OPEN COURT READING PROGRAM

When was the last time you were asked to read aloud as fast as you can? Unless you’re the FedEx man, this skill has no relevance to your life - however “fluency” as it is called is one of the basic tenets of Open Court Reading, the mandated program that comprises the majority of the teaching day in the elementary schools of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Open Court is a reading program that requires the teacher to follow a script, and allows for no creativity or individualization. In fact, every fourth grader, whether academically gifted or with severely limited learning skills, is supposed to be on the same page, on the same day - akin to the reading of the Torah.

Open Court Reading is phonics-based, and is very successful in teaching beginning readers to sound out and decode the language. Most children do learn to read with fluency - but they read English the way I read Italian. They can say the words, but by third and fourth grade, it has become increasingly obvious, and of great concern, that many children do not understand what they read.

The comprehension instruction in Open Court focuses on predicting what will happen next in the story, rather than drawing the student’s attention to the content of the material. Because a majority of our children lack opportunities to gather vocabulary and English language experiences, we need to focus on exposing them to
conversation, depth of meaning, nuance and the delight of reading.

The time accorded for this program varies from ninety minutes a day in the kindergarten to as much as three hours in upper grades, squeezing out of the curriculum most science, art, music and social studies.

The total curriculum devotion to this reading program and math, negates any cultural development, or refinement of thought, manners or taste. And we are already paying the price - students have no knowledge of the arts, their community, or the world they live in.

The great irony is that the sacrifice of all programs, other than reading and math, is to service the state and federal testing programs, yet most of our children do not score at the “proficient” level in reading comprehension, but at “basic”, “below basic,” or “far below basic” on these tests. So despite the time devoted, there is no gain and the children have been cheated out of even a basic education.