Reposted with the permmission of the author, Jill Stewart.
[part 7]
 On the opposing side, however, a raft of pro-skills educators poured 
forth, emboldened after years of being dismissed as mere fossils. They 
convincingly pointed out that reading levels among California's white 
children 
had dropped to the absolute bottom for their racial group in the U.S.--even 
below white children in Louisiana--so claiming that the poor performance of 
Latino immigrants had skewed California's scores was not only cynical, it was 
dead wrong. And pro-skills advocates revealed that New Zealand--even to this 
day still much ballyhooed by Sacramento education officials--had not, in 
fact, 
benefitted from whole language. Indeed, one-quarter of that country's 
gradeschool children could not read, and needed costly tutors. New Zealand, 
deeply embarrassed by its reading crisis, has begun a discomforting internal 
debate. Meanwhile, an international study found that New Zealand actually 
lagged behind the U.S. in gradeschool reading ability, despite its widely 
repeated claim that it was the "most literate" country in the world.
 "It turned out that New Zealand was behind us," says Honig, "so we had 
to ask, why on earth are we copying them?"
 Treadway, the professor at San Diego State, recently became the most 
prominent whole language proponent to publicly concede that whole language 
theory was fundamentally wrong for teaching beginning reading, even while 
some 
of its techniques, such as using rich literature and early childhood writing, 
were good ideas that should be retained.
 "In my mind," says Treadway, "we cast our eyes across the Pacific to 
such an extent that we ignored the findings in our own country, which said 
New 
Zealand was wrong. We felt, rather smugly, that American scientists merely 
had 
not caught up with us. We were very proud and maybe even self-righteous. We 
had 
real strong conversations with people who agreed with us from New Zealand. We 
validated one another in the most insular way. It was a basic, 
self-affirming, 
life affirming way to go. I don't mind saying it has been a disaster, as long 
as it's clear to everyone that it was done with the best of intentions by a 
lot 
of really committed people."
 Now the officials, consultants and scholars are sitting down in 
Sacramento to try to fix the mess they've created. According to Honig, at 
gradeschools in fad-driven areas where administrators went "whole language, 
whole hog," up to 30% of the children now need tutors and special 
intervention 
to catch up, and many of those schools are using extremely scarce funds to 
herd 
children into the lavishly expensive Reading Recovery tutoring system. 
"Officials in Sacramento and places like L.A. County are still saying 
beginning 
readers can pick up their reading skills in the context of a story, while 
absorbing whole ideas," says Honig. "It's like watching doctors bleed their 
patients." 
 The internal resistance to reform by whole language proponents has 
delayed state implementation of the new reading plan backed by the Task 
Force, 
and its prospects remain unclear. In fact, high-placed whole language 
proponents are spreading the word to whole language purists in local 
districts 
that they "can ignore" whatever the state decides, according to several 
sources. Nevertheless, proponents still expect that the state will approve a 
plan that, while retaining some use of literature and early childhood 
writing, 
will heavily emphasize word decoding and word attack skills through the 
second 
grade, with two hours per day devoted to reading lessons.
 Douglas Carnine, the Oregon scholar who is advising Eastin, warns that 
even though her proposals are solid, teachers, like any professional group, 
cannot absorb continual, massive change without creating an inferior product. 
"California," Carnine says, "is going to suffer terribly with its continuing 
addiction to massive innovation. I don't know if they can see what is 
obvious: 
that California is the first to innovate, and the first to fail. They don't 
understand the nature of change theory. California has got to slow down. Let 
individual schools pick what works and prove it to their community with test 
scores and visible, non-fuzzy, measurable achievements. Stop trying to fix 
the 
whole damn world and end up failing to fix a single school."
 Moreover, the state's teacher colleges continue to reject the vast body 
of research into beginning reading, and are expected to stubbornly resist 
altering their badly deficient reading methodology courses for new teachers, 
experts say. In response, the state is trying to reform its official teacher 
certification reading requirements, thus forcing the colleges to change their 
ways. But that effort has only just begun.
 Meanwhile, California's gradeschool teachers are left to pick up the 
pieces from what has been an unpleasant, close-up battle in the classroom. 
 At schools where administrators fought their teachers, ordering 
them around like naive children, it will take a long time to repair the 
damage to fragile, internal school cultures that tend to thrive upon 
mutual respect, but wither under authoritarianism.
 Many teachers are beginning to choose what works best for them 
and shrug off the worst aspects of whole language. At Toland Way 
Elementary School in Eagle Rock, for example, Janet Davis remains 
committed to the use of rich literature, invented spelling, personal 
journals and other techniques of whole language, but she has made 
concessions to traditional skills. "If phonics worked so friggin' well, 
do you think we would have stopped doing it?" she asks. "Older teachers 
were successful with a large percentage of students using their old way 
of teaching, but there were always kids who did not benefit. But then we 
lost what the old teachers knew by being so radical, and we started 
losing those kids too."
       Davis now creates her own spelling tests--over the objections of 
the anti-spelling LAUSD. And, as a mentor teacher, she has given her 
younger apprentice an old basal reader to show her how to teach basic skills.
[End part 7 - to be continued]
Chuck Beams
Fidonet - 1:2608/70
cbeams@future.dreamscape.com
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