[gregwebs]

The recent move away from phonics has been disastrous, and states that are using phonics now are seeing better results.

> Some have called it the “Mississippi miracle” ...

> A clear policy story is behind these improvements: imposing high standards while also giving schools the resources they needed to meet them. In 2013, Mississippi enacted a law requiring that third graders pass a literacy exam to be promoted to the next grade. It didn’t just issue a mandate, though; it began screening kids for reading deficiencies, training instructors in how to teach reading better (by, among other things, emphasizing phonics), and hiring literacy coaches to work in the lowest-performing schools. Louisiana’s improvements came about after a similar policy cocktail was administered, starting in 2021.

I would be interested to know more about the approach with literacy coaches. I donate to a charity that does 1 on 1 reading tutoring: https://readingpowerinc.org/

If we cannot as a society teach our children how to read, something is very wrong and we need to invest heavily in fixing it.

[joemi]

I don't even understand how one could learn to read without phonics.

[Nasrudith]

I know from my earliest memories that reading is possible from whole words if you are read to enough without being formally taught. Granted at that point my attention span was too lacking to really read books by myself, compared to being read to.

But that basically amounts to probably just learning phonics indirectly through examples and drawing patterns, and specifically is an exception and not the norm. And children's books even if they don't use the phonetic alphabet teach through example when read properly.

I don't know enough about whole language learning theory and its development aside from the fact that it has been discredited. Perhaps it was based off of the outliers and wrongly assuming that the higher end of the early literacy bell curve's techniques would be generally applicable?