently covers, and there are several locations that I know a lot of my listeners are from that are not covered, which is exciting. So I'll just mention a few of them. North Shore of Long island, northern New Jersey, sort of Summit, Short Hills, Far Hills area, the entire state of Maine, the entire state of Vermont, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, Brookline, Cape Cod and other parts of Massachusetts, a bunch of parts of Northern California like Napa Valley and San Francisco are not covered. Brooklyn, the Upper east side, the West Village, New York City neighborhoods are covered. New Canaan, Westport, Greenwich, Bedford, list goes on. Millbrook, New York, Sharon, Connecticut. So there's a lot of great opportunities out there. And if you're interested in learning more about the Scout Guide, you can go to their website, franchise.thescoutguide.com or you can email them at franchisethescoutguide.com to find out more. And when you do, don't forget to mention the interview with Leslie Heaney. So with that, here is my conversation with Dr. Barons.

[Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens]

Kimberly, I'm so happy to see you. Thank you so much for being on the interview today.

I'm so excited. Thanks for having me.

So, as I said to you before we started, I'm very personally interested in this topic because I have my own questions, being the mother of three with children who don't always learn in a straight line. And I thought it might be helpful, though, for listeners to kind of have a level set or an overview of the US Education system. And I know that's a very broad, very broad statement that I'm making. But what, what do you think is sort of the fundamental approach or pedagogy, you know, of our kind of traditional schools in the United States? Maybe public schools is a better example or how are they structured? And what would you consider kind of the United States approach?

So, I mean, I would say, you know, that's again, a complicated question. And I, and I wrote a whole book on this. So they're in there. And I'm not the only one. There are copious books on this topic because it is so vast and complicated. But I can summarize our education system in terms of kind of the model of instruction. And it would be inquiry based, also known as discovery based. So discovery based models of learning and instruction dominate US Education all throughout public schools. And also you'll find it in a lot of private schools. And so what that means is, and here's what I want to also make sure I put this caveat there is that it's not inquiry based or discovery based, because that's what science indicates is right. It's actually not the case at all. It's inquiry based or discovery based because that's the belief system of traditional educators. Traditional educators believe because they've been told by, you know, the College of Ed and decades and decades and decades of writing by really kind of educational philosophers that that's how, that's how schools should be designed. Not because it produces outcomes with kids, not because we know scientifically that that's how learning works. It's that that's what's always kind of been done because that was the originating belief back when our public school system was founded by, you know, we had John Dewey and Howard Mann and all those kind of educational philosophers who were really integral in the establishment of our public school system. They were philosophers, they weren't scientists. You know, they were educational philosophers. And they viewed, number one, they viewed education as a means of advancing our democracy, which was obviously correct and good. But then they also kind of had an opinion or a theory, theory about how learning should work. And a lot of that was really a backlash against the drill and you know, the drill based models that had hap that were happening kind of before progressive education took over, which is what it is really called. So progressive education replaced the schoolhouse model with the, you know, the teacher walking on the aisles with her ruler, banging it on the floor and the kids were chanting out their math tables and it was very punitive and there were dunce caps and kids think about one.

Of my favorite shows, Little House on the Prairie, right where you know, Willie would have to go in the corner, you know, and face the wall and everyone was in the same room. So I didn't know if sort of the teacher with a bunch of students model was just based off of the sort of the evolution of our country in terms of people gathering together or. But I guess the same system also exists in Europe. And so the group model of instruction.

Well, that was born out of necessity because, you know, before public education, only the elite classes educated their children. And more often than not it was with private tutors or private governesses. Right, right. It was very much one on one and it was only available to people with money. So when public schools were born, they had to educate a lot of kids at once, which is why the kind of group model of instruction was born. And again, not because it's right or better or best, it's because, because it was a necessity. So the theory was that kids learn best via exploration and that they should discover knowledge on their own and that teachers should just simply guide. Right. They should just simply kind of be gentle guides of a, of a child's discovering their own knowledge. And anything being directly instructed, directly drilled, was absolutely like, like rejected in the evolution of kind of public school as it is now. And that's continued to this day. And so there is still a, a very profound misunderstanding about how learning actually works. And there is still the widely held belief by educators and parents and people in the public that kids should be discovering stuff all day and they shouldn't be told told answers. They shouldn't be directly instructed. They should be given opportunities to discover knowledge. And so that inquiry based learning model dominates all of our schools.

And how is that, how's that working? I mean, it would be helpful to have some of your thoughts about kind of how well are kids learning? And I guess we're measuring that with standardized tests and in kind of reading about fit learning and all the wonderful things that you're doing. I was reading that kind of. There's some research that shows that the longer that you're in school, the less proficient that you are in a particular subject.

Yes. I'll go back to your first part of your question. How are schools doing? Not so great. So when I published my book, it was during COVID and so my book was released in October of 2020. Obviously I wrote my book before COVID It just happened to come out during COVID Right. And in my book I present a lot of educational statistics that are publicly available. These aren't my opinion, and these aren't. I didn't make these up. They're. They're data collected via the National Assessment of Academic Progress or the naep, which is a publicly available website that any citizen can access and look at our educational data, that those are widely available to everybody. So in my book in 2020, I presented the crisis that we're in because at that point, we were at 60% of kids below proficiency in all academic subjects, and that number is now 70%. So since COVID our proficiency rates have declined an additional 10%. And even worse for kids living in poverty, it is now actually more than 90% when you look at math and science. But literacy rates are, you know, 90% of children who qualify for free lunch, you know, which means that you have a, you have a, you're have a low income status. 90% of those kids are below proficiency in reading. So it's not going well at all. Like, you know, this whole model doesn't work, and it never has worked. Because here's the other thing, you know, I try to make really clear in my book, and I try to make clear every time I do one of these interviews, is that this isn't new. This isn't a new crisis. This isn't a new problem. This has been a problem since the dawn of the National Assessment of Academic Progress, when, you know, it was first administered in the early 1970s, that assessment. And never once, not once in the entire history of that assessment has a majority of students in the United States scored at the proficient level. Never. And actually, back going back to 1948 was the first time an academic, you know, analysis was ever, I mean, an analysis was ever done of our academic outcomes in education that was done in 1948, and that the results of that assessment were the same. A majority of kids were below proficiency. So to be quite frank with you, there's never been a time in the history of our school system that a majority of kids have acquired proficiency in academics from our school system. So it's never worked well.

