More states should follow the science on reading
Washington Examiner
Video Embed
New York City last week became the latest school district to mandate the use of phonics in elementary school reading programs, joining 31 states and the District of Columbia in a national movement toward teaching that works.
For too long, children’s learning and ultimate literacy have been damaged by academics and teachers unions pushing trendy reading methods. The data are in. Phonics works best. It is time all states put it back in classrooms.
It is not often that the nation looks to Mississippi as a shining example of public policy, but there is no denying what the state has accomplished since it obliged teachers to use phonics in classrooms. From 49th in 2013 to 21st in 2022, Mississippi fourth graders have posted reading scores that have turned heads.
Now, states are following suit, with Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia all recently passing phonics-only laws. Ohio is in the process of passing its own law, vigorously opposed by teachers unions, who seem at every turn to act against the interests of children.
A product of leftist academic thinking, the “whole language” approach to teaching young children how to read first became popular at teaching colleges and then spread to schools as young teachers took their first jobs. Where phonics focuses on breaking words down into building blocks of how letter combinations sound, whole language learning focuses on memorizing entire words.
It was quickly clear that this failed to teach children to read, so leftist academics switched to what they call “balanced literacy,” which they sold as a compromise between phonics and whole learning. In practice, it was just whole-language-light. Reading scores continued to slump.
California was, as ever, ground zero for what went wrong, with the whole language and balanced literacy revolutions. So, the Golden State has the highest adult illiteracy rate in the country. Democrats who control California are too proud to learn from Mississippi’s example. The state’s superintendent of public instruction, Tony Thurmond, vows to fight any effort to mandate phonics in California. “We are not promoting a one-size-fits-all approach in California,” he said. “That’s been tried before. Our state is too large, is too diverse.”
Diversity is just an excuse. New York City is plenty diverse, and its schools are happily embracing the phonics revival.