> simply because it turns the teacher's day into a drudgery.
Those words were put into my mouth by yummyfajitas. My complaint with DI is that it focuses on repetition and memorization rather than comprehension. It's great that a child can see a word on a test and recognize it then bubble in the correct answer because then we have "achievement." It's result though is meaningless if the child doesn't know what the word means.
I am wary of silver-bullet solutions like DI, though; not only might they not work, but they could also be just as damaging to classroom performance as teach-to-the-test standardized testing has been.