Phonics battle underscores public school failures

After California released its statewide test scores late last year, the president of the state board of education boasted that, “California’s public schools are making encouraging gains, and these gains are largest for our most vulnerable groups of students.”
Yet those numbers revealed only the slightest boosts, with a paltry 47% of California students meeting or exceeding English standards—up a mere 0.3% from the previous year. Test scores remained below pre-pandemic lev