In February of this year, Democrat State Assemblywoman Blanca Rubio from the 48th district introduced AB1121, the “Early Literacy: Professional Development: Instructional Materials” proposal, aiming to address the issue of poor reading abilities among California children. The proposal has not yet entered group discussions in the state legislature.
Rubio stated in a press release, “As a former teacher, I have witnessed the challenges and pressures that students face in learning to read when teachers lack proper training and materials.” The proposal would require the California Department of Education to approve recommended professional development and training programs by January 2027, revise kindergarten through 8th-grade instructional materials, and begin implementing new materials and teaching plans in 2029.
People recognize the importance of early literacy for children, as it supports brain development and promotes the development of language, cognition, communication, and emotional abilities. Regardless of a child’s native language, literacy promotes neural development in children. Clear and systematic teaching of phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and writing has been proven beneficial for all students.
The proposal highlights that California is facing a “literacy crisis,” with the majority of children not reaching appropriate reading levels by the end of third grade, unable to complete assignments, and lacking the literacy and language skills required for middle and high school. Among over 1.6 million kindergarten through 3rd-grade students in California, 63% from low-income families and 75% from Black or Latinx households show significant disparities in performance compared to other students.
California also lags behind other states in adult literacy, with approximately 28% of adults being illiterate, making it one of the states with the lowest adult literacy rates in the country. Illiteracy restricts adults’ abilities to navigate daily life and can lead them into poverty, isolation, difficulties in employment, and low incomes.
According to the LA Daily News, the proposal was pushed by the non-profit organizations Families in Schools, EdVoice, and Decoding Dyslexia California, and submitted to the state legislature by Rubio. Similar proposals in the past faced opposition from organizations like the California Teachers Association, who argued that it undermines literacy programs and excludes teachers from the process.
The decline in student reading scores in California can be attributed to various factors, including policies, curriculum design, instructional materials, teacher allocation, teaching methods, student motivation, and effort. For decades, teachers, parents, scholars, scientists, and curriculum developers have been vigorously debating to implement effective, comprehensive, practical, and best reading instructional methods. This controversy, known as the “reading wars,” has lifelong impacts on students, making them hostages and victims and leading to a national reading crisis, with some states, including California, still pursuing misguided approaches.
Established in 1977, EdSource has been documenting the state of education in California from preschool to university and national educational trends. The organization aims to promote meaningful education policies, accountability, and choice in the California K-12 education system. They believe that education decision-makers, including students, parents, teachers, and legislators, should have access to reliable information based on facts and data rather than relying on the “outrage cycle” and misinformation.
California implemented flawed reading methods advocated by Horace Mann, Kenneth Goodman, and Marie Clay in the 1980s, including whole word, whole language, and cueing learning methods.
Journalist Emily Hanford of American Public Media in her book “Sold a Story” wrote that after California fully embraced “whole language teaching” under State Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig in the 1980s, student reading scores significantly declined. In 1996, Honig admitted during questioning by state legislators that “whole language teaching” was not a good strategy.
Mann, a 19th-century politician known as the “Father of American Education” for championing free public education, believed education would “make men equal” and that children should be taught complete words directly in early childhood, skipping the alphabet and letter sounds because letters are illogical and dull.
Education policy expert Dale Chu pointed out that Mann’s whole word reading method treats the entire word as a unit, rather than through letters (or syllables), meaning children have to memorize the whole word to recognize it in the future.
In English, words consist of phonemes (sound units conveying meaning) composed of one or several letters. Decoding words by “sounding out” letters/sounds is not a natural process for children but requires learning. This is similar to Chinese, where radicals have distinct meanings, attributes, and pronunciations, aiding in recognizing a character.
Phonics instruction was widely used in teaching reading strategies. The 1690 publication “New England Primer” was phonics-based and continued until the emergence of “reformers” like Mann.
American education professor Goodman and New Zealand teacher Clay promoted the whole language reading method. The “whole language” theory posits that children are natural readers, focusing on understanding the entire sentence or story’s meaning rather than individual words, akin to whole word, sidelining phonics learning. Goodman’s 1967 paper “Reading: A Psycholinguistic Guessing Game” criticized an excessive focus on “precise letter identification” by teachers, asserting that children misreading “your” as “the” would not affect the meaning, thus denying the importance of accuracy.
Clinical psychologist Clay advocated for “cueing reading” in the 1980s across the U.S., allowing students to use cues like illustrations to understand the story’s meaning instead of using phonics to read and comprehend words.
California parent Kenni Alden told Hanford that her 12-year-old son when reading “skips words, adds words, or substitutes another word… and then reads on smoothly.” Forming such reading habits in public schools in childhood makes changing them difficult in adulthood, as “children do not understand the meaning of words and can only guess.”
By the mid-1990s, substantial evidence showed that whole word and whole language methods did not align with how the human brain learns to read. California trained teachers in phonics instruction and supported phonics-based textbooks from the 1990s to the early 21st century. The Reading Instruction Competence Assessment was developed by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing to assess teachers’ reading instruction skills.
However, some teachers found phonics instruction too rigid and boring, advocating a return to whole language teaching, leading to the development of balanced literacy curricula in California, intending to integrate whole language and phonics. From the 2000s to the 2010s, balanced literacy materials from California, such as Lucy Calkins’ “Units of Study” and Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell’s “Leveled Literacy Intervention,” were used across the U.S.
Critics argued that the phonics component of the balanced approach lacked depth compared to whole language methods. Sabrina Causey, an Oakland Unified School District teacher, told EdSource in 2022 that the balanced curriculum was “meaningless,” with students lacking basic skills, not recognizing letters or sounds, and only one child learning to read that year.
Former head of Los Angeles Unified School District Austin Beutner stated, “Children do not have a foundation in phonics… less than half of the children can read… How can we accept this reality?”
According to the results released by the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2024, California 4th-grade students’ average reading scores ranked 39th among the 50 states and DC. Not only California, but reading scores for 4th and 8th-grade students across the U.S. have also been declining.
EdSource suggests that ultimately, it’s crucial not to entirely entrust children’s reading instruction to schools. While California provides free compulsory education for every child, with an annual budget exceeding $21,000 per student, parents should observe their children’s reading habits. Do they skip, add, or substitute words? Do they refuse to read aloud? Rather than waiting for the government, parents should spend time reading with their children at home.