Regarding the California Reading Framework:
-> "I don't mean to be defensive about the framework, but it was a
-> philosophical document," says Grubb, who still insists teachers
-> needn't spend very much classroom time on phonics or word decoding.
-> "We didn't even cite researchers. It was philosophizing about making
-> sense of one's world by using literature, and it promoted the idea
-> that skills be taught to kids in the context of exploring literature,
-> not from separate how-to books. It never said don't use phonics. It
-> told teachers to look at the research about phonics on their own, and
-> apply it wisely."
You know, this quote reminds me a lot of how some people interpret the
NCTM Standards for Curriculum, a similarly controversial document in the
mathematics education community. (BTW, California also has a Mathematics
Framework which appeared a couple of years ago, based on the NCTM
Standards, and similarly very nebulous in meaning.)
I have conversed with math teachers who claim that the Standards and
California framework _state_ that grade school teachers should no longer
teach fractions. Yet, I have both of these documents and have read them,
and nowhere in them can I find such a statement. In any case, I have
been informed by some of my colleagues at the high school where I work,
that there are elementary teachers who are no longer teaching fractions
(thank goodness, not MY children's school!), and the teacher in charge
of our remedial math class at our school has used this to explain why
she no longer believes she should teach that topic either, but just give
them a fraction capable calculator. Arrggghh!
-> Whole language purists like Barbara Flores at Cal State San
-> Bernardino peddled the idea, via teacher credentialing classes, that
-> teaching phonics and other skills directly and
-> systematically to children was actually bad for them. According to
-> teachers who were trained at Cal State Northridge, Cal State San
-> Bernardino, USC and other California colleges, the reading
-> methodology course was reduced to a "child-centered" discussion
-> dominated by whole language ideas. By 1995, some 10,000 fresh new
-> teachers had poured into California gradeschools, thousands of whom
-> had no idea how to teach beginning reading.
I wonder why the school my children attend, which is located in Los
Angeles County, but not in L.A. Unified, has not been plagued by this
problem? Perhaps because I live in an area with many professional
parents who demand that their children do well in school? We do have
"open enrollment" here in California, which allows parents to sign their
kids up to attend any public school, regardless of where they live,
providing their is room for the  child. The teachers at my children's
school seem to teach a smattering of the traditional skills, including
phonics. They do get grammar lessons, spelling tests and my daughter
even brought home an old primer last year from which she had to read
some stories for homework.
Sheila
s
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