Hundreds of Chicago area parents aren't waiting for experts tofigure out why reading scores are tumbling. They're going outsidethe public schools for help.
They are sending their children to private tutors, oftenshelling out more than $30 an hour, or buying special reading booksand teaching their kids at home.
Last week's news of declining statewide reading scoresresurrected the great reading debate pitting old-fashioned phonics,with its drills and workbooks, against "whole language" teaching,with its invented spelling and emphasis on children's literature overfundamental readers.
Tinley Park resident Maryanne Roos' son Tom was getting A's andB's by the time he was getting ready for high school. So she wasshocked when he took a placement test that showed he read at afourth-grade level. She since has spent several thousand dollars ontutoring so he can catch up.
Most school districts say they use what works, but worriedparents say it's not working. They're seeking solutions elsewhere.
Jean Iovino, owner of eight Sylvan Learning Centers in thesuburbs, said the number of beginning readers in her centers hasskyrocketed in the last five years. Of the 900 enrolled, Iovinosaid almost half are in the first, second, or third grades. This isup from between 15 and 20 percent just a few years ago, she said.
There are many reasons children have trouble reading, but "a lotof the students we see are having difficulty with reading becausephonetically they can't decode words," Iovino said. Many parents suggest that the shift from phonics to the "wholelanguage" philosophy of reading instruction is behind the drop inscores.
Illinois Education Supt. Joseph Spagnolo said last week thatstatewide reading scores are in a "downward spiral," with 1996 scoresin two of four grades tested showing double-digit drops that can't beattributed to testing aberrations, he said.
Spagnolo suggested that lower scores are due in part to theproliferation of distractions such as television and computers.
Few dispute that they are factors, but others, including Chicagoschool chief Paul Vallas, agree with Iovino that the decline inphonics instruction is playing a role.
"The swing toward whole language, the substitution of wholelanguage for phonics, has done a lot of damage," Vallas said.
The whole language philosophy stresses literature rather than"see Jane run" reading texts. The goal is to develop a lifelong lovefor reading and writing. Children are encouraged to use "inventedspelling" to feel free to write without worrying about details.
Proponents of the philosophy - and virtually every Chicago areaschool administrator interviewed - insist that whole languageincludes phonics. But the repetitive method of sounding out words isde-emphasized.
Elyssa Rudie of Orland Park, who won't send her 8-year-old sonTim back to Orland Park Elementary School, said reading curriculumhas gone off the tracks.
"Whole language is a guessing game," she said. Her son, whowill attend a private school in the fall, "doesn't try to soundthings out. What he does is he guesses."
Jenny Bernas of Tinley Park became concerned when her daughterCarole "still wasn't reading words she should" in second grade.
By third grade, Bernas said, Carole still was saying "words thatwere nonsensical." She decided to spend the summer teaching herdaughter phonics.
Not everyone is opposed to whole language, which is usedthroughout the suburbs. Deerfield resident Sara Hutsell is evensatisfied with invented spelling, a lightning rod for criticism ofthe movement.
Hutsell said her youngest son, Tyler, 7, cared so little aboutspelling that she and her husband couldn't understand what he waswriting. But he was writing volumes.
"Tyler's invented spelling was kind of a reflection of hispersonality," she said. "In the beginning, he wrote so much healmost wrote a novel. It was really cute, but his father and Iweren't able to figure out what the words were because of the way hespelled them. His teacher figured it out.
"(Invented spelling) seemed to work for him. Now his spellingis better, and he loves to read."
Claire McKittrick, a parent of second- and sixth-graders atHillcrest School in Downers Grove, said: "It's not that wholelanguage is bad, but I'd like to see more emphasis on phonics andback to basics. The emphasis needs to be on sounding words out, notjust relying on the ones they memorize."
Marie Donovan, an assistant professor of education at De PaulUniversity, said whole language can be demanding for teachers andsome may need more work at it.
"There are a lot of people out there who say they are wholelanguage teachers but they don't know enough about what they aredoing," said Donovan, who advocates a mix of styles.
For example, good whole language teachers may teach phonic wordfamilies" - for instance, "fat, rat, pat", Donovan said, but insteadof using a segment from a fundamental reader, they may choose a bookthat has many of those words in it and ask children to raise theirhands when they hear the "short a" sound.
According to the Harvard Education Letter, researchincreasingly indicates that neither whole language nor phonics aloneis as effective as "a balanced approach that combines the two."
Arlington Heights Elementary District 25 Supt. Dorothy Webersaid a mixture of approaches is the key. She said teachers inArlington Heights use a whole language, or "literature-based,"approach but that spelling tests are given and phonics workbooks areused.
Reading scores dropped for the first time last year in ArlingtonHeights. But Weber said factors other than curriculum could be atwork. More special education students are taking the tests, as aremore students for whom English is not their primary langauge, shesaid.
The drop in reading scores is a national trend. So is thegrowth of private tutoring companies.
"Our business has increased 20 percent a year every year for thepast four years," said Vickie Glazar, spokeswoman for Maryland-basedSylvan Learning Systems.
Contributing: John Carpenter, Philip Franchine, Susan Dodge andMichelle Campbell
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