A Weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
Volume 4, Number 45. December 16, 2004

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Winners of the 2005 Prize for Valor
MARION JOSEPH--THE PAUL REVERE OF THE READING WARS

In June 2000, a reader of the Los Angeles Times wrote in to complain about a flattering article and interview with education reformer Marion Joseph. "Let me get this straight," the woman from Newport Beach stated sarcastically. "One woman, a grandmother with no formal background in education, yet with an extensive network of contacts in Sacramento, is changing how California and the nation teach reading. Is that right?" Who, the reader demanded to know, "elected Joseph?"

Who indeed. The little old lady from north of Pasadena has been hailed by Sacramento Bee columnist Peter Schrag as "the Paul Revere of the Reading Wars" and "the state's, and perhaps the nation's, most powerful individual force for education reform." Luminaries in the ed wars and seasoned education reporters alike say that Joseph turned the tide in reading instruction from whole-language back to phonics in California--and thus altered the way reading is taught nationwide. True, no one elected Joseph the patron of phonics. But her relentless, research-based advocacy--for which the retired grandma didn't earn a dime--is still a sterling example of what a citizen-activist and lone individual can accomplish in reforming U.S. schools.

When Joseph retired in 1982 after working for 12 years as a top aide to state superintendent Wilson Riles, she planned to putter among her herbs and roses and take part in local environmental causes. Then, one day in 1989, her daughter asked if Joseph could attend an open house at her grandson's school. Isaac, a first-grader, was a bright boy who was having trouble learning to read. At the school, Joseph listened to a young teacher deliver a baffling talk about the state's new approach to teaching reading. A few months later, when Joseph accompanied her daughter on a visit with Isaac's teacher, they learned that the little boy was to be given a difficult reading anthology--yet the teacher was not teaching him to read or sound out the strange words he would encounter.

The public schools' indifference to her grandson's struggle started Joseph on a fact-finding odyssey that led to her crusade for phonics. Yet when she began, Joseph "knew nothing about reading--I had worked on all these policy and structural issues." She was, moreover, an unlikely advocate for a traditional, back-to-basics pedagogy. Joseph was nothing if not an unreconstructed liberal. An only child, she had grown up listening to her parents rail against social injustice, racism and poverty.

When Joseph started asking whether other children were having problems learning to read, she discovered that public schools had changed. The new ethos was all about nurturing "self-esteem" and "constructivism"--the belief that children should construct knowledge from their experience, rather than acquire it by being taught basic skills.

Following her visits to Isaac's school, Joseph started working the phone and heard from teachers, parents, and legislative aides and bureaucrats that whole-language wasn't working. Shortly thereafter, she listened to Reid Lyon on a local NPR program. Lyon, the head of the development and behavior branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, cited research showing that children need to learn phonics to read. Joseph pulled off to the side of the road, found a pay phone, and called Lyon to request copies of the studies.

After Joseph read the damning research, she made copies for lawmakers and Sacramento education officials. "I'd carry the research studies around," she recalls, "and I'd say, 'I didn't write this paper. You read it. You decide what to take away from it.'" Her critique seemed doubly persuasive to lawmakers when the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that the reading scores of California students had not only fallen but were now the worst in the nation, surpassing only Guam's.

In 1995, the legislature passed--without a single dissenting vote--two bills that mandated the use of phonics in reading instruction and set up a commission to create comprehensive academic standards. Two years later, Joseph was appointed by GOP governor Pete Wilson to the California Board of Education, where she helped oversee the development of rigorous standards.

Joseph's success was bitterly resented by the ed school professoriate, by professional associations for reading and early childhood education, by state and local bureaucrats, and by Latino activists who were pressing for more bilingual education. "It wasn't the Democratic politicians that went after me," says Joseph. "It was the soft liberal wing of the education establishment." But despite the vilification, Joseph and her fellow phonics advocates ultimately won the reading wars. The California Department of Education no longer preaches the gospel of whole language instruction, and that movement has been seriously undermined by the lack of any independent scientific research documenting its methods' benefits. "There is no question that we have stemmed the tide," Joseph concedes. Still, Joseph, now 78, isn't satisfied. Her next goal is to improve the quality of teaching in California. "We have the poorest-prepared teachers continuing to teach the neediest kids here--the struggle continues," says Joseph. "You can never stop."

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