Phonics-Based Instruction is Back; When Did Phonics Leave the California Classroom?

Governor Gavin Newsom just signed Assembly Bill 1454 to bring phonics-based instruction back into elementary and middle schools. Assembly Bill 1454 was passed unanimously by both houses of the California Legislature, which speaks volumes.

Previous attempts to bring Phonics back have been opposed in the past by English language learner advocates, which claimed that a phonics-based approach only works for children who are fluent in English. And the state’s largest teachers union, the California Teachers Association, opposed claiming teachers need flexibility to pick a reading program that works for their students, Calmatters reported. Because it’s all about the teachers, rather than their clients – your kids and grandkids.

How did Democrats remove phonics and why are they now reinventing the wheel to bring it back?

Assembly Floor Analysis claims: “Prior to the pandemic, English language arts and English language development achievement in California was improving, and reading scores were approaching the national average,” and “scores declined during the pandemic, and recovery remains slow.” Baloney. Scores have been plummeting for years – since Phonics were discarded.

“It is a tragedy that California is only now going back to phonics-based reading instruction,” Lance Izumi, senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute told the Globe. “We have known since the 1990s that the phonics-based science of reading is the most effective means of teaching reading. However, progressive educators pushed the failed balanced-literacy method of reading instruction that asked students to guess at words as opposed to sounding out letters to make words. Today, the vast majority of schools in California use this failed method. No wonder that only 28 percent of California eighth graders score at the proficient level on the national reading test. The bill signed by the governor is a welcome step in the right direction. The key now will be the level of implementation at the local level and whether the university schools of education will shift to teaching future teachers how to teach reading using phonics—a task that most have failed to do.”

“More than half of California students taking the 2025 state English exam failed to score at the proficient level. On the state math test, more than six out of 10 test-takers failed to score at the proficient mark,” Izumi reports.

In 1995, after state test results showed that the vast majority of California public school students could not read, write, or compute at levels considered proficient, it was evident there had been a wholesale abandonment of the basics of phonics and math drills in California classrooms, CATO reported in 2022.

“The whole language method” and “new math” – why did bureaucrats insist upon experimenting on California’s school children when they already knew what worked? The answer is teachers unions and English-as-a-second-language advocates.

During reading lessons in my home, I always supplemented with a Phonics program.

Assembly Floor Analysis reports:

According to the Education Recovery Scorecard, a project of Stanford and Harvard Universities, California ranked 18th in recovery in reading between 2019 and 2024.

Achievement gaps in ELA are significant and widening. Students’ achievement in ELA varies significantly by racial/ethnic subgroup and other student characteristics.

In 2023-24, the following percentages of 3rd graders met or exceeded standards in ELA, by

race/ethnicity:

1) Asian: 67%

2) Filipino: 64%

3) White: 57%

4) Two or more races: 56%

5) Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 34%

6) Hispanic/Latino: 32%

7) American Indian/Alaska Native: 30%

8) Black/African American: 28%

And then the bill analysis concludes, “Similarly, a significant gap exists between students by income, disability, and other factors.”

They continue:

A 2025 analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) of state ELA and mathematics scores for all grades indicates that these achievement gaps started before the pandemic and have since accelerated. The PPIC noted that students scoring at the 10th percentile are now scoring significantly lower than those at the 10th percentile in 2019, and that this divergence from higher performing students began as far back as 2017.

Phonics will take care of that. We just hope teachers unions don’t get sick of the successes of their clients.