8 ms·

New Bill Would Require Phonics-Based Reading Instruction in California

Nifty3929 3y ago
Must everything be either required or prohibited? Wouldn't it be better to allow schools to try things their own way, observing each other's results and biasing over time toward what works, based on feedback from teachers and parents?
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Fair point, in general. The difficulty is that certain strategies like cueing (using nearby illustrations to help guess what a word is) and relying on just the first letter of a word leads to improved outcomes at first, but worse outcomes when the kids start reading less-familiar words, and reading books with fewer pictures. A kindergarten or first grade teacher might think that it's great to use cueing and other non-phonics based strategies since it improves her kids' reading ability in the short-run. But studies show that it is harmful in the long-run, and should be avoided.
  - everybodyknows 3y ago
    > improves her kids' reading ability in the short-run. This suggests it could be a way to game test-based systems for ranking teachers.
screye 3y ago
The issues with the California education system extend beyond reading. Like medicine, the certification system being as long and expensive prices an entire group of candidates out of the market. No k-12 teacher should need a masters, or a degree in education. An appropriate undergrad major should be sufficient. Funnily, 1st year PhD (with no masters) students become defacto instructors for undergrads but K-12 needs degrees and certifications up the wazoo. The wages for teaching (in CA) are only bad if you need a ton of qualifications to get there. When compared to other peer professions, it's hourly rate is alright. Except, those professions don't need advanced degrees. That's where the other main issue comes up. Teachers' hours are a lie. They're expected to work long unpaid hours, especially in their first few years of setting up their coursework. Add the auxiliary role of being baby sitter, and it quickly burns them out. I won't jump into issues around funding and over hiring for admins. That's a whole another can of worms.
oliwarner 3y ago
We didn't really have widespread phonics in the UK when I was at school. We did a load of things that looked a bit like phonics but going through it with my first daughter showed me how effective it really is. She picked it up really quickly, learned to read early —admittedly with a lot of support from me in lockdown— and can now, at 7, polish a proper book off in a couple of days. Far further ahead than me at 7. Her spelling is pretty creative at times, which isn't surprising given that English is the literal bastard child of several competing lingual styles, but that's really not important for a seven year old. So I was already completely sold, then my 3 year old sat next to me just yesterday and started sounding out words she was hearing, and writing them down. All I'm really saying is I don't understand how this is even a question any more. It's silly that we have to legislate for it, but if people are going to neglect children for whatever unknown ends, why not.
ren_engineer 3y ago
what's old is new, even NYC where the war against phonics was started has given up on it. I guess having Mississippi and Alabama score better than them was the final straw https://thehill.com/homenews/education/3996281-nyc-stressing-phonics-in-historic-revision-to-reading-curriculum/ https://thehill.com/homenews/education/3996281-nyc-stressing... basically 30+ years wasted on a strategy with no scientific basis, I wonder what our school systems are teaching today that will be looked at as being just as dumb 30 years from now
- 7thaccount 3y ago
  Some phonics is probably fine, but it needs to simply be a vehicle to helping kids start reading and then they just need to be encouraged to read. I taught my daughter the sounds of each letter, then we moved on to sounding out two-letter words, then three and four. I pointed out which words were weird and why and we moved on. I then started doing the Bob books with her before she was 5 and then switched to the little Disney short books and Dr. Seuss. Now she's in first grade reading chapter books meant for those in 4th-6th grade, while her classmates are still learning phonics instead of reading. Thankfully her teacher lets me pack her books and she can read those on her own instead of continuing the same tablet lessons she's done a dozen times. I realize not all parents have prioritized reading like I have and that can be challenging to teachers, but a big push should be to teach them enough to get them reading very simple "see spot run" type books and then plenty of practice where things gradually increase in complexity with amount of words, vocabulary, and words with unconventional pronunciation. The human brain will pick up all the words eventually without needing to try to apply 50 different phonics rules. It's just like with common core math where they have a really neat concept to try to make math more intuitive (and it's great for some students), but to many...it means they're just hopelessly confused and never even learn what would have been common for students 30 years ago.
