Too many California kids can’t read. Phonics alone may not be the fix.
Every minute counts in the quest to turn children into readers.
That’s why Joshua Elementary School’s principal, Lorraine Zapata, guards a door shortly after 8 a.m. She stops each student crossing the threshold and asks for a handshake.
As Ms. Zapata uses her right hand for the formal greeting, her left thumb clicks a counting device. Each click represents a tardy student. By day’s end, the number grows to 131 out of 500-some students. Their efforts to teach students how to read are in vain, she says, if the students aren’t there to learn.
She hurries them off to class, where reading instruction is about to begin. The school is among a growing number nationwide that have embraced a phonics-based “science of reading” teaching style at a critical time. Simply put, too many of America’s kids can’t read.
Ineffective teaching strategies, exacerbated by pandemic-era learning disruption, have snowballed into a generation of struggling readers. Not making changes, science of reading proponents warn, could have wide-reaching implications, for both children and society at large.
“What is that going to be in the future?” says Maryanne Wolf,
