The Future Is Now for School Literacy Push

Stung by the dismal performance of its students on national tests, the state of California four years ago launched a campaign to attack the literacy crisis on several fronts.

As part of the California Reading Initiative, the Legislature reduced the size of primary-grade classes, mandated use of the sound-letter techniques of phonics in textbooks and provided new teacher training on the basics.

Equally important, the state adopted language arts standards so teachers would know what to expect of their students in each grade. And a new standardized test--the Stanford 9--was required for students in grades 2 to 11.

Gov. Gray Davis’ recent education reforms--which create reading academies for struggling students and teacher training institutes in reading instruction--build on the earlier efforts.

Alice Furry has closely monitored the many reforms.

Furry is the director of the reading initiative’s State Resources Center, a publicly funded clearinghouse of information about research and state laws on reading instruction. She also is assistant superintendent of instructional support at the Sacramento County Office of Education.

From her office in Sacramento, she recently reflected on the progress of the initiative.

Q: Why will these reforms work when so many measures in the past have failed to boost achievement?

A: We have no excuses now. We have clear alignment among standards, instruction, materials and assessments.

If we use our state dollars wisely, we have this potential to have 95% of our kids reading on grade level by the end of third grade. We have to be committed to this. We have this huge civic responsibility to create strong readers. Let’s train teachers in the research. Let’s give them the right instructional materials to teach the children.

Q: This is the fourth year of the reading initiative. What are the major accomplishments and where has the campaign fallen short?

A: I think the majority of our school districts are well informed now about the research on reading, which says that children must be explicitly taught to unlock the sound-letter code of English.

However, I don’t think we have turned the corner. I think only 10% of the districts understand what it takes to really get our students reading on grade level. I think we are still rather complacent about what it will take.

I see too many programs that will give teachers a two-day training on “What is phonics?” You get the terminology and the examples, but that doesn’t translate to 60-minute classroom lessons--out of 2 1/2-hour blocks of daily reading instruction--in first, second and third grades. The problem is that districts have not had access to really substantial basic instructional programs or staff development to help teachers use such materials.

Q: So we need new textbooks. Aren’t we about to get them?

A: Yes. Districts can purchase comprehensive language arts reading programs as well as partial programs that provide practice in specific skills such as spelling or decoding or phoneme awareness. It is part of a special textbook adoption this summer to align materials with the new content standards.

I would hope that the books would be available in the fall. District committeeswould need to be working this summer selecting materials. Certainly by October materials could be in classrooms.

Q: What role do phonics and whole language play in those reading materials? Are the two philosophies necessarily at odds with one another?

A: Phonics is just a piece of an effective reading program, one of the fundamental technical skills children need to become readers. It is being overemphasized now because it was totally missing in the last decade.

Whole language has as its cornerstone that we will teach reading naturally. It assumes children learn words if they learn them in the context of stories. It is not scientifically grounded.

This initiative has forced educational policy to be grounded in scientific research because when it was not, we were making mistakes.

Q: The Stanford 9 became a key component of the reading initiative last year. The test raises many questions for parents and teachers. When will this year’s results be available?

A: The public will receive summary results for schools, districts, counties and the state on June 30, over the Internet, at https://www.cde.ca.gov. The districts, in July through September, will be sending home individual student reports.

Q: Can you explain the so-called augmentation, which is new this year?

A: The augmentation is the state’s way of testing students on the new standards. Additional test questions have been selected to match the standards in language arts and math.

A separate report [on the augmentation] will be generated to show parents how their children are mastering the grade-level standards.

This is the base year for the augmentation. Few districts have had time to change their instructional programs to reflect the standards, so we don’t expect to see high performance among our students.

This should motivate districts to move swiftly to incorporate the standards in every classroom at every grade level.

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For more information about the resources center, call (916) 228-2425 or go to https://www.csbe.ca.gov.

* SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LIVING: Children who resist bedtime may find good company in books about a badger and a mischievous guinea pig who enjoy being night owls. E6