A Proper Turn to Phonics

The strong reading prescription announced by Los Angeles school Supt. Ruben Zacarias would make phonics mandatory, require two hours daily of reading instruction in elementary schools and increase teachers’ skills. The school board should quickly embrace this initiative, which would ensure that English-proficient and limited-English students alike get solidly grounded reading instruction.

Zacarias’ reading initiative, as currently proposed, would cost $22 million over four years. School board members cannot evaluate this investment until they get details later this week, but they surely agree that reading instruction in the district must be strengthened. The plan would end any ambiguity; phonics would take primacy, as the state requires, though the whole-language approach of learning to read by reading would not be abandoned.

Two out of three pupils in the Los Angeles Unified School District fail to read at grade level by the end of third grade, a critical academic benchmark.

This issue has assumed even greater importance since the passage of Proposition 227, which ended most bilingual education. The district was, incredibly, refusing phonics and reading instruction to limited-English students and teaching only conversational English.

Pupils would also benefit from the doubling of direct reading and language arts instruction to two hours. This intensive approach has paid off in other school districts that have large numbers of poor readers. And by limiting elementary schools to one of three approved reading textbooks, more continuity would be provided to students who move from one school to another. The requirement to test students frequently would assess how the teacher and materials are succeeding, as well as identify learners who are falling behind.

Teachers would benefit from an increase in professional development geared specifically to phonics instruction and the systematic, phonics-based reading textbooks that district schools will use exclusively. The state allots only three days for such teacher training, a shortcoming that should be corrected by Gray Davis when he takes over as governor.

Zacarias deserves credit for putting students first and making reading the foremost among subjects. What he still has to prove is that he can turn his vision into reality in the classroom.