What does Practical Homeschooling Magazine say about The Maloney Method? What Is Practical Homeschooling and Who is Mary Pride? Practical Homeschooling has been the leading homeschool magazine for the last 15 years and probably longer. Mary Pride, its editor, is the Oprah Winfrey of the homeschooling movement. She was there to participate in and write about many of the early battles, issues, concerns and questions faced by this nascent movement. She created âThe Big Book of Home Learningâ as a resource book for early homechoolers. Most of the leading homeschool products can be found in the ads of her publication. She also does comprehensive reviews of new products and is widely respected for her ability to pick winners. A dozen years ago, I was contacted by Mary Pride because she had been made aware of our newly published reading series, âTeach Your Children to Read Wellâ. She not only decided to review the products, but she also decided to feature me, on the cover no less, for my work in using the research to create empirically-proven teaching programs. She also dubbed this new approach, The Maloney Method. It took me twelve years to adopt the name she gave me. The Maloney Method Reviewed In her review Mary systematically and thoroughly outlines the history of the research we used to develop the Teach Your Children Well series ( i.e. The Follow Through Project research studies) She describes its costs (2.2 Billion), its comparative nature (16 methods compared head to head nationally.) its huge numbers (250,000 students nation-wide) its length (almost 20 years) She considers the fact that only 2 of 16 methods worked when compared directly to one another. And the fact that our products used both of the successful methods to provide 2 years of learning every year with at-risk students. She even explains why the public school districts withdrew support from these programs despite their consistent success. Mary Pride appreciates that one size does not fit all, but she saw several benefits of our model, which were; Great help to those with special needs children Scientific help in measuring your childâs progress from day to day, regardless of his or her ability Generating more thought on curriculum design. Generating helpful discussion on the benefits of teacher-centered rather than child-centered educational methods. In the last dozen years, we have successfully taught many thousands of children, especially those at risk of failure, to read, do math, learn to spell and improve their language skills. We have been successful working with foster families and children with autism. It really helps to have someone of Mary Prideâs capacity to help blaze a trail for our work.
