California today is expected to complete its return to phonics as the foundation of reading instruction when the State Board of Education adopts new guidelines calling for students to learn basic word skills before tackling literature and other material.
The blueprint for classroom lessons will cap four years of reading reform in California and drive fundamental changes in curricula, textbooks and teacher training.
The reading and language arts "framework" will replace 1987 guidelines that called for students to learn to read by being immersed in literature. That approach was based on a method of instruction known as "whole language," and is now widely blamed for the dismal performance of California's elementary school students on national tests.
"The idea of starting with literature certainly didn't work for large numbers of California children," said Marion Joseph, a member of the state board. "You can only attend to the great ideas if you can get through the mechanics automatically and fluently."
Besides shifting philosophies, the new framework urges schools to devote more time to reading.
Pupils in kindergarten through third grade should spend a minimum of 2 1/2 hours on the subject each day. Those in grades four through eight should spend two hours. And high school students should take at least one language arts course per semester.
Now, school districts decide how much time elementary and middle school students spend on language arts and other subjects. High school students are required to take three years of English.
Language arts isn't the only subject undergoing revision. The board also is scheduled today to approve a separate framework for mathematics.
Both of the instructional road maps will affect schools nationwide because of the influence California exerts as the country's largest textbook market, analysts say.
"The textbooks that publishers will develop and submit in California will be the front-list offerings they will try to sell in other states," said Rick Blake, vice president of the school division for the Assn. of American Publishers.
Few issues have polarized teachers the way reading has divided advocates of phonics and whole language. From colleges of education to elementary school classrooms, instructors have waged sometimes bitter campaigns over how best to teach reading.
