Calif. Text Adoption Puts Emphasis on Phonics

After years of contentious debate in California about teaching children how to read, the state school board has capped off its effort to improve achievement with a renewed emphasis on phonics in the nation's largest textbook adoption for English-language arts.

But the adoption has done little to satisfy whole-language advocates, who charge that it is an unfair retreat from literature-based methods, and some teachers, who say that the rejection of some widely used books and products could leave them without valuable instructional materials.

Placing much of the blame for dismal scores on national and state reading tests on the whole-language movement, the state board last month rejected all materials that it felt lacked sufficient emphasis...