What happened to our children’s grades when they took phonics out of schools. It was a disaster right? Why repeat the same old mistakes - we must learn, progress and grow from them.

I don’t know if you’ve seen this, so I’ve included it below:

Open Court: Myths and Realities
Margaret Moustafa, California State University, Los Angeles

Open Court is a commercial program for teaching reading to elementary school children. It is published by McGraw-Hill, a Fortune 500 corporation that also owns media companies.

Myth # 1: Open Court raises (reading test) scores.
Reality: When a high-stakes test is used year after year, scores rise year after year (Linn), regardless of the program used (Land and Moustafa). However, scores rise higher in schools with unscripted programs than in schools with Open Court (Land and Moustafa; Moustafa; Moustafa and Land).

Myth # 2: Open Court is not a scripted program.
Reality: Open Court has not scripted teachers’ words from 1995 to the present. However, current implementations of Open Court script what, when, and how teachers teach via pacing plans that require teachers to teach specific lessons within specific days whether or not they are appropriate for the students (Anderluh; Bazeley).

Myth # 3: Open Court helps under-prepared and beginning teachers.
Reality: Schools with unscripted programs score higher than schools with Open Court and Success For All, the two most commonly used scripted programs, especially schools with high percentages of uncredentialed teachers (Land and Moustafa).

Myth # 4: Open Court helps low-achieving children.
Reality: All students–high, average, and low achieving—become better readers with instruction that uses texts with familiar language and helps children make sense of what they are reading than with traditional phonics-based instruction (Anderson et al.; Cantrell; Eldredge et al.; Milligan and Berg) such as Open Court.

Myth # 5: Systematic, explicit phonics instruction is better than unsystematic phonics instruction in context.
Reality: This is a false dichotomy: phonics can be taught systematically and explicitly in context (Cunningham; Moustafa and Colon-Maldonado). Phonics instruction in the context of stories with familiar language is more effective than phonics instruction out of context, as in workbooks and flash cards (Bus and van Ijzendoorn; Cantrell; Freppon).

Myth # 6: Phonics instruction is better than whole language instruction.
Reality: This myth is similar to myth #5 and also a false dichotomy: whole language instruction includes phonics instruction. A highly publicized study by Foorman et al. found that phonics instruction is better than whole language instruction. However, it is scientifically flawed (Coles; Moustafa and Land; B. Taylor et al; D. Taylor). Most researchers have found children learn to read better with whole language instruction (instruction that uses texts with familiar language and helps children make sense of text) than with phonics-based instruction (e.g., Anderson et al.; Cantrell; Eldredge et al.; Freppon; Milligan and Berg; Mullis et al.; Reutzel and Cooter; Sacks and Mergendollar).

Myth # 7: Decodable texts are better than predictable texts.
Reality: Predictable texts are stories written with familiar language. Decodable texts are limited to letter-sound correspondences that have been taught and consequently have distorted language. When teachers read predictable texts, texts with familiar language, to and then with children, children learn to read better than when they are taught phonics out of context and then asked to read decodable texts, texts with distorted language (Bridge et al.; Freppon; Rhodes).

All my best,
Andrea