The vote was unanimous in both legislative chambers. The decision against the Board was upheld all the way through the Court of Appeals to the State Supreme Court. Rather than comply with the law and adopt tested practices though, the legislature removed the law allowing the statewide mandate of the exclusive use of the untested whole language approach to continue. For example, in Massachusetts 40 researchers in linguistics and psycholinguistics from Harvard, MIT, University of Massachusetts, and other research institutions have signed a petition to the state of Massachusetts to reverse the direction of the proposed language arts standards advocating whole language methods for reading instruction. The list of programs approved by the Oregon State Board of Education is only a recommended list.
Local districts can adopt any programs and materials they wish.
However, individual schools must fill out extensive applications to use materials that differ from those adopted at the district level. State adoption committees did not use scientific research-based criteria in the selection process. Local adoption committees assume that the state-level process is reliable, when it isn't. We need to improve the way we teach beginning reading right now. To prevent massive reading failure in Oregon, as occurred in California, Oregon schools must include systematic, explicit phonics in initial reading instruction.