End the war on phonics at the ballot box in November

OPINION:

By now, you’ve probably read the numbers and the declines in test scores for America’s students are the worst in more than 30 years. The “political science” behind extended lockdowns, remote learning and other disruptions to the educational environment at the behest of teachers unions certainly had an impact on student achievement. The left’s obsession with masking immeasurably harmed 3- to 6-year-olds due to their inability to see expressions and lips during their formative years for language development.

The reality, however, is that it’s simplistic to merely blame the pandemic. The erosion of English reading skills, particularly in public schools, started decades ago with a long-simmering war on teaching phonics.

U.S. literacy rates, even through spikes in immigration, were once exceptional. Reading, writing and language skills were emphasized in schools, and the methodology was simple: phonics.

Phonics teaches reading by having the student break down each word into its individual sounds and then blending those sounds together. Thousands of schools have, unfortunately, adopted the “whole word” method or “sight words,” which is essentially memorization. 

The father of American public education, Horace Mann, is often cited as starting the war after bringing the “whole word” concept back from Europe. The movement to abrogate phonics again gained steam in the early 1980s. Common Core proponents also jumped on the bandwagon in many states.

Phonics lost that war in many places and so did millions of students. 

We’ve all heard the old truism “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” Phonics is the language equivalent.

By breaking a word down to its components and sounding it out, students can ultimately come to learn how to read and write virtually any word whether they’ve seen it before or not.

Private and parochial schools outperform government-run schools on reading scores precisely because they tend to teach phonics. 

Adding insult to injury, the education establishment’s nonsensical preoccupation with elementary school kids learning Spanish has created competition in classrooms with what used to be a stronger focus on English proficiency.

Democrats will claim the continued decline of public education is some combination of systemic racism, underfunding, or the result of increases in immigrant populations. More diverse student populations can certainly play a role in test scores, but phonics as a proven methodology could have given even non-native speakers a better start.

Democrats in blue states have been fighting phonics-based curriculum and additional training for teachers to teach phonics for years. 

It’s not the kids. It’s not who is teaching or how many degrees they have. The problem with declines in reading proficiency is how it’s done.

Teachers unions and academia have written volumes of studies attempting to analyze the state of American education. The phonics story is so simple, it could only be willful blindness that it has been ignored.

The education establishment writ large should embrace phonics and admit the failure of the “sight word” method of teaching. Instead, they’d rather allow union bosses to set policy, fret about student pronouns and put tampons in the boy’s bathroom. 

We know phonics works. Quantitative analyses have been conducted for years to study the effectiveness of the methodology. According to an American Educational Research Association report, phonics helped students markedly including disadvantaged students, and students at risk for reading disabilities.

Children who cannot read by third grade have persistent problems throughout their academic career. Many will never read with the same proficiency of their peers.

Reforming government schools must go far beyond getting the porn out of the library, stopping the trans activism in the classroom and ending field trips to drag shows.

Any parent who has seen the smile on a child’s face when they sound out a word knows that sense of achievement reinforces itself and can spur a lifelong love of learning. Children who read better have greater confidence, are more independent and grow to become critical thinkers. It’s not a stretch to think they advance professionally as well and are less dependent on the government.

Phonics is starting to make a comeback, but like so many other decisions of the education racket in this country, decades of eroding its use has left great damage in its wake. If you’re a parent heading to the polls, this November demand candidates embrace state laws to restore or protect phonics in schools.

It will yield not just better test scores, but a next generation better prepared to keep America strong and free.

• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax TV, an author and a former Bush administration official.