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Could phonics solve California's reading crisis? Inside the push for sweeping changes
latimes.com
Could phonics solve California's reading crisis? Inside the push for sweeping changes
8:31 AM · Jun 2, 2025. //

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. //

What is so infuriating about all this, aside from the obvious fact that generations of kids have been unnecessarily hampered in their education and hence their lifetime achievements, is that liberals are always given a pass for ruining things, and when they shift to proven methods, they somehow get credit for doing the obvious. //

SSGT Ranger Davis ConsistentConservative
2 hours ago
It took 100 years to rewire our brains to make us a society that thinks in written words. Giving up phonics was an attempt by the teacher’s union to disrupt the reading ability of our students and create another “crisis” that they could ask for more money. As a recently retired teacher (on my fourth day so far) I’m sure that was their intention, even though I haven’t been part of the union in twenty years.

Watt SSGT Ranger Davis
an hour ago
You may be right, but I think there were other factors as well:

• The desire to come up with something new and innovative for the sake of it, or to demonstrate that education, too, is a real science.

• The fact that, once we get the phonics down, we do tend to see whole words as units and no longer need to sound them out (kind of like reading Chinese characters). So the "innovators" thought they could skip the phonics step and jump to adult reading.