To put that into context, though, how do we compare to other Western countries? Because they, I think, have the same sort of discovery approach to education that we do.

[Leslie Heaney]

Right.

[Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens]

I think that Western education is fairly uniform. I think. I don't know. You, you're the expert. That's why I just play one on tv. That's why I'm asking you all the, all these questions. But why are outcomes, are they having the same outcomes? Do they have the same rates that we have in terms of children not being proficient in subjects, or are they having better success than we are?

Depends on the country. So these kinds of data are available from the Program of International Student Assessment. It's also called the pisa. So again, you can look up PISA data yourself. The PISA data are what are available for the public. I do report on these as well in my book. So I will tell you that we are not performing well compared to other countries that spend the same amount of money as us.

I see perform less well.

But I will also say that no country is performing very well besides Singapore. You know, Singapore performs pretty well, especially in mathematics. Some of the, I will say the Asian countries do tend to perform better, but they are not doing what we do. So the best performing countries are the countries that do not do inquiry based learning. They do direct instruction with lots and lots of practice, 100% period. And so, you know, Japan, China, Singapore, those kinds of countries have a very different instructional system. They have a, like they have more of a. The teacher's in control and tells the kids what they have to know and the kids learn, repeat it and practice it until they know it. You know, they're not just being guided through the day and hopefully they discover what they need to know about fractions. So the top performing countries are countries that eschew or never. It's not like they eschew it. They've never ever done it. Like they don't do inquiry based learning. Now there are schools like Finland who, I mean, countries like Finland who had a brief kind of improvement in their test scores. And then I think those have gone down a little bit recently. But that's has a lot to do with them overhauling their teacher training program, which is also extremely important to acknowledge.

I just wanted to make a comment on the, what you were just saying in comparing kind of schools in Southeast Asia to our schools in Europe and in the US that they keep drilling right. The concept into the child. Right. Until the child gets it. There does seem to be a sense of kind of or not a sense in my observation, in our education system, it's sort of like the teacher teaches it and if you don't quite get it, then you weren't, you didn't get it. It's sort of like that's, that's where, you know, some kids are moving ahead and some kids are falling behind. Like the teacher presented the lesson and either you learned how to do long division or you missed the boat and then you're going to get a C and the other person's going to get an A. I mean, I think that's sort of as opposed to sort of really ensuring that the kid actually understands it before they move on to the next thing.

Right. And so you're getting at a really, you're getting at another really important point that really distinguishes our type of schooling versus schooling that might happen in China, for instance. So in our country, there is a push for content over competence. And what that means is the educationalists, you know, who make all this stuff up, because they're really ideologues. They're theorists, they're not scientists.

[Leslie Heaney]

Right?

[Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens]

Their opinion is, okay, to fix this problem, we're going to expose kids to more and more and more content at earlier and earlier ages. It's almost like, you know, picking up a handful of spaghetti and throwing it at a kid and hoping a couple strands stick on them.

[Leslie Heaney]

Right?

[Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens]

Like, that's exactly what our education system does. And so what it does is, you know, you know, school boards come up with arbitrary timelines of how much content state standards must be, you know, introduced or kids must be exposed to throughout a year. And teachers are required to follow that timeline regardless of the preparedness of their students to learn that material or whether or not their students have actually learned it. And so that is a massive problem. That, again, doesn't happen in a lot of Asian countries, because in Asian countries, they focus on what we would call the basics for a long time. So, like, they. They spend a. They spend, you know, three to four years on core hand writing skills for their language, which is very symbolic. You know, Chinese is an unbelievably symbolic language. And so kids spend a lot of time mastering how to write those symbols. And they spend lots of times on the core skills involved in, like, the subjects they're studying, rather than being a kindergartner expecting to write in a journal every day about your day when you can't even hold a pencil and you have never. You don't even know how to form letters, which is so crazy. But that's what happens in America. I mean, that's what we do. Like, that's what our schools do is they. They think, okay, if we expose kids to science labs when they're kindergarteners, they'll start to learn to think critically. I promise you they won't. What they'll do is they'll have fun playing in the dern, and maybe you're doing something with earthworms, and that'll be really exciting for them. But they're not going to learn to think critically. They're going to learn, okay, well, earthworms and dirt are fun, but I still can't read, and I still don't have core numeracy skills. So of course I am going to struggle next year because I don't have any of the things required for me to do first grade or second grade or third grade work.

So you. So in your book, you Talk about, and you mentioned it here, that these people that are creating the curriculum or theorists or they're school boards can be made up of all different kinds of people.

Right.

Whoever runs the board. Right. Not necessarily even theorists or even people who have a background in education. But your approach is a scientific approach. Right. You are a behavioral scientist. And so through your research, you've come up with your own approach or philosophy to how to address some of these issues and how you can kind of transform the effectiveness of educational practices. Tell us more about that, because I know that's a big crux of your book.

Yes. So I call it the Technology of Teaching. And it actually combines several highly widely researched methodologies that I didn't invent. I mean, you know, these are, that's what happens in science, right. In science, methods evolve over time and there's decades and decades of evidence supporting those methodologies. So I can talk to you about our technology of teaching that we use at FIT Learning combines direct instruction, precision teaching, and curriculum based measurement. And so all three of those are separate, you know, disciplines that have decades and decades and decades of science behind them. And we combine them into one approach. And of course, because we've been doing this for 26 years, we've made a lot of discoveries and we've evolved those approaches a lot because that's how science works. That's what science allows you to do, make new discoveries and evolve so that it becomes better and better and better. But the premise, like our basic approaches, are widely researched outside of fit learning. I mean, lots of people use direct instruction, precision teaching, and curriculum based measurement. Besides.

So what is, to break it down for people who are listening, what is precision direct instruction? Does that mean one on one?

