Commentary by Anita J. Holten
Indianapolis Star -- March 15, 2001

Teaching contracts are soon to be offered for new college graduates. It is critical for principals to hire qualified teachers to assure students will learn to read with skills based on expert empirical reading research.

Unfortunately, most teachers are not required or encouraged to know the current reading research. How can our students succeed if their teachers haven't been taught explicit, systematic phonics as fundamentally necessary for decoding our alphabetic coded English language?

Walter Wink in his book, Engaging the Powers, writes, "There is nothing more rare or revolutionary than an accurate description of reality."

The Star's endorsement of the scientifically research-based Open Court reading curriculum, and the call for uniformity of Indianapolis Public Schools reading programs to stop the flood of remediation for highly mobile students caught between diverse programs, describes reality.

Congratulations to Superintendent Duncan Pat Pritchett and the IPS board. They have grasped this reality of reading failure and now will offer one of the most outstanding reading curriculums in the country with a proven track record to move their students into reading success. The in-service training of three days plus available videos for teachers offered by Open Court's publisher, McGraw-Hill, sounds like a reading revolution heading for victory.

What a dream awaits for those who struggle to bring that print off the page and into their minds and voices. Think of all the remediation money that can be saved. Think about the teary-eyed first-graders who will read under their own power and not guess or memorize endless words they can't decode. That's revolutionary.

Read the February 2001 Reader's Digest, Page 76, "Principals of Success -- Uncompromising leaders plus innovative programs equal a comeback for these troubled schools." The article features retired principal Nancy Ichinaga, now on the California State Board of Education.

Ichinaga told me the reading scores of her students (poor and largely Hispanic) have soared with Open Court's reading curriculum. She said Saxon math was the best, and the results of this sequential, well-structured program, were superior. She told me bilingual teaching is a dead issue. Her students picked up much English through peer conversation and their English classes.

Supporters of whole language ideology -- the learn to read by reading approach -- are engaging a propaganda campaign when they speak about "balanced" instruction. Don't be fooled. Alphabetic decoding is the opposite of guessing or memorizing, using picture clues or context, as whole language encourages.

Dr. Louisa Moats, prominent reading researcher and project director for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, has just written Whole Language Lives on: The Illusion of 'Balanced' Reading Instruction. Find it at www.edexcellence.net or call for free copies at (888) TBF-7474.

She writes, "Unfortunately, many who pledge allegiance to 'balanced' reading continue to misunderstand reading development and to deliver poorly conceived, ineffective instruction."

The discredited theory that learning to read is natural, like talking, should be withdrawn from our teacher training institutions. The schools of education have been like the walls of Fort Knox, protecting whole language as if it were fool's gold.

Celebrate the IPS schools system for choosing a uniform, superior reading curriculum that contains proven reading skills, in spite of the walls. Reality can't be denied forever in a democracy.

Holten, of South Bend, is director of the Indiana division of the National Right to Read Foundation. Its Web site is www.nrrf.org.

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