The most pressing problem facing Interim School Superintendent Ben Marlin is the growing illiteracy of our children, the result of a flawed elementary-school reading curriculum.

Local educators should heed a recent report released by school officials in California, which revealed that as many as 250,000 California students have been wrongly labeled learning-disabled or dyslexic because they had not received systematic and explicit phonics instruction and intervention prior to third grade. They are twice as likely to drop out of school, which means that they are substantially more likely to use drugs, and wind up in prison.

Prior to June 1996, most county schools taught reading by the ludicrous "whole-word" method, which depends on visual recognition and memorization. On June 19, 1996, former Superintendent Joan Kowal and the School Board agreed to spend millions of dollars to purchase new readers and related materials, despite the repeated protests of parents who produced documents showing that a former employee had rigged the textbook review process in favor of "whole language," a euphemism for "whole-word."

Four members of the current School Board -- Sandra Richmond, Bill Graham, Jody Gleason and Paulette Burdick -- did their part to contaminate the results of the textbook study by hiring the senior author of a whole-language publisher to conduct districtwide seminars while the textbook review process was in effect. This action was tantamount to providing inside information to vendors who bid on School Board contracts.

Moreover, both the textbook selection committee and School Board ignored the research findings of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which found that poor phonics skills prevent students from acquiring the advanced reading skills that all competent readers possess.

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