When I moved to Texas in 1997, there was already an effort underway to revise the standards for the teaching of all subjects, including English. These standards, the TEKS, (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) were generally pretty good -- but in my opinion still lacked a serious focus on the basic building blocks of the English language. The result of these and the earlier standards, known as the Essential Elements, was that students were reaching me in grades 10 and 11 without having mastered essential skills for literacy. And I am not just talking about ESL students -- I'm talking about native speakers of English.

Now there is an effort to revise those standards to focus more on the fundamentals of language.

The education agency already has convened a teacher study group to study the English TEKS, and the revisions were scheduled to be presented to the board for approval later this year. But the board stopped that process in April and set a June 14 work session to hear from reading experts about the curriculum.

That meeting changed the minds of some board members, including board chairman Geraldine "Tincy" Miller, who apologized to McLeroy at the end of the meeting.

"I really was convinced we had an incredible curriculum, and it just needed a little tweaking," said Miller, R-Dallas. "We need to stop this process right now."

One criticism voiced at the session is that the TEKS are too student-centered, often asking students to use their attitudes, behaviors and ethics to interpret texts. For example, students in fourth through eighth grades are expected to "describe mental images that text descriptions evoke" and "compare text events with his or her own or other readers' experiences."

McLeroy calls such standards "fuzzy English" and wants to expunge them from the state's curriculum. He said such standards can't be measured on state tests.

Board member David Bradley, R-Beaumont, voted in 1997 in favor of an alternate set of standards that was heavier on the basics of spelling and grammar. Critics said the alternate standards would wind up micromanaging teachers by dictating what and how they must teach rather than giving them the flexibility to determine how to reach individual students.

The problem is that the standards adopted were not terribly flexible, nor were they particularly measurable. it was all well and good that students were expected to express themselves in multi-media presentations -- except that the reality is that most texas schools lacked (and still lack) the computer and video equipment to make that a reality. And the hoped-for flexibility was not a reality -- teachers were still expected to produce results on a high-stakes test, so it was those portions of the TEKS that were measured on the TAKS test that became the focus of drill-and-kill instruction in many classrooms.

And still students reached upper grades without mastering fundamentals. My students this year had spent all but one year of their education under the new standards, but they still exhibit the same problems as under the old standards. Purposeful reading and writing remain beyond the reach of too many of them -- a complaint I've heard from fellow teachers in a number of districts. Vocabularies are limited ("Mister, quit using big words like "contemporary."). Spelling is terrible. The mechanics of the English language are a mystery ("Do we have to use paragraphs?" "Where's the verb? What's a verb?").

So I salute the State Board of Education in taking the opportunity to direct the teaching of English back to the fundamentals.