So, no. So direct instruction is actually capital D, capital I. It's, you know, some people, you talk about direct instruction as a, as a, as like kind of a common noun. But the direct instruction I'm talking about is a proper noun. It is the name of an instructional methodology that was created by a guy named Siegfried Engelman back in the 1960s. And I am not kidding when I tell you that this is how long direct instruction has existed and been available for schools to use, although schools do not use it. And it is a tragedy. So direct instruction is a method of instruction that entails several characteristics. And I talk about this in my book. The number one kind of most critical care characteristic of direct instruction is coral active responding by the class. So rather than a teacher standing up in front of the class and talking all day, which is what teachers do, they blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then maybe once or twice a class, they give one, you know, the opportunity for kids to raise their hand. And one kid gets the opportunity to respond.

[Leslie Heaney]

Right?

[Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens]

So I'll tell you right now, Siegfried Engelman, who developed direct instruction, was heavily influenced by learning science, by my field. And, you know, he understood that learning occurs. And I'm going to get to get into some learning science now. Learning occurs and only occurs through the repeated reinforcement of behavior over time. Okay? That is a law. That is a principle that we now know. It is undeniable. There. There. There is almost a hundred years of science supporting that to be the case. So as I don't care if you're a human being, if you're any kind of mammal, you learn by behaving in an environment. And then that that environment is followed by some consequence. That actually is what produces a neurological change in your brain. So there's the symbiotic relationship between behavior, a consequence in the environment, and a neurological process that creates the learning process. Okay? That's how learning works. So you can't learn without actively responding and receiving feedback for that response. Right. That. That's just how it works. Which is if that's not any indication of how the educational establishment does not understand how learning works, the fact that Lectures with Hand Rising is still the dominant model in schools is laughable to me because there are. It's not just my field. It's neuroscience, it's cognitive science, it's behavior science. We all know unequivocally that. That learning cannot happen without active responding by the learner. So sitting and staring doesn't. Yeah. If kids sitting and staring in a desk half asleep, drooling on themselves, messing with their neighbor, doodling, that they're never going to learn the material. That's why they don't. That's why kids don't learn it.

So what would you give an example? So direct learning would be like you're in a science class.

Well, let's do it. Let's do a lesson together right now.

Okay, great. So you brought up the earthworms.

Well, let's do something that's a little bit more. Let's just do something more parsimonious. You should leave the letter. Let's just stick with a literacy concept. Let's stick with something simple, like vowels. Okay, so I'll be the. I'm going to be the teacher, you be the student. Are you ready?

I am ready.

Okay, so now remember, even though this is one on one. This would be done in an entire classroom with kids. Okay. So let's just pretend there's 30 of you. But it would. Doesn't matter. It's going to go the same way. We use one on one instruction at FIT Learning, and we still do direct instruction just like this. So it could be one on one, or it could be 30 on one. It doesn't matter. Okay, are you ready?

Yes.

Okay, so today we're talking about vowels. What are we talking about?

Vowels.

Awesome. So you see how I signal to you to answer vows. Great. All right. Great, great. So we're going to talk about vowels. There are five vowels. How many vowels?

Five.

Awesome. So are there four vowels? Yes or no?

No.

Are there three?

No.

How many are there?

Five.

Amazing. Really good. And vowels are very special letters that. I mean, vowels are letters that play a special role in words. What are v. What are vowels?

Letters that play a special role in words.

Koolaid. Awesome. So say that one more time. Vowels that play a special role in words.

Special role. Vowels are letters that play a special role in words.

Amazing.

Graded for this, Kimberly. This was. I was. Oh, oh, I.

And then if I go and if I said letters that play a special role in words, what are those called?

Vowels.

Amazing. Awesome job. So here are your vowels. Ready? A, E, I, O, U. What are your vowels? Say it.

A, E, I, O, U. And say something. Really good.

Yes, really good. So A, I, O and U. What are those called?

Vowels.

Okay, great. So we can stop there. But do you get. Do you see the difference?

Yes, I do.

So now a traditional educator not trained in direct instruction would do something more like this. All right, boys and girls, we're going to talk about special letters today. They're very special, and they play a very special role in words. And some of you may have. May recognize these letters and. And know what these letters are. So who. And this is the first telltale sign who can guess what kinds of letters we're going to talk about today, Right? So that's what inquiry based learning does. It promotes guessing. And what it does is it benefits the kids who already know the answer, because those kids can guess. Right. And the kids who have not had the opportunity to learn vowels have no opportunity to learn it, because what it actually does is it only. It is. It only benefits. And it reinforces and almost like admire, it allows admiration of the kids who have the opportunity to come from an enriched background and know this stuff already. And so they're not learning it in the classroom. They're just demonstrating Pre existing knowledge, but the kids who haven't learned it, they're still not going to learn it. It's a, it's a tragedy. Which is why 90% of poor kids cannot read, if you know what I'm saying.

I do know what you're saying, but I'm just so puzzled by why with the science being what it is and the research being there. I always think of bank street in New York as people going to Bank Street. I guess maybe that's more for early education, but that's a school where people go to get their master's in education. Why would those schools not be looking at direct instruction versus inquiry based?

Because this, it's crazy. And trust me, asking someone like me who's trained as a scientist and any, any of us who's who are on my side of the line, like right, any of the people I hang out with, because I hang out with a lot of, I hang out with this whole science of learning group. Some are behavior scientists, some are neuroscientists, some are cognitive scientists. But we're all know the same, we all understand the same thing. Our level of analysis may be different, but we're. It's all the same thing. None of us understand this. None of us understand why schools aren't doing this and why schools are not only not doing it, they are actively telling teachers not to do it. They are penalizing teachers who try to do it. They are ostracizing people who want to bring it into schools. It's shocking. And the reason it is is because again, schools are a ideological institution. They're similar to religion and politics. It's about belief and faith. And we don't believe that that's how kids should learn and we don't believe that that's how teachers should teach. So we're not doing it. Even though. So the biggest, the largest federally funded study ever done in America on educational methods was done back in the late 1960s and it went into the early 1970s. And it was called Project Follow through or the Follow Through Project. It sometimes goes by either name. You can look it up. And the results of the project, of Project Follow through were thus methods that match the ideology of the educational establishment. So discovery based inquiry based learning models were included in the study, as was Direct Instruction. The results of the study were undeniable. Direct Instruction outperformed every other method by multiple standard deviations, not only on academic achievement, but on measures of self est esteem.

