On a chilly Tuesday back in January, my 7-year-old son’s classroom in Minneapolis was humming with reading activities. At their desks, first- and second-graders wrote on worksheets, read independently ...

The International Literacy Association has put out a new brief endorsing “systematic and explicit” phonics in all early reading instruction. “English is an alphabetic language. We have 26 letters.

As a teacher in Oakland, Calif., Kareem Weaver helped struggling fourth- and fifth-grade kids learn to read by using a very structured, phonics-based reading curriculum called Open Court. It worked ...