In the saga of American education, reading has undergone many fads: phonics-only, whole language, the LIPS method, and language immersion (i.e., surrounded by good books) — each of which, by itself, is only partly successful in teaching all students how to read.
As a classroom teacher for eight years, six of which were spent as a first-grade teacher, one lesson I learned quickly is that all these methods have to work in concert to help children of all abilities learn how to read. In California, it seems that teaching with phonics has been severely neglected. According to the Los Angeles Times:
Phonics-based lessons are on the fast track to become law in California under a sweeping bill moving through the Legislature that will mandate how schools teach reading, a rare action in a state that generally emphasizes local school district control over dictating instruction.
The bill is the capstone to decades of debate and controversy in California on how best to teach reading amid stubbornly low test scores. Gov. Gavin Newsom has pledged his support, setting aside $200 million to fund teacher training on the new approach in the May revise of his 2025-26 budget proposal.
The Times notes that teachers had been using other methods for reading instruction, such as pictographs, book immersion, and context clues. Again, these aren’t bad strategies, but they just aren’t going to be effective as stand-alones. Phonics — or the sounding out of words phonetically — is critically important and one of the first building blocks of reading.
When a child understands the rules of how letters and clusters of letters sound, they will be able to start decoding words.
Side note: This is where my teacher self has to chime in and point out that even though phonics is essential, not all words follow the rules. Words like “laugh,” “said,” and “what” don’t follow phonetic rules. They would be considered sight words, or words that you have to learn as a whole word by sight because they aren’t conducive to being sounded out.
California teachers have been leaning into a “whole language” (or “balanced literacy”) approach for years. The philosophy behind this method is that students will naturally learn to read by being immersed in good books and receiving constant exposure to written language. Sounding things out is not encouraged.
As a teacher who has taught many children of all abilities — including English-as-a-second-language students, dyslexic students, students with processing issues, and more — I find the whole-language method to be ineffective as a strategy for teaching entry-level readers. It’s tantamount to expecting a child in mathematics to multiply without first understanding how to count. Reading, like learning anything else, has foundational skills that build on each other.
First, students need to develop phonetic awareness. Can they hear beginning/ending sounds? Do they understand the concept of syllables? These are strictly listening skills. Next comes phonics — the understanding that letter symbols correlate with sounds. Then comes reading fluency, which incorporates sight words and emphasizes how we read sentences and words as a whole. After that, vocabulary comes into play, which is all about understanding the meaning of words. Finally, comprehension is the highest tier. Can students read a sentence or a paragraph and understand what it’s telling them?
These pillars are known as the science of reading. It’s rather amusing that California’s insistence on solely using whole language is counter to the known science. Once again, the party of Follow the Science™ did not follow the science.
The skill of using pictures and context clues — as whole language emphasizes — to understand what’s going on in the text is a vocabulary- and comprehension-level skill, not an entry-level skill. If you skip foundational reading steps, then most kids will fail. That failure will lead to low confidence in their own abilities and stifle love of reading fairly quickly.
The Times also notes that California began adopting the whole-language approach in the 1970s and ‘80s. During the George W. Bush administration and his No Child Left Behind Act, there was a big push for phonics. However, after Bush left office, teachers decided they preferred the loosey-goosey, less regimented whole-language approach, and reading scores began their inevitable decline.
Whole language has its place, but phonics is a foundational skill for all readers to master. It may not be the most exciting method — it may, in fact, seem boring — but it is a necessary building block for kids to master before moving on to higher-level reading skills. This reassessment and redirecting of California’s teaching practices is a step in the right direction. This is a big win for California students and a big win for common sense.