Yes.

And the other models that are fluffy, progressive, I mean don't get Offended by progressive. That's just what it's called. You know, don't, don't get that confused with progressive politics. It's literally called progressive education. I'm not trying to throw progressive politics under the bus. I'm. It's very different. So I just want to make sure your listeners understand that. So progressive education models, which are inquiry based models, dramatically failed. So not only did they fail to produce any gains with the kid, a majority of the kids, some of their models actually worsened academic achievement and dramatically worsened measures of self esteem. So you'd think after this huge federally funded study was conducted and the results were presented to Congress, you would assume that at that time Congress would invest funding and getting direct instruction at every single school in the United States. No, that is not what happened. Why? Because lobbyists associated with progressive education models, for whatever reason, the college is a dead. The, the publication that the, the, the curriculum companies that are making so much money from this fluffy crap they've put out there, they lobbied Congress and convinced Congress to put more money to the ineffective methods, suggesting that well, this is how teaching should go, so let's just fund, fund it to try to make it better. And that's what they did.

Yeah. As you're saying this though, and I, I hate to be political, but I was thinking that perhaps is it that teachers unions might be concerned that they have teachers that are already in the classroom that aren't trained in that method and so they didn't want to have to or maybe didn't know how to go about implementing, training teachers in direct instruction. It's almost like getting, I mean now.

Now it's, now it's a big old mess.

Right.

You definitely have big powerful groups in charge and getting anything changed is crazy and almost impossible. And look, I am not anyone to say that unions don't, that workers don't matter and shouldn't be protected. I am absolutely not someone who would ever say that. But what I will say is unfortunately, oftentimes in education it's about protecting teachers, preserving teachers jobs inside of how they experience them rather than focusing on student outcomes.

[Leslie Heaney]

Right.

[Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens]

And you'll see that everywhere. So, and look, I am a contrarian in the education space. I do a lot of these interviews, I do a lot of media and I say a lot of stuff that people don't like to hear. You have no idea how demonized I, I have been in this space because I tell the truth. And you're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to ever suggest that teachers could Be teaching better, that teachers could be trained better, that the College of Ed isn't working, that schools aren't working, that our outcomes are very clear. And that means educational methodologies are ineffective, which means we have to change them. You're not allowed to say that stuff. It's the weirdest thing ever. Imagine in any other industry like, like medicine, engineering, any other industry where outcomes are the measure or the metric. Right. Like any pilot where 90% of the time his flights crashed.

Right.

Or an airline company that built planes that were ineffective 9% of the time or a hospital that in which 70% of patients died on the operating table. I promise you, those would no longer exist. Yeah, right. Those companies would be gone. They would be out of business. They would have been shut down. It's not. That is not happening in education and it's nuts. Well, we're not even allowed to say it.

Yeah, I think it's all, you know, it's same thing goes with, as you mentioned, sort of underperforming schools in general. Right. Where there are communities that are saying, you know, wanting charter schools. Right. Or wanting school choice because of the, the performance of their school. And I know that that's a much different topic and we could go on about that for a long time, but it does get to the root of the issue of schools still existing, teachers still existing, even if the outcomes are not what they should be. Right. And so. And that being a standard that would never fly, frankly in any other industry. Right. You wouldn't.

Is the goalpost continues to get moved. Te. Now, you know, why do you think standardized testing starts? Has, you know, got. Has started. Has been thrown under the bus for so long because standardized testing tell numbers don't lie, man. Yeah, standardized testing. Look, I know there's problems with standardized testing. There's a lot of issues with standardized testing. A one shot assessment of performance is not a reliable measure. A comprehensive measure performance, I get that. But it is a metric. It is a very important metric. And the minute, you know, because those scores don't improve and they only worsen, it's always about like, well, let's stop testing them at all and let's stop even measuring them at all. And let's stop like, you know, it's not about grade. It's just lowering and lowering and lowering and lowering the standards, which is like kind of crazy. And here's what I'll say about just one comment on the school choice thing. I think as a short term solution, I get it. I think it's important for parents to have choices. And they shouldn't be. They shouldn't have to send their kids to a school that is consistently profoundly failing their child. And they should have the right to educate their child at any meter they want. But long term, that is not the answer because we have millions of children to educate and they will never be enough charter schools, there will never be enough private schools, and there'll never be enough vouchers to solve that problem. What the problem that needs to be solved is that public schools need to be transformed and designed according to science, according to what we know works, is dictates how learning works and how instruction should be designed as a result of it. Every top down, every single part of a school should be designed based on our unbelievable wealth of understanding about learning, which is, it's, it's unbelievable what we know about this stuff now. It's like crazy that we're still having this conversation about how to teach reading.

Yeah.

In 2025. That's like a whole topic. Now phonics is somehow back in fashion, which is shocking to those of us who knew it should. It wasn't out of fashion. We just don't wear because we know this stuff like it. Of course phonics is a component skill of reading. Of course kids need phonics. Fact that it got thrown out the window, that was a result of these educationalist ideologies. Not what science suggests.

Yeah, no. And it's funny. It's not funny, but one of my children was a very late reader and we had a sixth grade teacher just sort of, I don't know, I don't. And they ended up. She literally said, I don't know, I don't know what to do here. And they had a learning specialist join the school who was trained in the Orton Gillingham is that Orton Gillingham method. Learned how to read in, I don't know, a month. And then within six months, reading was way above reading level than the kids, you know, and his peers were reading. But before that, he's never unlocked the door. And so we were able to, you know, to find someone to assist him. But to your point about, you know, kids that don't have access to those resources, I can't imagine how they would be pushed on to another grade with ever having those skills. Okay, so you talked about direct instruction, precision teaching.

Yes. Okay, so precision teaching stems directly from behavior science.

