If less than half of 8th grades can't read, should it maybe, just maybe mean it's time for spelling reform? It's baffling, that you need a method and something special for such a basic thing as reading.
Spanish has almost perfectly logical spelling. I mean: given a sound, there's one way to write it. And, given an unknown written word, there's one way to pronounce it.
Even if English were to have these two properties:
- we would still need a method for teaching reading
- it would be possible for more than one method to exist
- it would be likely that one method would be generally better than all other methods
Figuring out the sounds is a small part and we definitely shouldn't assume it's the bottleneck.
Olso, zis kaind of speling luks strainj to old pipl.