Glorifying consumption | Life of privation | Safeguard bees. Mercury News reader letters to the editor for June 20, 2025.

California’s reading wars may finally be over. After decades of debate over how to teach reading, a new bill aims to use phonics to solve the state’s literacy crisis.

Nearly 6 in 10 third graders scored below grade level on California’s reading tests during most of the last decade.

A primary school in Peterborough has been awarded for its phonics teaching – helping young pupils to learn the sounds of ...

Benjamin Adlard Primary School sees all its Year 1 children achieve 100% success in phonics tests for the second year running ...

Molinar also outlined the district’s new model for serving students with dyslexia. Fort Worth ISD has experienced a growing ...

Kids who don’t read by fourth grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school. We know what follows. When the California Assembly passed a bill last week adopting the so-called ...

Submit your letter to the editor via this form.Read more Letters to the Editor.. Phonics alone won’tget kids reading. Re: “Far too many California children can’t read” (Page A7, June 17 ...

Simply put, they battled over phonics, the 17th-century system of sounding out letters and words. The reading technique fell out of favor in most American schools in the 1980s, but now it’s ...

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. At a minimum, schools should teach children to read. But for years California’s elementary schools have been ...