From my observations, I would surmise that in a school of mediocre teachers, the direct approach is probably better; a more flexible approach to lesson planning

From my observations, I would surmise that in a school of mediocre teachers, the direct approach is probably better; a more flexible approach to lesson planning would just gives those teachers an excuse to throw up their hands and say “follow your bliss, kids”. But the constraints that provide necessary support to mediocre teachers are a straitjacket to the good teachers... thus encouraging good teachers to abandon the field. When I was an ed student, the guy who taught the reading-methods class said that direct instruction was absolutely an important part of a whole-language classroom; if you see that kids in your class are having trouble reading words with “th”, then you are doing nothing wrong in the sight of God and Dewey by taking them aside and presenting them with a lesson on “th”. But a teacher in a whole-language class who isn’t paying attention will not realize what kids are getting stuck on and therefore will just assume that everything is going to work out, somehow, eventually. A good teacher in a class that is all phonics phonics phonics, on the other hand, will be aware that a lot of the phonics lessons are wasting everyone’s time on unnecessary drills.