  - GlassOwAter 3y ago
    As someone without kids. Is it uncommon for parents to encourage children to read outside of school?
vonnik 3y ago
This is great downside protection against the quack methods that have sucked millions out of public school budgets: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2023/09/08/controversial-reading-project-teachers-college-will-dissolve https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2023/09/08/c... But … phonics still needs other things to work, like committed teachers and parents who spend the time exposing their kids to books. Phonics is necessary but insufficient. It is the best method, but it still requires a functioning classroom and/or household, which many kids don’t get.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Jolter 3y ago
  You’re right, but that’s a whole different bill, I’m afraid. Don’t let the perfect stand in the way of the better.
binarymax 3y ago
Hard for me to read this without repeating “Hooked on phonics worked for me!” in my head. Nice to see they are still around. https://www.hookedonphonics.com/ https://www.hookedonphonics.com/
WillAdams 3y ago
Ages ago, there was an alphabet system which was phonetic in character, but worked by modifying the lower portion of the letters where necessary --- the idea being that most recognition is based on the upper portion, and that this eased transition. The modification of the lower half was done to match how other letters which made the same sound were shaped, so again, an aspect which would transfer to normal alphabets. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it since that first encounter, and I looked quite hard when my children were learning to read.
slowmovintarget 3y ago
Phonics, then grammar. This is what works, and we know that it works. The evidence says so. We homeschool our child and we've used a UK phonics program and now a UK grammar program. Kiddo is now a voracious reader. Finding suitable books to keep kiddo happy is the new challenge.
- api 3y ago
  Why was there such a push to replace this with other methods? I’ve only heard far fetched conspiracy theories.
  - zharknado 3y ago
    Highly recommend the Sold a Story podcast (mentioned elsewhere) for a synopsis accessible to laypeople. A big part was guilt by association with a behaviorist view of education. Phonics is very rote and mechanical, which clashes with notions of whole, meaningful problem solving. By analogy, think reps on Spanish flash cards vs speaking Spanish to solve a mystery or order lunch. At first blush mechanical drills feel divorced from an authentic lifelike context, which can lead to poor engagement and generalization. Then there’s the affective layer—how you feel about the subject and your ability in it. If all you do is drill Spanish flash cards, you might worry that a lot of kids will hate Spanish instruction. Alternative reading methodologies put a lot of emphasis on kids falling in love with reading. But it turns out that in all the well-intentioned holistic thinking they basically they forgot/missed that decoding phonetic information is just super important as a discrete outcome, and you can’t skip addressing it directly or many kids will fail to infer it on their own. And turns out it’s not so boring for little kids, because it’s new to them, and decoding skills give them much-needed momentum to read literally any text they encounter in their daily lives.
    - slowmovintarget 3y ago
      That's right. Kiddo was grabbing everything around the house and reading all the labels. Everything. Bottles of hot sauce, recycling instructions, air purifier operating manuals, shampoo labels... The world was a marvel because everything could be decoded and understood. Reading is our first superpower. "Don't tell me which one! I'll read and find it!"
unsigner 3y ago
From reading about this reading wars, one would think reading itself was invented around 30 years ago, and people are still not sure how to teach it. Shouldn't that be a solved problem? How were English children taught to read 100 years ago? 150 years ago? something scholarly-looking claims there was 90% literacy rate in England in 1870: https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/education-in-victorian-england/#:~:text=At%20the%20beginning%20of%20the,at%20approximately%2090%25%20in%201870 https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/education-in-victorian-en.... I've learned English as a second (actually fourth) language, and it was definitely weird (the previous ones, including my mother tongue are almost fully phonetic, i.e. much easier to read) - I guess it must be different when learned as a first?
- lupusreal 3y ago
  Just a word of caution: comparing literacy rates from different times and places is difficult because literacy isn't really a binary and the way people are judged to be literate or not literate isn't standardized. To compare literacy rates from two different times or places you need to figure out how each was determined.
  - satvikpendem 3y ago
