Read to your kids when they're toddlers, I did. My son is now 18, graduated HS with honors and will be starting college in a few weeks. His education started with me reading Dr Seuss books when he was a baby and that gave him a huge head start. Dr Seuss's ABC's defeats "sight words" and "whole language" by introducing the child to the concept that the letters represent sounds, and from there they go on to sounding out words.
