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The Editorial Board at The Washington Post published a bold claim: The reading wars are ending. Phonics won:

The “reading wars” that raged in American schools for decades finally seem to be ending. The victor is clear: Phonics is the best way to teach kids how to read.

California is the latest state to re-embrace the tried-and-true teaching method, in which kids learn the sounds that each letter makes and then use them as building blocks for words and sentences. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Thursday signed reforms into law that will encourage schools to turn away from other unsupported teaching methods, despite resistance from teacher unions….

Momentum for re-embracing phonics started in Mississippi, which long had a reputation for sitting at the bottom of national education rankings. In 2013, state officials decided to enforce adoption of the old-school instruction method that is often referred to as the “science of reading.” The state explicitly discouraged methods such as cueing and started aggressively holding back third-graders who didn’t meet reading standards, angering many parents.

There are a few problems, however.

First, and most damning, California did not just pass Science of Reading legislation modeled on Mississippi, as detailed by Martha Hernandez:

The bill has been described in the media as California’s new “science of reading” bill, but this shorthand fails to accurately reflect the legislation’s comprehensive scope and intention.

Let’s be clear, AB 1454 is not about narrowing literacy instruction to one approach. Rather, it’s about realizing California’s long-standing, comprehensive vision for literacy that meets the needs of all students — including our state’s 1.1 million English learners.

Phonics and foundational skills are essential for teaching students to read, and they always have been. But effective literacy instruction is not just about sounding out words. Children also need strong oral language, vocabulary, background knowledge, writing and comprehension skills to thrive as readers.

AB 1454 accounts for this reality. At its core, it aligns with California’s English Language Arts/English Language Development (ELA/ELD) Framework, adopted in 2014. This framework is nationally recognized for weaving together multiple strands of research — including phonics and decoding — alongside research on how children learn a second language, how their home language knowledge supports English learning, and how their cultures and life experiences shape how they use and understand language.

For a comprehensive overview of how California’s new reading legislation does not conform to the Mississippi model, please see this excellent overview by Jill Kerper Mora, Edgar Lampkin, Barbara Flores, and Anita Flemington: Pushing back against Science of Reading mandates: The California story.

Next, the Editorial Board perpetuates the whole language Urban Legend about failure in California, a state that saw literacy test scores drop after a decrease in funding and an influx of multilingual learners in the late 1980s into the 1990s (in fact, Linda Darling Hammond found a positive correlation between whole language and higher NAEP scores in the 1990s).

For a debunking of the Urban Legend, see Whole Language and the Great Plummet of 1987-92: An Urban Legend from California by Stephen Krashen.

And finally, but not surprisingly, the Editorial Board falls for the Mississippi “miracle” narrative.

There currently is no research showing SOR instruction has succeeded in MS; in fact, research shows only grade retention is associated with some short-term test score increases. MS grade 8 scores remain in the bottom 25% of score in the US, the state continues to retain about 9000 K-3 students each year, and the race/poverty gap is the same as 1998.

For an overview of why Mississippi reading reform is not a “miracle,” please see Misunderstanding Mississippi’s Reading Reform: The Need to Resist Copycat Education Reform.

In short, the Editorial Board gets everything wrong, and once again, mainstream media falls for the phonics gambit.