KAROL MARKOWICZ: Going back to phonics is just the first step to making our schools teach again.

There’s been a national conversation recently on the way schools have taught reading.

For decades, schools dropped phonics-based models in favor of memorization.

This half-baked idea was implemented throughout the country with disastrous results.

Bad ideas sometimes work — until they don’t.

My older two children learned to read easily using this ridiculous memorization method.

But my youngest decided to just memorize all words instead of actually learning to read. This worked remarkably well, and he managed to fool a lot of people in his orbit.

When we realized what was happening, we got him extra help focused on phonics. But how many parents were unable to get their kids similar help?

The situation is even worse in science, as Karol explains in her column.