The Scores Still Say It All

California is still flunking reading, and it’s running out of excuses. Our fourth-graders rank next to last on the nation’s report card, the 1998 National Assessment of Educational Progress, as reported Friday. Only Hawaii’s fourth-graders did worse.

The majority of those California students cannot read at the most fundamental level. Still, the state’s showing was a very slight improvement over 1994’s tie for dead last. Perhaps it indicates the first stirrings of improvement due to a greater emphasis statewide on the phonics method of reading instruction, class-size reduction in the primary grades and tougher academic standards. But second from last is no cause for cheering.

The experts know how children acquire reading skills and what discourages learning how to read. They attribute the continued failures in California to large class sizes in previous years, high rates of poverty, great numbers of English learners, high rates of transiency and classrooms staffed by inexperienced teachers with insufficient training. These are huge obstacles, but they are not unique to California.

The Texas school enrollment has demographics similar to California’s. In Texas, students are increasingly Latino, increasingly English learners and increasingly poor. They are also making progress on the national tests and performing at the national average. They are outperforming California students in every category: overall, gender, race, ethnicity, economic, urban and suburban. They are putting our fourth-graders to shame.

Texas doesn’t wait for pupils to fail. Teachers are encouraged to assess primary students early and often, to diagnose obstacles to reading and correct them quickly. The state requires an assessment of every student, every school and every district. Top-down accountability requires even the lowest-performing students to improve, or the principal and school district face consequences.

There are few consequences for failure in California schools. Gov. Gray Davis wants to change that with legislation that would hold students, teachers and principals more accountable, with rewards for success and assistance for laggards, along with heavier consequences for failure. The Legislature should not delay this progress.

Davis also wants to strengthen reading teachers and provide remedial reading programs for struggling primary pupils. He is on the right track, but the state and the school districts will have to take other steps, such as reducing the clout of the unions, if they are to weed out ineffective teachers and put an excellent reading teacher in every primary classroom.

Teachers’ jobs are easier if children come to school ready to learn. Parents should set high expectations and encourage their kids to read. Understandably, the national test results showed that fourth-graders who read more, at school and at home, read better. So do pupils who discuss their books and studies at home and those who watch less television.

Educational reform has begun--in Sacramento, in classrooms, in homes. Reading scores could rise substantially in each of the next five years if the reforms are unimpeded. Any other result is unacceptable.