An impact on early education stunting people’s reading capabilities wouldn’t show up for about 10~20 years… so… between 2015 and now is where the impact would be most obvious.
There are of course other factors, such as the cost cutting and underpaying of teachers leading to shortages and larger class sizes, but the introduction of whole language absolutely lines up with the dramatic spike seen recently in functionally illiterate young adults/teens, if you account for the fact that the effects wouldn’t be fully manifested until people taught it in kindergarten reached a point where they’re expected to be functionally literate teens and young adults.
The data comes from tests given to students in grades 3-8, so changes in pedagogy should trickle through completely within 8 years or so.
And my point is that anti-phonics advocates started actually phasing out phonics in the 90’s and 2000’s, so that the teachers between 2007 and 2015 (those critical 8 years of instruction for students taking the test in 2015) were probably the most anti-phonics cohort of the historical data.
From that history, I would assume that the 8-13 year olds in 2025 had more formal phonics instruction than the 2015 cohort.
An impact on early education stunting people’s reading capabilities wouldn’t show up for about 10~20 years… so… between 2015 and now is where the impact would be most obvious.
There are of course other factors, such as the cost cutting and underpaying of teachers leading to shortages and larger class sizes, but the introduction of whole language absolutely lines up with the dramatic spike seen recently in functionally illiterate young adults/teens, if you account for the fact that the effects wouldn’t be fully manifested until people taught it in kindergarten reached a point where they’re expected to be functionally literate teens and young adults.
The data comes from tests given to students in grades 3-8, so changes in pedagogy should trickle through completely within 8 years or so.
And my point is that anti-phonics advocates started actually phasing out phonics in the 90’s and 2000’s, so that the teachers between 2007 and 2015 (those critical 8 years of instruction for students taking the test in 2015) were probably the most anti-phonics cohort of the historical data.
From that history, I would assume that the 8-13 year olds in 2025 had more formal phonics instruction than the 2015 cohort.