Fifteen hundred high school students who had taken part in the Direct Instruction (DI) Follow Through Program in elementary school were studied to examine the impact of DI on their high school careers. Positive effects were found in each of the six sites studied. Two sites demonstrated positive effects in both achievement and graduation/dropout rate. In four sites, positive effects were found in some areas of high school achievement. In three, 9th grade reading achievement was within 10 percentile points of the national median, indicating that students had maintained the level achieved at the end of Grade 3. In four sites, the dropout rate for DI students was significantly lower than that for non-DI students. Generally, positive effects were stronger in communities with a kindergarten-starting program than a first-grade-starting program. The only two significant negative effects were in math achievement in one site and in the dropout rate of one cohort in another site. (CMG)