    Indeed. In North Korea, the population apparently has a 99% literacy rate but their government just defines it as being able to write your own name.
    - pavel_lishin 3y ago
      And I'm sure a lot of people's names end up being whatever the Hangul version of "X" is.
    - bigbillheck 3y ago
      Surely you could provide a citation for this.
      - satvikpendem 3y ago
hartator 3y ago
This sounds like it will learning will be even worse with dyslexia.
- Jolter 3y ago
  Phonics is a method that works fairly decently for dyslectic kids. The other method (whole-word reading) works really, really, REALLY poorly for dyslectics because it relies on recognizing the shape of words. A skill dyslectics are fundamentally unable to acquire before hearing the word. Sounding out words is slow but works even for dyslectics if applied patiently.
Dwedit 3y ago
"Dick and Jane" books were specifically designed to NOT teach phonics. Rather, they tried to teach look-say reading. Phonics is effective and look-say is not. So these books were designed to make kids dumb.
gnicholas 3y ago
I’m surprised this doesn’t mention the Sold A Story podcast and reporting series, which kicked off efforts like this. It’s excellent, and revealing: https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ edit: whoah, can someone help me understand the downvotes here? I realize this was an issue before the series (I work in literacy), but it certainly raised the public awareness in a completely new way.
- GavinMcG 3y ago
  This has been an issue since well before the 2022 podcast. Here’s something from 2019, for example: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/data-how-reading-is-really-being-taught/2019/12 https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/data-how-reading-is...
  - SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
    tbf, I believe the writer behind that podcast has been on the issue for a long time, but yes.
- SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
  Just finished it the other month and second the recommendation. After listening to it, I feel grateful to my father every time I pick up a book. He was dyslexic and spent most of his schooling in remedial reading classes, only to finally be taught phonics at a late age. When our school asked him to volunteer to help teach reading, he completely ignored the method they presented him, which from the sounds of it was some kind of whole word or whole language method, and just taught us phonics. Further, after listening to the podcast I've basically learned to recognise people who weren't taught phonics in the wild. Some of the reading errors other adults make that used to completely perplex me now make perfect sense. I'm in Australia and not actually entirely clear what the current state of our reading education is, but it's clear that for about 50 years or so, at least, the trend ran against phonics, just as in the US. I'm unsure if this has been rectified or not, and it would probably vary by state I suppose. Anyway, the podcast is very revealing not only about reading, but as a cautionary tale about pedagogical and other academic/professional fads.
trebligdivad 3y ago
How does Phonics works for ensuring whether/weather & their/there get remembered? (I'm hopeless at getting them right...)
- Jolter 3y ago
  Phonics is for teaching them to read. Spelling English words is not helped, I think. It’s the single most difficult to spell language because it has no rules of spelling.
  - Jolter 3y ago
    (Well, correction to the above hyperbole: It has rules of spelling but a broken orthography so "spelling cannot be systematically derived from pronunciation, but it also has the more unusual problem that pronunciation cannot be systematically derived from spelling" (wikipedia).
WalterBright 3y ago
We don't need phonics anymore, because now we have reverted to icons, a primitive method of writing abandoned thousands of years ago.
throwoutway 3y ago
Seems the school board(s) can no longer be truste to do their job.
- DragonStrength 3y ago
  I mean, in my state the legislature already banned the old sort of instruction. The issue, as I understand it, more stems from the advocate for the failing system being the head of Columbia's literacy center. If anything, it seems like another mark against trusting our elite universities and the research they produce than anything at the government level. The more conservative states have been quicker to act, which to me wouldn't be expected given how we generally talk about education. I'd be interested to see some exploration of why AL and MS chose the more effective curriculum sooner. Their education rankings have even risen to middle of that pack as CA's own ranking declined. How does this go on? Combined with the data on pandemic recovery, it's looking like my decades of priors about the education systems in each state aren't worth much anymore.
verticalscaler 3y ago
For some additional perspective on the ed biz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6OaYPVueW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6OaYPVueW4 https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/new-math.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/new-ma...

