Good Framework for Textbooks

California’s reading crisis has to be solved in the earliest grades with competent, well-trained primary teachers who are equipped with the proper tools. Chief among those tools are the right reading texts. The state’s excellent new reading and language arts framework recognizes this, focusing on the importance of a balanced, systematic and explicitly phonics-based reading series.

All children need to become competent readers in English by the end of the third grade, or by age 9, before harder schoolwork and the state’s new ban on social promotion literally leave them behind.

The framework, a blueprint for early reading proficiency, aligns classroom instruction with the state’s tough new academic standards and tells publishers what is expected of their textbooks. Already approved by the State Board of Education, it replaces 1987 guidelines that tilted reading instruction toward the whole-language approach, which immersed pupils in literature before they were taught explicit fundamental skills. Because this method did not work for many teachers and pupils, state reading scores fell.

The new framework document should be required reading for teachers, principals and school boards. One of the high points is a requirement for 2 1/2 hours of reading and language arts instruction every day in the primary grades. Parents would also benefit from understanding the guidelines, but the 300-page document is daunting. The state should consider issuing pamphlets for parents setting forth requirements for individual grades and perhaps also publishing an executive summary for others interested in improving the schools.

Textbook publishers who covet the nation’s most lucrative textbook market are studying the framework. Competition among them should result in excellent reading series tailored for the state’s rigorous standards and diverse student populations. But no matter how brilliant the books, the State Board of Education should adopt only two or three reading series so that students moving to a different school would be more likely to be familiar with the texts. The textbook choices, expected by July, should include one series that works with young pupils no matter what language they speak at home or their degree of preparation when they start school.

There can be no more excuses, no more blaming failure on the children or their parents or their specific circumstances. New research is focusing on the importance of good teaching above all other factors, including poverty.

All students must be expected to learn to read, as the framework demands, “with comprehension and enthusiasm.” Children who hate to read are not likely to achieve the state’s new standard that calls for fourth-graders to read extensively at home, in addition to the reading they do for school. Youngsters cannot gain the fluency, speed or vocabulary they need unless they get the proper foundation and practice in the early grades.

California’s new framework gives the highest priority to instruction in reading, the skill that leads to all other academic skills. It’s the first step in climbing out of the deep hole where the state’s test scores lie.