WRONG! My kids were educated in the CA school system. The BIGGER question based on my experience shoud be "How should California teach roughly THREE QUARTERS of the state's public school population -- students who ARE native English speakers -- how to read and write? The schools are failing these kids, too.
Yep!!! My daughter has started struggling this past year (3rd grade) with reading. She has brain damage with speech and language problems, and it is no surprise that she is having problems with reading. There are several multi-sensory reading programs available that are recommended for kids like my daughter.
The public school is denying her these programs because she is only 6 months behind. They will not give them to her until she is 2 years behind.
We even had an independent evaluation done by a neuropsychologist, learning specialist, and a speech therapist who all recommended a multi-sensory reading program.
Of course the poor ESL kids get tons of help at the school. It pisses me off because those kids don't need anything special to learn to read.
My daughter will not read unless she has special help.
We're pulling my daughter from public school and putting her in private school with the reading program she needs.
(We're also going to sue the school district to pay for the private school and reading program. We should win.)