Okay.

Direct instruction was influenced by behavior science. But precision teaching is a branch of behavior science is an applied branch of our field. And so precision teaching is really a system of measuring learning and evaluating instruction. So it's a data system. It's a data collection system. So, and just kind of, in short, that, you know, in brief, I will tell you that we know in behavior science that rate, or count per minute, which is a measure of rate count per time, right? So like 60 math facts per minute, 150 words read correctly per minute. Those are what we call rate measures. So rate is our fundamental measure in behavior science of any. Of any skill we're trying, you know, any. Any behavior, any skill. It is the fundamental measure. So it could be. If you're teaching an instrument, it could be notes played correctly per minute. If you're teaching basketball, it could be shots on, you know, baskets made per minute. It depends. It doesn't matter what skill you're working on. Rate is the most sensitive and reliable measure of that skill. So we measure everything as rate of response in precision teaching. And so we do, you know, every time we're working with kids, it's timed. And during the timing, as they're performing, we're counting corrects, errors, and often prompts, like, if we have to jump in and provide some assistance for them to get a correct answer, that would be considered a prompt. So we're counting that stuff during a timing. At the end of the timing, the child gets immediate feedback on their performance. Like, you, amazing. You just got, like, 27 correct. And. Okay, you got a couple. You know, we call them learning opportunities. So that's what errors are called. You made a couple of errors. Let's jump in and practice these. You know, practice this one. Give them feedback, and then they go back into another timing, and then they try to beat their score from the previous timing. So precision teaching is a way of basically, we time practice, count correct scenarios, and then that the results of that get plotted on a very specific chart or graph that is designed to evaluate learning over time. And so it produces slopes, right? So, like, the steeper the slope, the faster the learning the slope. The flatter the slope, the slower the learning. So we always go for steep, steep slopes. So what happens is, when we've been measuring learning over time, and let's say we have a kid who's, you know, working on a decoding skill, and they're stagnating. Let's say their errors are high and their corrects are just flat. Well, we see that with our eyeballs, and we know we have to change something. And so we have lots of things that we can modify. We could maybe. Maybe it's too. Maybe the. There's Some words on there that are, that are more difficult than others. We had to pull those out and work on those separately. Or maybe they're mixing up some vowels or they can't. They're not. They're making vowel errors and they need more practice with vowels in isolation or, or maybe it's most motivational and they need a more powerful reinforcer for that program or whatever. There's lots of things we can change. And so we do some type of instructional intervention and we draw a line on the chart and then we take data after that intervention's done and see if it, if it steepens the learning line and then we know we're being effective. So precision teaching is a way of measuring learning and evaluating instruction so that powerfully effective instructional, more data driven instructional decisions can be made such that we maximize learning gains, which is why at Fit Learning, we produce more than one year of growth in 40 hours of training. So that is a work week. In a 40 hour work week, which is a typical work week for a person, we're moving kids an entire grade level. Why? Because we use direct instruction on concepts. We do focused practice on core component skills. We measure every single time a child practices. We put those on a chart, we evaluate that data over time and we make instructional decisions to ensure that rapid gains are being made. And it's transformative. It changes kids lives. Kids who've been told they'll never read, they have all these ridiculous learning disabilities. No, it's like they just need effective instruction and practice to mastery on core skills. That's what it is more than a majority of 99% of the time.

So you mentioned. So I want to get to that on the, on those, on those diagnoses of learning disabilities, when in fact it might, it seems like in many cases it may just be poor instruction, the wrong instruction. So you've got the direct instruction, you've got the precision learning. There was a third component too.

So curriculum based measurement or something called.

Okay, that's part of the. Right. You're. You mentioned that.

So curriculum based measurement is, is also known as cvm.

Okay.

That is actually an assessment methodology. It's a, it's a methodology for progress monitoring. And so by progress monitoring, like you can think of it this way. So direct instruction is used to teach the concept of something. Right. So like for instance, what you and I did conceptually, I'm teaching a kid to conceptually understand what a vowel is. Right.

[Leslie Heaney]

Right.

[Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens]

So that happens in direct instruction. And then kids need to. But it's not Enough, they've got to go into focused practice, identifying vowels or identifying vowel sounds, which we do in time. Right. Which, which we do in timed practice. And we're counting and we're charting and we're making decisions so that kids become fluent, which is our measure of mastery in behavior science. Fluency is a rate or account per minute that produces long term memory, increased attention span and the ability to apply skills. So direct instruction on what, on what a vowel is. Fluency based practice on identifying vowel sounds till they're fluent, meaning 100 per minute, basically.

[Leslie Heaney]

Right.

[Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens]

And we're doing all that with precision teaching. And then weekly we're conducting progress monitoring assessments using something called cbm. And so CBM was developed by this guy, Stanley Dino, who was very influenced by precision teaching and direct instruction. And so CBM was a, was really a means of making the assessment process, number one, easier to implement for teachers. Something that could happen on a regular basis, like weekly. Because what happens is when you're running these big standardized assessments, they happen at the end of the year with no time left for teachers to do anything about. Terrible percentile ranks that come out of it. Right. Bad scores.

Right.

And they're so global that there's no way to pinpoint exactly what part of that child's repertoire is making them struggle so badly in a big area like comprehension or reading. Right. So CBM was a way of using, of doing short assessments designed directly from classroom curricula, basically that what a kid needs to learn in his school year is broken into these very short, very administrable assessments for teachers that they can do every single week and evaluate their, their entire class progress towards grade level on all the things they're supposed to know by the end of that year so that they can know sooner if the kid's not on track. Right. So if a kid's not on track to be on, to be at grade level, it tells you very, like, it's amazing. Like there's whole systems for this. Like we use AimsWeb, there's lots of other systems. AimsWeb is a part of Pearson. And once you enter a kid's progress monitoring score, a graph pops up and it tells you this child's on track to be at grade level by the end of the year. But it'll also tell you, oh, this child's not on track. And you know, after several of those kinds of assessments that are below where they need to be, right. Then they'll be like, this child's in need of an intervention. So, so CBM was really developed for RTI models, which is another kind of crazy lingo which is really called response to intervention models that are the new standard in, in really special education. So what happens is there's like tier one, tier two, tier three, tier four. Interventions to help kids that need varying levels of intensity and intervention to make progress. Basically. Right. So CDM is a way to measure kind of global progress towards grade level as a function of all the nitty gritty stuff you're doing on a daily basis for the kid, either in the classroom or in high impact tutoring, which is what I do. We do high impact tutoring. So as we're in the weeds teaching and getting kids fluid at all these core skills, we want to keep our eyes on grade level growth. And so that's what CV allows us to do.

