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| Texas Wonders McGraw-Hill ©2020 | into Reading Texas Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ©2020 | myView Literacy Pearson ©2020 | 2019 | |
| total average decodability1 | 90% | 85% | 85% | These will enter Texas 1st Grade classrooms in the fall of 2019 and remain there for at least 8 years, maybe longer. We scrutinized (1) how well they teach Reading by real phonics, and (2) story content. Our phonics review criteria this year match those in our report on Texas' current Grade 1 English Reading programs adopted in 2010. |
| % of Grade 1 student Reading selections that are 80% or more decodable | 88% (260 of 297 selections) | 75% (227 of 304 selections) | 81% (165 of 209 selections) | |
| % of Grade 1 student Reading selections that are 90% or more decodable | 72% (214 of 297 selections) | 67% (204 of 304 selections) | 59% (139 of 209 selections) | |
| # of phonetically-IRREGULAR words taught as high frequency (i.e., sight) words in Grade 1 | 68 | 68 | 60 | |
| # of phonetically-REGULAR words taught as high frequency words before decodability in Grade 1 contrary to Proc. 2019 Q&A Doc. Answer to Question 6 | 96 | 167 | 65 | |
| comprehensiveness2 ("LSCs"=letter-sound correspondences) | teaches 70 of 70 TEKS-mandated LSCs +31 more | teaches 70 of 70 TEKS-mandated LSCs +30 more | teaches only 68 of 70 TEKS-mandated LSCs +19 more | |
| intensiveness3 | 2,295 practice opportunities | 1,312 practice opportunities | 777 practice opportunities | |
| oral vocabulary alignment4 | mostly | mostly | partially | |
| other strengths or weaknesses | Only program that reviews the alphabet for students who did not attend kindergarten; briefly notes some not-yet-taught LSCs when presenting high frequency words | Cites some familiar LSCs and unusual spellings in high frequency words; points out decodable high frequency words; has most-interesting decodable story content | Presents high frequency words without info on LSCs, students just memorize the letters; much less practice on new LSCs than in the other two programs here | |
| overall ranking > > | BEST | BETTER | FAIR |
1 DECODABILITY: For each Grade 1 Reading selection, we added the phonetically-regular words, all of whose LSCs have been taught, plus the phonetically-irregular words that have been taught, and divided by the total number of words. The figure shown here averages all those quotients.
2 COMPREHENSIVENESS: We found how many of the 70 LSCs required by Proclamation 2019 Grade 1 English Reading TEKS that each program teaches, plus how many additional LSCs each program includes.
3 INTENSIVENESS: We counted how often each program has 1st Graders practice (i.e., see, hear, say, and write) three randomly-selected LSCs in their introductory lessons, and also compared four randomly-selected blending lessons. The figure shown here is the total for all seven exercises.
4 ALIGNMENT: We checked whether each program avoids expecting 1st Graders to recognize or "read" phonetically-regular "Oral Vocabulary" words before learning all their LSCs. (None of these programs' Language Arts components fully align with its Phonics strand, but some do better than others.)
This analysis focuses on 1st Grade because many Texas students do not attend kindergarten and have zero phonics knowledge entering 1st Grade. Contact us to discuss these findings. We have no info for other grades in this adoption.