California’s Challenge

Why Johnny Can’t Read,” a national bestseller in 1955, attacked the abandonment of phonics in the nation’s public schools. A similar critique could be written today, cataloging California’s encyclopedic failures in public education.

All of course is not bad. Top California students can take credit for winning the national Academic Decathlon championship, placing second in the Science Bowl, acing multiple Advanced Placement exams and racking up other academic honors. More students are also taking the more difficult academic courses needed for college admission and many get good grades. But the bigger picture is unacceptable: statewide standardized test scores are well below the national average and huge numbers of students need remedial math and reading.

It’s all laid out in grim detail in this Times special project, “Public Education: California’s Perilous Slide,” which continues through Tuesday. In reading, the state’s fourth-graders tie for last with Louisiana; in math, they are second from the bottom.

Reading Meltdown

In part, these children are casualties of the state’s faddish embrace of the laissez-faire whole-language method of reading instruction, which did not include a proper balance with essential phonics-based instruction. California led this failed revolution when the state Department of Education in 1987 all but abandoned phonics in favor of an enriched, literature-based approach to reading instruction, which worked for only the brightest and hardest-working students. Most other states soon followed, as did major textbook publishers. California also got sidetracked on prolonged multicultural debates. Too much well-meaning but misguided energy was drained in foolish arguments over whether schools should teach Mark Twain or whether textbooks spent enough pages on Shakespeare or James Baldwin. The answer was not either/or and should have been simple: Teach all that our children need to know in a global marketplace and ought to know in a diverse nation and state.

The result of all of this has been a growing national concern about reading comprehension, and a return by most states, led by California, to systematic phonics-based instruction, which teaches a child to read by associating letters and sounds. But the lingering damage requires another revolution, in remedial reading.

Reading, a gateway skill to other subjects, is especially critical in high school because students are expected to master more sophisticated material. An in-depth look by The Times at seven high schools across the state finds many examples of how poor reading comprehension forces teachers to lower expectations, simplify course work, avoid the classics and water down tests. On many campuses, the lack of literacy is compounded by a shortage of textbooks and library books.

High school teachers shouldn’t be expected to teach reading. But somebody had better do it. California needs a new initiative that assigns reading specialists to every campus where children are failing on the state’s new standardized tests. Remedial reading, currently nonexistent in most school districts, should be required daily for all students who cannot read accurately and easily with good comprehension. These students should get intensive extra help during and after the regular school day. And what better time to revive another sensible idea: summer school, or for the year-round schools, winter school.

Gaining Accountability

This additional instruction will be expensive, but Sacramento should be willing as long as schools deliver results.

“Results” is a dirty word in California education circles. No one is held accountable when a student fails. Not the principal, not the teacher, not the parents, not even the student. Schools don’t get an extra dime if they improve, nor do they lose a cent if test scores plunge.

Consider Texas, which is demographically similar to California. Its fourth-grade math scores now rank in the top 10 among the 39 states that can be compared; its reading scores are at the median. California students rank at or near the very bottom. In every category--white, Latino, black, children of college-educated parents, children of high school dropouts--young Texans outperform young Californians. That broad success, which will be outlined in Tuesday’s special section, is attributed to rigorous accountability that includes an innovative use of test data to track individual student performance. Every student is held to the same standard. Schools that raise test scores, improve student attendance and reduce the dropout rate are rewarded. Schools that perform at unacceptable levels are sanctioned. Each school receives a public rating--exemplary, recognized, acceptable or low performing. A transforming performance pays off with promotions for principals and career boosts for teachers. A poor performance can result in intervention from state-appointed managers who oversee a troubled district, or the firing of faculty members. Failing schools also get extra help. The result, over the past five years, has been steady improvement in test scores.

The Texas reform would not have been possible without the prodding of influential business leaders who, concerned about the poor quality of the state’s work force, championed improvement. The business community got help from an unusual ally, the state’s largest teachers union. The coalition attracted strong support in the Texas Legislature.

Why not do it in California?

As California’s steady erosion of literacy skills portends trouble, so too does the failure of bilingual education in a state that is home to nearly half of the nation’s immigrant students and where nearly one-fourth of students speak little or no English when they start school.

Among the more startling findings of The Times’ special education project: More than 1,000 schools with limited-English students failed to redesignate a single bilingual student last year. Whether the teachers used traditional bilingual instruction in the child’s primary language or taught solely in English, no students in those schools learned enough English to progress into regular classes. Without consequences to or assistance for such schools, there is no incentive to succeed. There is a disincentive, in fact, since students classified as limited-English draw extra federal, state and sometimes local funds to a school. Instead, the state should consider a per-pupil bonus to every school that quickly teaches children proficiency in English.

Role of Parents, State

Progress for all kids begins with parents: Mothers and fathers who hold high expectations of their children, help them achieve in every way possible, require them to work hard and praise them for a job well done.

Reading to a child must begin at home, long before school age. Once children enter the primary grades, classrooms should be staffed by experienced teachers trained in reading instruction that emphasizes phonics and reading comprehension. Teachers holding emergency credentials, who have never taken a course in how to teach reading, should not be assigned to teach what they do not know.

The Legislature needs to lengthen the school year, toughen requirements for teacher training, increase professional development for teachers already in the classroom and link it to the skills urgently needed. Principals and teachers who get results should be rewarded. Those who don’t, year after year, should be forced out.

A reinvestment in public education would cost billions, and no taxpayer wants to throw good money after bad. The Legislature should target investments, in the same way the space race of the 1950s and 1960s directed infusions of public money into specific efforts that paid off for all Americans.

If California students are to compete globally, the state’s education crisis should be treated like the national crisis sparked in 1957 when the Russians beat the U.S. into space

The success of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, urgently reordered national priorities. “No event since Pearl Harbor set off such repercussions in public life,” according to Walter A. McDougall in “The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age.” Winning became patriotic. The space race launched a government-sponsored technical revolution that pumped billions into math and science teacher-training, secondary and college education, research and development and a new agency named NASA. The collective effort got results in high school classrooms, on university campuses, in aerospace careers and the fledging computer industry, in technological and medical advances, and of course with a victory: the first man on the moon. Just as Americans set a goal then and worked hard together to reach it, California must take the initiative, set a goal--first, reading proficiency for all children--and work collectively to reach it. ‘ (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Reading Numbers

Fourth-graders’ average scores* in selected states on the reading test of the National Assessment of Educational Progress 1994.

Maine (1st) 229

New Jersey 220

Texas 213

Mississippi 203

California 198 (last**)

*out of a possible score of 500

**tie with Louisiana

Source: NAEP