DUMP THE WHOLE LANGUAGE READING METHOD  BY MARY MCGARR:

OP-ED Piece for the Katy Times   July 31, 1996

DUMP WHOLE LANGUAGE READING METHOD

By Mary McGarr

Parents of children who finished the first grade in May should have been enjoying one of the most gratifying periods of parenthood this summer.  I refer, of course, to the joys of having one's child read everything in sight.  There is no greater pleasure than to watch one's offspring exhibiting the self-esteem of having acquired a valuable skill.

If a youngster has completed the first grade, he should be reading the newspapers, wanting to go to the library to check out books, reading the comic section of the paper and laughing at the jokes, reading the backs of baseball cards, reading instructions for games and recipes, and doing other such things that require the ability to read with comprehension.

Unfortunately, if one's child is among the 20% of Katy ISD students who exit the first grade NOT knowing how to read, [and I now believe that percentage to be at least 40%] a parent may not have had these pleasures!... If the administration has a different number for non-reading first graders over the last five years, I would like to see it and the verifying proof.

If one's child is among these first grade non-readers, (418) students), that parent should be sitting in the principal's office when school opens in August, demanding an explanation.  There is no reason children cannot read after completing kindergarten and first grade in our schools other than that the curriculum and the methodology for teaching them to read are faulty.

Children in this district are taught to read using what is called "whole language."  One of the whole language programs that is used in Katy ISD schools is called LOMS (which stands for Linguistically Oriented Multi-Sensory).  (And yes, I too noticed that there is no noun in the name!)  Anyone who says that this program combines the elements of whole language WITH phonics is either ignorant of this curriculum or does not know what "phonics" means.  Phonics is the only method that has 120 legitimate studies verifying that it works.  If one needs further verification, send a note to the Consumer Information Center, Pueblo, Colorado, 81009 and request What Works:  Research About Teaching and Learning, a free U. S. Department of Education report that chronicles the best methods of how to teach children to learn and which makes the statement that "Children get a better start in reading if they are taught phonics." *

Most teachers do not understand the value of phonics because colleges of education stopped teaching this method many years ago ...educational gurus at the Texas Education Agency are afraid for them to have this knowledge.  Of course, our school district could provide this training.

Anyone who thinks direct intensive phonics does not work should visit Wesley Elementary School.  This school is an inner-city elementary in one of the most economically disadvantaged areas of Houston (Acres Home) with three-fourths of the students receiving government lunches.  If one will make the effort to visit this school, one will hear almost all of the kindergarten students reading, with comprehension and on level, by the end of the ninth (!) week of school because the school uses ONLY a phonics curriculum (DISTAR).  On the other hand, in Katy ISD schools, at the end of 72 weeks of instruction, by the end of the first grade, 20% (and probably a lot higher percentage than that) of our students still are unable to read, and many of them have been erroneously labeled as "learning disabled."  [There could be a reason for keeping some of them from learning how to read if one considers all the money that KISD receives from the state and federal governments for having "learning disabled" students.]

Keeping the demographics in mind, the per pupil expenditures of the two districts ($2,050 per pupil in Houston ISD vs. $4,788 per pupil in Katy ISD), as well as the personal economic advantages KISD children enjoy, is it not revealing that in 1993 (the last year this information was made available to school board members), students at Wesley fared better on the third grade reading test than 50% of Katy ISD elementary schools?  Passing TAAS scores in third grade reading for Wesley Elementary were at 94.2%, but were only 93.3% at Golbow, 88.4% at Mayde Creek, 92.9% at Memorial Parkway, 92.8% at Sundown, 92.6% at West Memorial, 86.5% at Hutsell, and 88% at Wolfe.  Please remember that "passing" the TAAS means that the student had to score only at the 70% level, which to most people is the equivalent of a "D-"!

Thaddeus Lott, the Houston ISD principal who has had to fight twenty years' worth of whole language proponents, has the scores to prove his beliefs.  Where are the scores to prove that the "whole language" approach works? 

There aren't any.

The "whole" language approach to reading also does not help with students' long term comprehension skills.  Would it not seem obvious to anyone that our students have a problem when, on the TAAS reading test, the ability of students to comprehend word meanings (a rather important comprehension skill and indicator, and one which the TEA cannot jigger to make students look like they are improving when they are not) drops in Katy ISD schools between 12 points (Pattison) to as much as 42 points (Sundown) between the third and the fifth grade?  When Dr. Hinds stands up at a Board meeting and touts three to six point TAAS score increases as something of which we should all be proud, how might she explain forty-two point drops?  Of course these "drops" do not get touted in public; they do not even get addressed in Campus Improvement Plans.

This argument boils down to politics, power and money.  Isn't it about time someone cared about what will happen to these non-reading students in our school district? ... Isn't it about time we had a school board that had the courage to TELL the administration to dump whole language as the method they use?  If the entire state of California can dump whole language, (elementary teachers in California spent this summer learning how to teach phonics) why isn't OUR school board coming up with a similar directive?  If the Houston ISD is training 3,000 elementary teachers how to teach reading using phonics (Wall Street Journal,) July 24, 1996, why can't our school board do the same for our teachers?

If children cannot read, they will be uneducated and not able to compete in an ever changing technological world.  Katy ISD students will be competing with the California and Wesley Elementary students for spots in major colleges and jobs in the "real" world in a few years.  Will KISD students be left out? That decision rests with our elected public servants.

*  One may now access this government document here:  http://www.scribd.com/doc/98369983/What-Works-Research-About-Teaching-and-Learning