Another Urban Legend

Did test scores plummet in California because of whole language? Was Humphrey Bogart the original Gerber baby? Are there alligators in the sewers of New York?

By Stephen Krashen

Thanks to pack journalism (one major newspaper prints a sensational story and others believe it and report it as "news"), it is now generally accepted that test scores dropped dramatically in California in the late 1980's and early 1990's and the cause was the introduction of whole language, a fuzzy-minded method of teaching reading that forbids the teaching of phonics and spelling, and that asks children to read texts that are completely incomprehensible.

None of this is true. It is, in fact, an urban legend, one that competes with alligators in the sewers of New York, and that Humphrey Bogart was the original Gerber baby. Let's look at each aspect of the legend.

Did California adopt whole language? Many writers claim that whole language was introduced in California by the California Language Arts Committee that met in 1987. I served on that committee. To my knowledge, we never used the words "whole language" in our discussions and the phrase does not appear in our report. We said that language arts should be literature-based. This is hardly a radical position.

Were phonics and spelling banned in California? No surveys were done. We have no idea if teachers changed their teaching or not. There is, in fact, no evidence that whole language was ever widespread in California.

Did test scores plummet? What is true is that in 1992 California's fourth graders ranked last in the United States on the NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] test of reading comprehension. But this was the first time the NAEP scores had been presented by individual states. Critics of whole language assumed that things had been better before, that there was a decline, but they had no basis for making this assumption.

In his book The Literacy Crisis: False Claims and Real Solutions. (a book I usually refer to as The Pelican Brief), Jeff McQuillan examined reading comprehension scores from another test, the CAP test, from 1984 to 1990. McQuillan found no evidence that scores had decreased or increased in California in all grades tested, grades three, six, eight and 12.

California's reading scores were low well before the framework committee met in 1987. And they are still low: NAEP tests administered in 1994 and 1998 have shown no gains at all for California.

WHY THE LOW SCORES?

Why are California's scores so low? McQuillan provides overwhelming evidence that California's low scores are due to its pathetic print environment. Let's examine every possible source of reading material for children, and we will see that in each case, California ranks at or near the bottom of the country.

School libraries: California has the worst school libraries in the country. The national average for elementary schools is 18 books per child. California now has 12 books per child (down from 13 per child ten years ago), and the Los Angeles district has only six books per child. These are disgraceful statistics for a state that eagerly spends millions on testing. In the United States, there is one school librarian for every 900 students. In California, the ratio is one for every 5000.

School libraries are important: Keith Curry Lance and his associates found that Colorado schools with better school libraries (with better staffing and better collections) had higher reading scores, even when factors such as poverty and availability of computers were controlled. Lance's Colorado results have been replicated in several other states, by Lance himself as well as by other scholars and are consistent with studies done by McQuillan and by me: We found that states with better school and public libraries earned higher scores on the NAEP fourth grade reading examination.

Public libraries: According to data published in 1997 by the National Center for Educational Statistics, California's public libraries have 1.9 volumes per capita, compared to the national average of 2.8. Only three states are worse. California's public libraries circulate 4.9 books per capita per year, compared to the national average of 6.6. Only ten states are lower.

Books in the home: McQuillan reported that California ranked near the bottom of the country in the percentage of homes with more than 25 books. Of course, books in the home is directly linked to poverty: California now ranks in the bottom eight of the country in terms of percentage of children ages 5- 17 living in poverty.

These print access variables are strongly correlated with NAEP reading scores. McQuillan reported a .85 correlation between measures of print access (books and other forms of print available in the home, school and community) and 1994 NAEP scores. Even controlling for poverty, the correlation remained high (r = .63). Independent research supports McQuillan's analysis. There is excellent evidence that children with more access to books read more and that children who read more make superior gains in literacy development.

What's the obvious cure? Better school libraries (and of course better classroom libraries). We have no control over public libraries and no control over books in the home, but we can easily improve school libraries. For many children of poverty, school libraries are the only possible source of books. A modest investment, a fraction of what we cheerfully pay for testing and technology can have a profound effect on the print environment. There is no evidence that increased testing works, and no evidence that computers have ever had any effect on reading ability. But there is tremendous evidence that access to books and actual reading are good for you.

Of course, the public's view is that the cure is increased phonics and other forms of direct instruction. Nobody has denied the value of teaching some phonics, of giving students some conscious knowledge of sound-spelling correspondences.

Frank Smith, in his classic book on literacy, Understanding Reading, points out that some knowledge of phonics can help make texts more comprehensible. Smith points out, however, that there are severe limits on how much phonics can be taught directly: the rules are complex and have numerous exceptions. Smith argues that most of our knowledge of phonics is the result of reading and not the cause. The rules of phonics also have limited applicability. California State University at Fresno Professor Elaine Garan (see her book, Resisting Reading Mandates) has also concluded that in grade two and higher, children who have participated in intensive phonics programs do not do significantly better than those with less intensive phonics on tests of reading comprehension. What is clear is that children who read more read better, write better, spell better, have better control of grammar, and have larger vocabularies.

Humphrey Bogart was not the original Gerber baby. There is no evidence that alligators live in the sewers of New York City. And the urban legend that whole language caused California's reading scores to plummet is false. Reading scores were low well before the Language Arts Framework Committee met in 1987, and there is compelling evidence that California's low scores are related its impoverished print environment. There is also no compelling evidence that the cure is more phonics. The skills hysteria that has gripped California and other states has no basis.

Postscript: A word on whole language. Whole language has been badly mischaracterized by the media. It certainly does not forbid the teaching of phonics. The core of whole language is the hypothesis that we learn to read by understanding texts. Phonics is one way of doing this, but there are of course other ways, such as supplying background information. Whole language teachers do not force children to deal with incomprehensible texts; rather, they provide interesting texts and help children understand them.

Stephen Krashen is Professor Emeritus of Education, University of Southern California.

Summer 2002