re: The education data out of Mississippi is getting more insane. They have zoomed past CA

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The Atlantic posted an interesting article about the origins of Whole Language Learning (the trend away from phonics) and how it has changed reading outcomes. My understanding is the data supports a phonics curriculum

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Technically the data supports a blended method. However, even that is a nail in the coffin for whole language. Think of it this way: when you are taught phonics (the individual building blocks of words), you have to sound out each word. However, sound out the same words enough times and you’ll memorize the word as a whole, just like you would with whole language. That’s why people who learn phonics only have to “sound out” words they aren’t familiar with as opposed to sounding out every word forever. On the other hand, with whole language, you only memorize the words. To learn more words, you memorize more words. That’s it. It doesn’t build on itself. Memorizing the next word takes exactly as much effort as memorizing the last word.

Learning phonics gives the foundation to ultimately accomplish what whole language endeavors to accomplish. Whole language gives no foundation whatsoever, and therefore, accomplishes next to fricking nothing.

Did I mention how much this shite pisses me off?

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Why they ever stopped this is mindboggling.

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It’s very easy to understand. The “experts” can’t get rich by saying that what you’ve been doing for centuries is correct.

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Technically the data supports a blended method. However, even that is a nail in the coffin for whole language. Think of it this way: when you are taught phonics (the individual building blocks of words), you have to sound out each word. However, sound out the same words enough times and you’ll memorize the word as a whole, just like you would with whole language. That’s why people who learn phonics only have to “sound out” words they aren’t familiar with as opposed to sounding out every word forever. On the other hand, with whole language, you only memorize the words. To learn more words, you memorize more words. That’s it. It doesn’t build on itself. Memorizing the next word takes exactly as much effort as memorizing the last word.

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Im a younger millennial (1989) and had "Spelling" as a separate subject where we learned the Spelling and definitions of hundreds of words per year.

I was an elementary/middle school ELA teacher from 2012 to 2019 and was really shocked that they had completely got away from that and everything was considered"ELA" now. I think that has something to do with it.