Phonics

Re "State Embraces Phonics," Dec. 13: Good grief! Phonics being found in the new reading books approved by the state! What could possibly be next--basic skills in the math textbooks? JANIS SMITH Redondo Beach

Dealing with its alarmingly high dropout rate should be a higher priority than test scores for the Los Angeles Unified School District, Ramon C. Cortines said in his first interview since being named senior deputy superintendent Tuesday. Because students who drop out often are low achievers, he warned, keeping them in school could well impede -- at least initially -- a rise in test scores.

Research used to justify a return to a "back-to-basics" method of teaching U.S. children how to read is flawed, according to a study presented at a national reading conference in Orlando. The traditional phonics method teaches children to sound out words, as opposed to the so-called whole language approach in which children learn to identify words through their context in sentences or stories.

On Wal-Mart's aisle of educational toys and children's learning materials, dozens of brightly packaged products and cartoon-infused titles vie for parents' attention and a slice of their spending. There's the LeapFrog electronic writing pad, Dora the Explorer learning kits, SpongeBob SquarePants educational games -- and an old brand fighting to be new again.

Don't be fooled by the hokey name or the zebra-striped rug on the office floor. Zoo-phonics means business. And this is a banner year for the thriving company that was hatched in a garage. "We're crazy busy," says President Charlene Wrighton. Phonics is back in California, and that means business is booming for entrepreneurs large and small.

Your editorial Sept. 8, "Schools Struggle for Quality With Help From Community," addressed many of the challenges that had to be met to implement the smaller K-3 class sizes this fall. There was concern that the rearrangement of classrooms, libraries and other areas would "not be an ideal situation for learning." I grew up in the South. Our schools had no air-conditioning. On hot days, our teachers frequently held class outside. We learned absent any facilities at all. Clearly facilities are a part of the "situation for learning," but not one of the most important elements.

Gov. Pete Wilson's offer "to spend $127 million on textbooks and teacher retraining with the proviso that skills such as phonics and spelling be stressed"(May 7) perpetuates a false dichotomy between a "basics" phonics approach to teaching reading and "whole language" methods. Phonics versus whole language is not the issue; teaching is. In order to promote and permit better teaching of reading (as well as all other subjects) in our public classrooms, it is imperative that we reduce class size.

Fullerton School District trustees have decided to spend as much as $40,000 for a plan that will emphasize phonics in the curriculum. After it was unanimously approved Tuesday, Trustee Anthony M. Valla called the plan marvelous.

Re "Hooked on Phonics? We Should Lose This Addiction," by Mary Lee Griffin, Commentary, Oct. 22: Structured reading programs have helped more students than they've hurt. In California, we went through a decades-long phonics alternative, the whole-language reading instruction program and found it lacking. There seemed to be a strong causal relationship between lack of structure in the reading program at induction and the lack of interest in reading found in older students at the "low-performing schools."

Remember "Hooked on Phonics"? Actually, who could forget? A few years back, you'd hear the company's farfetched claims of success--"I read a 120-page book after using one tape"--every time you turned on the radio. In 1995, however, the ads were silenced when the Orange, Calif.-based company went belly-up. Bankruptcy, though, didn't alter the value of the name. Tens of millions of advertising dollars had created a public awareness that, as with Kleenex or Xerox, transcended the product itself.

The Federal Trade Commission has ordered the company known for its Hooked on Phonics program to give up the money it earned by surreptitiously disclosing personal information about its customers, the agency said Wednesday. Gateway Learning Corp. of Santa Ana agreed to pay $4,608, the FTC said. The company also agreed not to share consumer data without consent and not to retroactively change its privacy policy without alerting customers.

Now that Xavier has made it to the regional finals for the first time, it's time for a refresher on the school's name. Listen up, those who want to pronounce it "Ex-ay-vee-er." All together now, it's "Zay-vee-er." "It used to be about 50-50, those who could pronounce it right," Xavier Coach Thad Matta quipped Saturday on the eve of the Atlanta Regional final between the Musketeers and Duke. "After this year, it should be 80-20 for those getting it right."

Re "Hooked on Phonics? We Should Lose This Addiction," Commentary, Oct. 22: Why all this phuss about phonics? Although I am a phonics phan, having phormulated sounds phonetically since inphancy, as a phormer English teacher I am aware of its pitphalls. But phortunately, most of us learn to surmount the diphiculties. Enough of this phracas! Glenna Thompson Oxnard

Re "Hooked on Phonics? We Should Lose This Addiction," by Mary Lee Griffin, Commentary, Oct. 22: Structured reading programs have helped more students than they've hurt. In California, we went through a decades-long phonics alternative, the whole-language reading instruction program and found it lacking. There seemed to be a strong causal relationship between lack of structure in the reading program at induction and the lack of interest in reading found in older students at the "low-performing schools."

How bad is this national reading crisis we keep hearing and reading about? Federal officials, citing the findings of the National Reading Panel, have decreed that only "evidence-based" programs that include the teaching of phonics will be supported with grant money, such as President Bush's Reading First initiative. But whose evidence, and how was it gathered, evaluated and interpreted?

"School Excels in Reading by Sticking With What Works" (April 1) mischaracterizes the whole-language approach to teaching reading. Whole language does not simply "encourage children to intuit the nuts and bolts of how words worked"; rather, whole language is based on the well-supported hypothesis that we learn to read when we understand what is on the page. A central task of a whole-language teacher is to provide children with interesting texts and to help make these texts comprehensible.

Kathryn Dronenburg, a teacher who as a member of the California Board of Education was one of the earliest and most knowledgeable voices advocating the importance of phonics lessons in learning to read, has died. She was 55. Dronenburg, of El Cajon, died at home March 9 after battling cancer for more than two years. Dronenburg was appointed in 1990 by Gov.

A new school year means a lot of reading for students. Most educators agree that children should have early phonics instruction to grow into good readers and spellers. Computers can be great tools to teach phonics rules and applications. In "Disney's Phonics Quest," first- and second-graders join Mickey Mouse on an adventure revolving around six phonics games.