So you're really, you're looking at kind of the, you're working from the Mac, you're doing micro and macro, you're kind of.

That's exactly right.

So how 30 learning centers nation nationwide did I read that?

Well, it's throughout the world, so we have a bunch in the United States, Hawaii, Canada, Ireland, London. And London does a ton of work in the Middle east, which is very cool. And then we have Australia. And then we just launched the online division not quite a year ago. Our website officially launched in February or March of last year. So the online division, Nick and I, now that's what we're overseeing. We're in charge of the online division because, you know, opening locations is very hard. It takes a long time. It takes a lot of training and certification and staffing. And so we, you know, we opened the online division because we perfected our online model during COVID We did a huge study on our outcomes and it, they were the same as our live model. I mean our, our, our online kids make as much progress as our live sessions. And so Nick and I launched Fit Learning online because we're committed to just, you know, accessing as many kids as possible. So, you know, increasing access for kids who don't live near a location. I mean, and then we also have a school model is called Fit Light. It's kind of a stream, like a, a simplified, streamlined version of our crazy intensive high impact tutoring model that is for school implementation. And we have school partnerships happening throughout the country. I actually just launched a partnership with a school in the Bronx in New York and we've started a high impact literacy intervention for their junior and seniors who are graduating and are functionally illiterate. And so that Principal who's now a science of learning guy. He's amazing and he's committed to getting like science of learning driven instruction in his school. So he and I partnered together and we just started after the winter break. So we just started two weeks ago ago.

That's incredible because I was going to ask you, you know, you, you mentioned that kids within 40 hours of instruction can, can actually move up a grade level. If a child comes to you, like they, like, I'm struggling in school and they just make this sort of broad statement to you. How does FIT learning start to address it? Is it by assessment?

[Leslie Heaney]

Looking at each subject?

[Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens]

Yep, 100%. So here's how it starts. So assessment is the first step. Six steps to transformation at fit. So the first step in terms of your child's transformation is assessment. So I started developing our assessment in 1998, because when I started doing this work, there was nothing available. You know, no published assessments existed that allowed me to pinpoint core skill deficits, especially in terms of fluency. So most like, you know, published assessments, the that are available are look at global skill domains, right? So like reading comprehension is one thing and reading is one thing, and math is one thing. Well, I promise you, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of component skills involved in every single one of those large overarching domains. If you don't put those that domain under a microscope, you're never going to identify with precision.

Which part?

Exactly.

[Leslie Heaney]

Okay.

[Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens]

What aspect of your child's repertoire is truly disfluent and requires precise fluency building? So I started developing our assessment back in 1998, and now, of course, as a team, we've evolved it so much and now our assessments are, I mean, we are the world leader in those kinds. Like in core skill assessment, it's literally the most remarkable process. Parents who've been told, your child has dyslexia, your child has auditory processing disorder, your child has adhd, your child's never going to learn, your child's lazy or they're not motivated. They need to mature more. All the garbage that parents are fed. When parents finally find us and they have an assessment run, they're like, it's almost like a lightning bolt strikes you in the face and you realize, well, no wonder my kid's not reading. Because you see every single component skill involved in being a proficient reader assessed in separate timed practice periods with a fluency measure. So, for instance, it's not just how accurate is your child at identifying phonic sounds, it's how fluent so can your child identify 100 phonic sounds a minute and then what specific phonic sounds are they missing? You know it is so precise. So it allows us to. Then step two in the transformation process is we design a fluency building program from that assessment to target every single skill that was identified to be this fluent. Then step three is they start attending sessions which are one on one, fast paced, goal oriented. We have an unbelievably amazing team that are that go. We have a certification process of our own now. So all of the people that work for us are certified in our model. And that certification came from my design dissertation. That was what I did my PhD on. Was this the entire way we certify and train our people. So they're certified learning coaches and they literally run the most jaw dropping sessions to gradually and systematically and effectively increase your child's fluency and core skills. And then after a benchmark and then there's weekly progress lettering with CBMS every week to evaluate global gains and, and then every 40 hours there's a full benchmark reassessment like the first one we ran so that you. So that we can see all the progress that has been made and then generative gains to like untargeted areas which happens all the time because we collaterally improve attention, perseverance, problem solving, critical thinking, all the cool stuff. Kids just start figuring out stuff on their own. They're just so cognitively fit. And then all of those data get presented to you again in a meeting so you get to see evidence of your child's progress. It's not subjective. It's not like the tutor's making up what they're going to work on every day or they're doing their kids homework for that. It is a systematic, unbelievably precise, data driven method of instruction that transforms kids lives every single time. We never fail.

Kimberly. I mean I need to go to you and have my assessment because I still have some, you can tell from my VAL response, some I need some kinks in my, I mean chinks in my arm or rather I've got to get them them buffed out. But how can we take what you're doing and bring it into hap instead of kids coming to you who are doing this outside of, you know, they're probably in that environment all day. Then they get to your center or they're online with you and they're so engaged and they're so excited and it's almost like a bit of a, of a learning roller coaster for them. How much better if you're, you know, if your system were in schools and have you given some thought about obviously their board of educations in each town? And then I don't know how it works on the state level, but it seems like this is something that needs to be brought to a higher level or, you know, have it be a conversation that's happening with a lot more audiences.

Yes, it does. So we're doing this in terms of bringing high impact tutoring into schools with fitlight.

Right.

So the high impact tutoring in schools through fitlight is happening in two ways. The first way is that our certified team engages in a fitlight partnership with a school, which is like what's happening in the Bronx.