Must everything be either required or prohibited? Wouldn't it be better to allow schools to try things their own way, observing each other's results and biasing over time toward what works, based on feedback from teachers and parents?

gnicholas 3y ago
Fair point, in general. The difficulty is that certain strategies like cueing (using nearby illustrations to help guess what a word is) and relying on just the first letter of a word leads to improved outcomes at first, but worse outcomes when the kids start reading less-familiar words, and reading books with fewer pictures. A kindergarten or first grade teacher might think that it's great to use cueing and other non-phonics based strategies since it improves her kids' reading ability in the short-run. But studies show that it is harmful in the long-run, and should be avoided.
- everybodyknows 3y ago
  > improves her kids' reading ability in the short-run. This suggests it could be a way to game test-based systems for ranking teachers.

screye 3y ago

The issues with the California education system extend beyond reading. Like medicine, the certification system being as long and expensive prices an entire group of candidates out of the market. No k-12 teacher should need a masters, or a degree in education. An appropriate undergrad major should be sufficient. Funnily, 1st year PhD (with no masters) students become defacto instructors for undergrads but K-12 needs degrees and certifications up the wazoo. The wages for teaching (in CA) are only bad if you need a ton of qualifications to get there. When compared to other peer professions, it's hourly rate is alright. Except, those professions don't need advanced degrees. That's where the other main issue comes up. Teachers' hours are a lie. They're expected to work long unpaid hours, especially in their first few years of setting up their coursework. Add the auxiliary role of being baby sitter, and it quickly burns them out. I won't jump into issues around funding and over hiring for admins. That's a whole another can of worms.

oliwarner 3y ago

We didn't really have widespread phonics in the UK when I was at school. We did a load of things that looked a bit like phonics but going through it with my first daughter showed me how effective it really is. She picked it up really quickly, learned to read early —admittedly with a lot of support from me in lockdown— and can now, at 7, polish a proper book off in a couple of days. Far further ahead than me at 7. Her spelling is pretty creative at times, which isn't surprising given that English is the literal bastard child of several competing lingual styles, but that's really not important for a seven year old. So I was already completely sold, then my 3 year old sat next to me just yesterday and started sounding out words she was hearing, and writing them down. All I'm really saying is I don't understand how this is even a question any more. It's silly that we have to legislate for it, but if people are going to neglect children for whatever unknown ends, why not.

ren_engineer 3y ago

what's old is new, even NYC where the war against phonics was started has given up on it. I guess having Mississippi and Alabama score better than them was the final straw https://thehill.com/homenews/education/3996281-nyc-stressing-phonics-in-historic-revision-to-reading-curriculum/ https://thehill.com/homenews/education/3996281-nyc-stressing... basically 30+ years wasted on a strategy with no scientific basis, I wonder what our school systems are teaching today that will be looked at as being just as dumb 30 years from now

7thaccount 3y ago
Some phonics is probably fine, but it needs to simply be a vehicle to helping kids start reading and then they just need to be encouraged to read. I taught my daughter the sounds of each letter, then we moved on to sounding out two-letter words, then three and four. I pointed out which words were weird and why and we moved on. I then started doing the Bob books with her before she was 5 and then switched to the little Disney short books and Dr. Seuss. Now she's in first grade reading chapter books meant for those in 4th-6th grade, while her classmates are still learning phonics instead of reading. Thankfully her teacher lets me pack her books and she can read those on her own instead of continuing the same tablet lessons she's done a dozen times. I realize not all parents have prioritized reading like I have and that can be challenging to teachers, but a big push should be to teach them enough to get them reading very simple "see spot run" type books and then plenty of practice where things gradually increase in complexity with amount of words, vocabulary, and words with unconventional pronunciation. The human brain will pick up all the words eventually without needing to try to apply 50 different phonics rules. It's just like with common core math where they have a really neat concept to try to make math more intuitive (and it's great for some students), but to many...it means they're just hopelessly confused and never even learn what would have been common for students 30 years ago.
- GlassOwAter 3y ago
  As someone without kids. Is it uncommon for parents to encourage children to read outside of school?

