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Hard numbers for "decodability" a national first

Children were the winners when Texas' elected State Board of Edu­ca­tion (SBOE) – with the unani­mous backing of its heroic con­serv­ative mem­bers – ordered major pub­lish­ers at its Novem­ber meeting to raise to 80% the decod­a­bility level of their Grade 1 Reading programs submitted for 2000 local Texas adoption. When some said the Board could not or should not so vote, SBOE conserv­ative Dr. Richard Neill of Fort Worth replied: "I am willing to fall on the sword for this issue."

All real phonics programs are fully de­cod­able. "100% decod­ability" means they con­tain only pho­ne­tic­ally regular words ("run," "sit"), all of whose sounds have been taught, plus pho­ne­tic­ally ir­reg­ular words ("said," "have") that have been taught. This is the opposite of the fail­ed "whole lang­uage" approach that cripples so many read­ers. Texas is the first to man­date a specific percent decod­ability. "80% de­cod­ability" is the new start­ing point for future phonics gains.

Demanding 80% decodability was gutsy as well as right. Texas' SBOE broke publicly with its own staff, the Texas Education Agency (TEA), which had told pub­lish­ers the rules required only 51% decodability. The Board rejected the usual claim that some compa­nies might not submit text­books next time if it overruled TEA so late in the adoption process. It ignored lib­er­als' pretense that it lacked authority to set stan­dards. It defied bogus hints of a pub­lish­ers' lawsuit.

TEA clearly went too far this time. Texas SBOE conser­va­tives have been saying the state education bureau­cracy is out of con­trol, il­legal­ly exer­cis­ing Board pero­ga­tives. Early in their writing phase, pub­lish­ers asked TEA what should be these read­ers' percent decoda­bil­ity. By law, TEA should have asked the SBOE this. Instead it gave pub­lishers the 51% figure on its own au­thor­ity. The Board did not learn of it until short­ly before it was to vote to approve those programs.

Decodability got all the media atten­tion, but it is not the sole concern in these Grade 1 readers. Compre­hen­sive­ness, inten­sive­ness, and con­sis­tency of phonics in­struc­tion are im­port­ant issues too, as our comparison chart shows. We also check­ed these series' story content in Grades K-3 and found no negative or evil themes, though some stories are bland or boring. You may be interested in our standard review criteria for judging story content at all grade levels.

Most of the "conforming" programs on our compar­ison chart had been more consis­tent­ly "whole language" in earlier versions. Some publish­ers were more organ­ized and coherent in revising these for Texas adoption. Their series are thus more purg­ed of "whole lan­guage" vestiges than oth­ers. Hence our chart’s spectrum show­ing relative­ly strong or weak phonics cores. ("Conforming" and "noncon­form­ing" are Texas' terms for whether they meet all state standards.)