To the Editor:
Five years ago, I dropped my subscription to Education Week because of its pro-whole-language bias and unswerving anti-phonics stance. A colleague sent me your Web story on G. Reid Lyon’s leaving the government (“National Reading Czar to Leave Public Sector,” Web Only May 24, 2005.), and I took the opportunity to browse through other articles. You’re still knocking phonics and influencing your readership to believe phonics is stultifying and terrible.
As a national resource, you have a responsibility to present both sides of the picture. As it stands, you have no credibility. The state of our schools and student achievement in comparison to other industrialized nations is horrendous. Your publication is in its own way responsible for promoting a reading method that has left our education system in tatters.
Children who can’t read drop out of school and earn minimal wages. One should care about children and what methodology will make them successful in life. To neglect what works for those at risk for failure is shameful. Shame on you.
Marsha Kessler
New York, N.Y.