vonnik 3y ago

This is great downside protection against the quack methods that have sucked millions out of public school budgets: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2023/09/08/controversial-reading-project-teachers-college-will-dissolve https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2023/09/08/c... But … phonics still needs other things to work, like committed teachers and parents who spend the time exposing their kids to books. Phonics is necessary but insufficient. It is the best method, but it still requires a functioning classroom and/or household, which many kids don’t get.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Jolter 3y ago
You’re right, but that’s a whole different bill, I’m afraid. Don’t let the perfect stand in the way of the better.

binarymax 3y ago

Hard for me to read this without repeating “Hooked on phonics worked for me!” in my head. Nice to see they are still around. https://www.hookedonphonics.com/ https://www.hookedonphonics.com/

WillAdams 3y ago

Ages ago, there was an alphabet system which was phonetic in character, but worked by modifying the lower portion of the letters where necessary --- the idea being that most recognition is based on the upper portion, and that this eased transition. The modification of the lower half was done to match how other letters which made the same sound were shaped, so again, an aspect which would transfer to normal alphabets. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it since that first encounter, and I looked quite hard when my children were learning to read.

slowmovintarget 3y ago

Phonics, then grammar. This is what works, and we know that it works. The evidence says so. We homeschool our child and we've used a UK phonics program and now a UK grammar program. Kiddo is now a voracious reader. Finding suitable books to keep kiddo happy is the new challenge.

api 3y ago
Why was there such a push to replace this with other methods? I’ve only heard far fetched conspiracy theories.
- zharknado 3y ago
  Highly recommend the Sold a Story podcast (mentioned elsewhere) for a synopsis accessible to laypeople. A big part was guilt by association with a behaviorist view of education. Phonics is very rote and mechanical, which clashes with notions of whole, meaningful problem solving. By analogy, think reps on Spanish flash cards vs speaking Spanish to solve a mystery or order lunch. At first blush mechanical drills feel divorced from an authentic lifelike context, which can lead to poor engagement and generalization. Then there’s the affective layer—how you feel about the subject and your ability in it. If all you do is drill Spanish flash cards, you might worry that a lot of kids will hate Spanish instruction. Alternative reading methodologies put a lot of emphasis on kids falling in love with reading. But it turns out that in all the well-intentioned holistic thinking they basically they forgot/missed that decoding phonetic information is just super important as a discrete outcome, and you can’t skip addressing it directly or many kids will fail to infer it on their own. And turns out it’s not so boring for little kids, because it’s new to them, and decoding skills give them much-needed momentum to read literally any text they encounter in their daily lives.
  - slowmovintarget 3y ago
    That's right. Kiddo was grabbing everything around the house and reading all the labels. Everything. Bottles of hot sauce, recycling instructions, air purifier operating manuals, shampoo labels... The world was a marvel because everything could be decoded and understood. Reading is our first superpower. "Don't tell me which one! I'll read and find it!"

unsigner 3y ago

From reading about this reading wars, one would think reading itself was invented around 30 years ago, and people are still not sure how to teach it. Shouldn't that be a solved problem? How were English children taught to read 100 years ago? 150 years ago? something scholarly-looking claims there was 90% literacy rate in England in 1870: https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/education-in-victorian-england/#:~:text=At%20the%20beginning%20of%20the,at%20approximately%2090%25%20in%201870 https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/education-in-victorian-en.... I've learned English as a second (actually fourth) language, and it was definitely weird (the previous ones, including my mother tongue are almost fully phonetic, i.e. much easier to read) - I guess it must be different when learned as a first?

lupusreal 3y ago
Just a word of caution: comparing literacy rates from different times and places is difficult because literacy isn't really a binary and the way people are judged to be literate or not literate isn't standardized. To compare literacy rates from two different times or places you need to figure out how each was determined.
- satvikpendem 3y ago
  Indeed. In North Korea, the population apparently has a 99% literacy rate but their government just defines it as being able to write your own name.
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    And I'm sure a lot of people's names end up being whatever the Hangul version of "X" is.
  - bigbillheck 3y ago
    Surely you could provide a citation for this.
    - satvikpendem 3y ago

hartator 3y ago

This sounds like it will learning will be even worse with dyslexia.

