From a local campaign:

High Standards
Senator Huppenthal will end social promotion by using phonics to teach students to reading [sic] by the end of third grade.

Huppenthal is running for Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction. I’m not sure where he went to elementary school, but it was clearly sub-standard if students were not able to read by the third grade.

My parents had us reading before they sent us to kindergarten. But, even if they hadn’t, I can’t imagine Mrs Aniuk allowing any of her charges to move up to Sister Thomas’s first grade class if we hadn’t grasped something as basic as reading.

As a plank on a campaign platform, teaching children to read by the time they are 8 years old seems a poor choice.

This post was originally going to be about the 3rd grade reading exclusively, as that grabs my attention every time I drive past one of his signs. However, when I visited his page to ensure I had the proper wording (and noticed the typo noted above), I found it under the heading “High Standards”. Then the next paragraph, which is actually about high standards, is under the heading “Reading by Third Grade”. A man hoping to be top dog in our education system should certainly have someone proofread the PR materials.