On teaching phonics and taking a hacksaw to the HISD payroll
One of the big changes that is going to be made by the TEA takeover is how kids are taught how to read. To the point, a big chunk of schools in HISD are going to be using phonics-based instructional materials to abet the reading skills of kids when school resumes in August. A Wikipedia page on the subject of phonics and phonics-based reading methods can be found here. It seems the idea is to have kids sound out new words and vocabulary that they are introduced to, bit by bit, rather than taking guesses at new words. One really big proponent of phonics-based teaching is John McWhorter. In his book Woke Racism – How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, McWhorter advocates a handful of things that could make a really big practical difference in the life outcomes of Black Americans. One of those is that phonics-based reading instruction should be taught to kids who don’t happen to come from nice, upper-middle or upper class homes whose owners have acquired a substantial collection of books. McWhorter should know about this better than most, considering that he is an academic linguist. McWhorter might be a self described liberal Democrat, but I find myself (as a Liberty-Republican) agreeing with him.