Jolter 3y ago
Phonics is a method that works fairly decently for dyslectic kids. The other method (whole-word reading) works really, really, REALLY poorly for dyslectics because it relies on recognizing the shape of words. A skill dyslectics are fundamentally unable to acquire before hearing the word. Sounding out words is slow but works even for dyslectics if applied patiently.

Dwedit 3y ago

"Dick and Jane" books were specifically designed to NOT teach phonics. Rather, they tried to teach look-say reading. Phonics is effective and look-say is not. So these books were designed to make kids dumb.

gnicholas 3y ago

I’m surprised this doesn’t mention the Sold A Story podcast and reporting series, which kicked off efforts like this. It’s excellent, and revealing: https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ edit: whoah, can someone help me understand the downvotes here? I realize this was an issue before the series (I work in literacy), but it certainly raised the public awareness in a completely new way.

GavinMcG 3y ago
This has been an issue since well before the 2022 podcast. Here’s something from 2019, for example: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/data-how-reading-is-really-being-taught/2019/12 https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/data-how-reading-is...
- SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
  tbf, I believe the writer behind that podcast has been on the issue for a long time, but yes.
SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
Just finished it the other month and second the recommendation. After listening to it, I feel grateful to my father every time I pick up a book. He was dyslexic and spent most of his schooling in remedial reading classes, only to finally be taught phonics at a late age. When our school asked him to volunteer to help teach reading, he completely ignored the method they presented him, which from the sounds of it was some kind of whole word or whole language method, and just taught us phonics. Further, after listening to the podcast I've basically learned to recognise people who weren't taught phonics in the wild. Some of the reading errors other adults make that used to completely perplex me now make perfect sense. I'm in Australia and not actually entirely clear what the current state of our reading education is, but it's clear that for about 50 years or so, at least, the trend ran against phonics, just as in the US. I'm unsure if this has been rectified or not, and it would probably vary by state I suppose. Anyway, the podcast is very revealing not only about reading, but as a cautionary tale about pedagogical and other academic/professional fads.

trebligdivad 3y ago

How does Phonics works for ensuring whether/weather & their/there get remembered? (I'm hopeless at getting them right...)

Jolter 3y ago
Phonics is for teaching them to read. Spelling English words is not helped, I think. It’s the single most difficult to spell language because it has no rules of spelling.
- Jolter 3y ago
  (Well, correction to the above hyperbole: It has rules of spelling but a broken orthography so "spelling cannot be systematically derived from pronunciation, but it also has the more unusual problem that pronunciation cannot be systematically derived from spelling" (wikipedia).

WalterBright 3y ago

We don't need phonics anymore, because now we have reverted to icons, a primitive method of writing abandoned thousands of years ago.

throwoutway 3y ago

Seems the school board(s) can no longer be truste to do their job.

DragonStrength 3y ago
I mean, in my state the legislature already banned the old sort of instruction. The issue, as I understand it, more stems from the advocate for the failing system being the head of Columbia's literacy center. If anything, it seems like another mark against trusting our elite universities and the research they produce than anything at the government level. The more conservative states have been quicker to act, which to me wouldn't be expected given how we generally talk about education. I'd be interested to see some exploration of why AL and MS chose the more effective curriculum sooner. Their education rankings have even risen to middle of that pack as CA's own ranking declined. How does this go on? Combined with the data on pandemic recovery, it's looking like my decades of priors about the education systems in each state aren't worth much anymore.

verticalscaler 3y ago

For some additional perspective on the ed biz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6OaYPVueW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6OaYPVueW4 https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/new-math.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/new-ma...