Via Gaynor Chapman who says: “The one thing Erica Standford has done–insisting on phonics taught explicitly a.k.a. structured literacy–should not be controversial at all. The evidence is overwhelming and this miraculous improvement in reading achievement is by the very poorest. The US state of Mississippi is one such amazing example everyone, especially parents and teachers, should know about .
Mississippi is also the US state with the largest number of ‘people of colour’, which is evidence that this is what Maori need most for improvement in academic achievement — instead of so much Matauranga Maori.
Structured phonics is what we used to have officially in NZ pre 1950 and because it worked teachers continued to use it secretly in their classrooms for decades after 1950 .
It was what contributed to our excellent world-class education last century.
Academia introduced whole word and whole language which are now shown to be an unmitigated failure. Marie Clay is largely responsible for taking us down the wrong path in cancelling out explicit phonics. , for 45 years and us now in NZ , having the worst reading scores in English -speaking countries. Also the longest tail of underachievement . This tail is disproportionately composed of Maori and Pasifica students. who are along with other low socio-economic students the most damaged by lack of explicit phonic instruction.