California is finally adopting phonics, fulfilling a grandmother’s dream

Marion Joseph died in 2022 and therefore cannot celebrate what at long last is happening in California to improve children’s abysmal levels of reading comprehension.

Joseph, a renowned expert on reading instruction, came out of retirement in the 1980s to wage a personal crusade for the adoption of phonics, doing battle with educators who stubbornly supported a rival system called “whole language” that was failing to raise reading scores.