Okay, so what's happening in the Bronx.

Is that this, this principal has partnered with FIT Learning Online and my certified team is providing high impact literacy sessions for these kids throughout the week. These kids come into a computer lab, log into their session, do a, do a high impact literacy intervention session with my team for 20 minutes and then they go to their next class. Okay. So basically it's FIT Learning driven high impact tutoring that schools can acquire and, and have available as a, as a resource for their kids who need a high impact intensive intervention.

I see.

So that's one option. The second option is that we train school personnel in our methodology and these school personnel deliver our instructional method with their kids and we provide them ongoing supervision and support. We provide all our curriculum, they get a license of all of our intellectual property involved in our literacy program. So the two models are that we provide the sessions that schools just, you know, they enter into an agreement with us and we provide however many hours of intensive intervention for kids that they, that they elect do or they choose that. We want an in house team doing this that is inside the school. And then we provide training to those people, those professionals, those teachers, those resource teachers, whatever it may be, those reading specialists. We train them. So, so that is happening throughout the country through fit, but you're talking, I think, more in the grand scheme of shifting education to a more effective.

If we know that direct instruction is the way that kids learn and we know what the outcomes are and you see it. I just saw a front page in the Post last week about New York City schools, how they're failing our kids. It just doesn't seem like there's any reflection about the instruction. It's more about do we change standardized tests, as you pointed out, or do we do away with them? Question for you quickly. Erbs. Do erbs measure what kids have learned because I have a friend who is, you know, her son goes to a very good private school. He does very well there. He's got very good grades, but his erbs were terrible. And she, she went to public school and she said, I would never. I can't believe these ERB scores and my knowing nothing. I said, well, he's doing well in school and he's, you know, he don't worry about it. But maybe she should be worried about it because are they. Or maybe we should all be worried about it. Are they with our own kids? Because I'm sure that that happens a lot. But is that measuring sort of how well they are retaining the different type of math or science or reading skills that they're supposed to have?

Yes.

Okay.

I mean, look, you know, any of those kinds of tests are measuring skills, skills that must be acquired via instruction and repeated practice. So those, those tests do measure those kind of skills. Now, those tests also involve other types of skills like attending.

Right.

Paying attention fully, reading instructions on sections of the test and following those instructions, fully reading each test item and answering carefully and not guessing. Right. Not rushing through it just to be done, not just Christmas treeing your paper because you want to be done with it. Right. Like there's, there's lots of variables that can affect performance on a standardized test that have nothing to do with the skill that's being directly assessed, like reading and everything to do with other types of skills, like learning, attending, all those, you know, those kinds of skills, performance based variables. Right. A kid could not feel good that day. A kid could be too cold or too hot or there's some distraction, or the kid got off on one wrong line, you know, bubbled in the wrong one, and it messed up the whole test. Like, there's lots of problems with those standardized tests. I'm not saying there aren't, but fundamentally those tests measure skills that have to be acquired via instruction. And so when kids perform very poorly on those tests, it is likely an indication that they have failed to master the skills those tests assess. And if they fail to master it, well, the school responsible for teaching those things is accountable for that. It'll. Right, but that's actually not what happens.

No, they go over, they go over it almost as if at least it's the kid's fault. So if you're a parent who's listening and your child is struggling academically or like in the case I just gave you, you know, their, their standardized tests don't reflect maybe their grades in school or they're they are getting some kind of support because they are struggling academically, whether it's tutoring or ADHD medication. And it's still not working besides going to fit learning, which is the, what is the obvious, the obvious thing that they should do. But by the way, with that people can do that.

Right?

You're saying now you're online so you're oh, 100%. Anyone can access you, but anybody can access us.

Finlearningonline. Com.

But how can they advocate within their school? Is there something. Give some guidance on. On that for parents?

Well, and that's a tricky one. And here's what I will say, which is why, to be honest with you, you know, I always, I call my but book my rage project because I had just had enough. Like, you know, you hit that enough is enough point where I had had the same type of conversation with the same devastated, heartbroken, like crying parent.

Yeah.

And it had been over, over two decades of this for me. And, and parents who've been told the same goes garbage from schools and believed that, that those were the experts believed, believed they were. The experts believe they know what they're right and have no distinctions around the unbelievable blind spots that people in education have about how learning actually works and how instruction needs to be designed to ensure learning happens. Educators do not have that training. And I know that sounds crazy to say, but it is a fact. Teachers who are, who are get, got, get degrees in the College of Education, do not get training in the science of learning, and they definitely don't get training in instructional design according to the science of learning and how to measure learning and how to evaluate learning and how to ensure learning has happened and what to do if it isn't. They don't get training in any of that. That's not what they get trained in. And then, and then when kids fail, which of course they do, what happens? It's put on the parent and it's put on the kid.

[Leslie Heaney]

Right.

[Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens]

It's either the parent's not spending enough time, the parent's not involved enough, the parent's not providing. Not all, you know, it's all a parent or it's the. Some kids got something wrong with their ability to learn. I think the most important thing is for parents to understand that, that this is what's happening and arm yourself with that knowledge. Empower yourself to know that. I hate to say it, but if you're given that, if you're told that stuff by people in your school system, do not believe them because they don't have good training in how learning works and how instructional it should be designed. And in instructional interventions of any sort. They're not trained that way. So give your kid the benefit of the doubt. Give yourself a break. You're not supposed to be a math teacher at night. You should. That parents should not be expected to be.

I want to lay on a sofa and have you talk to me about this. I mean, I am just. I certainly struggle with, with that sort of kids coming home and maybe missing stuff in lessons. And my thought is like, how did he learn, leave the school without knowing at all how to do this homework at all how.

Because instruction doesn't work.

Right.

And then, but then she's going to say it's because your son has ADHD and he doesn't listen.

[Leslie Heaney]

Right.

[Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens]

Rather than my instruction fails to elicit listening from your son. And I need to adjust my instruction to ensure I get his respond. His listening by ensuring he's responding. When you're trained in science, especially in behavior science, the number one thing is accountability.

Right.

