It turns out that New York's Democratic governor is hooked on something, and you'll be really

surprised to find out what it is.

I'm Scott Ott with Bill Whittle and Stephen Green.

This episode of Right Angles brought to you by the members at Bill Whittle.com.

And gentlemen, what Kathy Hokel, the governor of New York State, is hooked on these days, is

phonics.

She has just proposed that the state spend $10 million to,

and by the way, I'm getting this from the New York Times, so this isn't something from Fox News or something.

The governor proposed spending $10 million to retrain teachers on what is known as, quote, the science of reading, which involves

teaching children to sound out words, decode them, and understand their meaning, as well as

helping them expand their vocabulary. She's calling for increase in teacher training programs

at state universities so we can prepare teachers

to teach this obscure science of reading. And Stephen Green, the reason why she's doing this is because

last year, fewer than half of New York State's third graders were proficient on state reading

tests. Now, many teachers in New York City and the state have been

trained and have been using a method known as balanced literacy, which encourages, and this is in the

New York Times words, independent reading and includes practices that experts say are problematic,

like teaching children to guess words using pictures.

Experts and policymakers say it is now clear the balanced literacy approach did not offer

children enough foundation in the fundamental skills such as phonics.

Stephen Green, I guess it's one of those things where if you wait long enough, common sense will come back around again.

But what do you make of this move by New York State's governor and the city, by the way, has done something comparable to invest millions of dollars, basically to go back to the way that I was taught to read.

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