Like at Fit Learning, we are 100% accountable for the learning gains we produce and our failure to produce them. And I'm not. This isn't magic man. When I say we take data on everything a kid does and we evaluate charts over time. There are a lot of times when charts aren't doing what they need to be doing, when charts don't look the way we want them to. We don't blame the kid and the parent. We say, okay, we, we get into. We get together in meetings. We have think tanks. We're like, what? Why can't we get this kid moving on whatever this skill is? And we come together and we make adjustments and we change our instruction. We try and we try and we try until we get it. It's not like we're emailing the parent and saying, I'm sorry, but your son's just not mastering their math. So what are you going to do about it? Right.

It's like my son's first grade. I same teacher for two different. For two of my children. One, you know, who learned one way. You know, he was the smartest child that's ever come through her school. The other learned a different way again. She just sort of said, I don't, I don't really know. I don't really know what to do here. And then he squads a different way. Yeah.

Yeah. Arming yourself with the knowledge that, first of all, parents. Schools do a brilliant job making parents believe that they're alone.

Yeah.

That they're alone in their kids failures. Schools don't want parents to know that 70% of kids are struggling. Schools don't want you to know that. So schools make you think that you're the only one, that your kid is the only one, that everyone else is doing great and you're not. Do not believe them.

Well, because then they're accountable then, right? Because then it. Then, you know, we could be looking back at them.

Wait, can I say something? Because I never answered this question for you.

[Leslie Heaney]

Yes.

[Dr. Kimberly Nix Behrens]

You asked me about the declining proficiency rates in the United States and if that's real, and how can that possibly be real? So this is a perfect segue into, like, to really connect what you're asking me about what your concerns are about your kid or what you want to learn about your kid. So the reason. Yes, that is 100% correct. And again, those data are available on the National Assessment of Academic Progress. Or it's better if you go on my website, Dr. Kimberlybarons.com I have a bunch of educational statistic charts because they like to bury these kinds of data. Also, like, you kind of have to be a data scientist to be able to pull this stuff out. Yes.

Yeah.

So I am a data scientist. So that's all on my website. So you can see these charts and you can see the decline very visually and very easily. So the reason that academic proficiency rates decline throughout the course of schooling is because of this. Kids are advanced from grade to grade based on age, not based on mastery of prerequisite skills. So because a kid turns 6, they are advanced to first grade, not because they have achieved mastery in phonics, decoding basic words, sight reading basic words. Right. They're not advanced to first grade because they've achieved mastery and prerequisite skills. They're advanced because they turned a year older. Because schools are based on really the developmental psychology theory that, you know, age determines what skills you learn and master, which has absolutely been debunked by all the hard sciences. All the hard natural sciences in learning have debunked that as the unbelievable myth. Age has no relevance with respect to skills that we learn and master. That's about instruction and repeated, reinforced practice to mastery. So because kids are advanced from grade to grade based on age, regardless of their mastery prerequisite skills. Now, you can understand that the higher you get on this, on the grade levels, the less and less prepared you are and the more and more you fail. Right? Because the gap between where you really are instructionally and where you're expected to be gets Wider and wider and wider.

See, so that's why that is. So that makes more sense or that makes total sense. Say when you were explaining that the longer you're in school, the less proficient you become. Because these things build on one another.

So that's what I, you're. I don't know what ages your kids are, but you know, we have a lot of college kids, we have a lot of high school kids. Fit, especially at FIT Online. Because Fit Online is great for kids in high school and college because of their schedules. You will not believe the deficits, especially my college kids. They go back to first, second and third grade. These college kids, they've gotten into college and they are struggling in college because they do not have the core skills required to be able to keep up and do well in college. So this stuff doesn't go away. And homework helpers, homework tutors that people in New York spend 300, 400, $500 an hour, stop doing that. Because if your kid cannot complete their homework independently, if they need an assistant to do their homework, that is a symptom of something much bigger going on than that homework assignment.

Yeah.

They need someone with expertise to go underneath there and fix that. Those pre existing skills deficits that go way back.

Right.

Because if your kid can't do homework independently now, they are definitely not going to be able to do it in college. I promise you that.

Right. And the sooner that you address those deficits. Right. The better it is for the student.

And for, for your, for everything. Because again, remember, like, that's why my kindergarten, first and second graders, they are, it's like, boom, they're fit. It's like, is that what they have to master? Lines is so little is so small. Versus when I get my sixth graders, my seventh graders, my eighth graders, my ninth graders, that's a bigger deal, man. Because now you've got years to, to catch up. You know what I'm saying?

Yes.

And don't wait, man. It doesn't fix itself. Don't believe what they say. Oh, they'll grow out of it. Oh, it's fine. Oh, it'll get better. Oh, they're just not, they're just not a math person. Oh, they're just don't know. None of that is true.

I love how, you know, first of all, I love how what you're doing is based in, in science and in research and understanding how kids learn. Cause that really is the point. Right. It's not them getting, getting the grade. Right. It's them actually having the skills. Kimberly it was so great to see you. I appreciate so much you taking the time. I can't wait. I'm going to ping you next week. I'll be moving and packing up boxes but maybe we can grab. I might need a cup of coffee but wine might be more in line depending after how the moves go. But thank you so much. I'm so so grateful to you and so excited by what you're doing. Thank God bless you and thank you for doing what you're doing on the front lines and for introducing a different type because it's also you brought up the self esteem piece I think is so huge for kids and having getting that positive feedback that they can do well and that there is a path forward for them is just so important for them so well I want to.

Blast thank you for having me on and thank you for letting me talk about this unbelievably important topic and it's the passion of my life.

[Leslie Heaney]

That brings us to the end of this episode of the interview. A huge thank you again to Dr. Kimberly Behrens for joining and as always, thank you all so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I also want to thank the Scout Guide for sponsoring this episode. If you're interested in learning more about how to become a franchise of the Scout Guide, please go visit their [e-mail] and when you do, don't forget to mention the interview. If you enjoyed this episode, please please rate or review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. We release a new episode every Wednesday, so until next Wednesday. This is Leslie and thank you for joining the interview.