SCHOOL BOARD SUSPENDS `TOO-EASY' SPELLING TESTS : EDUCATORS SPLIT ON TEACHING DIFFICULT VS. EVERYDAY WORDS.

Byline: Associated Press 

The Fountain Valley school board has suspended spelling lessons until it can decide whether it's more important for children to memorize tough words or focus on everyday usage.

Throughout California, school officials are wrestling with the Friday spelling test, a classroom tradition since the 19th century.

Fountain Valley's spelling lesson suspension came Sept. 4, after school board members questioned whether elementary students should be learning words more difficult than ``thought'' and ``something.''

The board is considering temporarily discarding a spelling program based partially on a theory that children must learn to spell common words correctly in everyday writing. The district's spelling list will be fully overhauled later this year.

Meanwhile, delivery of spelling books remains on hold until after the board's concerns are addressed, said Catherine Follett, assistant superintendent of instruction.

The former teacher who wrote the spelling list Fountain Valley adopted in 1991 believes that forcing small children to memorize big words for a weekly test accomplishes nothing.

``Whether or not a student can spell doesn't have much to do with whether they memorize words on Thursday night for a test on Friday,'' said Rebecca Sitton, who urged an end to the Friday spelling test in the fall edition of the California Reader, a journal based in Costa Mesa.

``Probably there are parents out there wondering how their kids can get an A and still not know the difference between `their' and `there' when they're writing a science report,'' she said.

Fountain Valley board member Barbara Vogel says the district's word list is too easy. She called for discussion of the spelling program after the district's spelling test scores for elementary students, still at or above average, were not as high as scores in other subjects last year.

``We want to be great at all subjects, and we're not that great at spelling, and I want to change that,'' Vogel said.

The ideas of Sitton, who lives in Spokane, Wash., are likely to be discussed more as districts throughout the state start buying new primary language-arts books this month. In June, a state task force called for language-arts teachers to embrace a combination of phonics, or the teaching of sound-letter combinations, along with an approach that immerses children in literature.

The report was not specific about spelling, suggesting only that programs should be based on words in writing and reading - but include ``tricky'' words.

By the first grade, children should move from guessed spellings to correct spellings, the report suggests. Districts are free to develop their own spelling programs.

Not only the teaching of spelling has changed over the years. The days of reaching for a dictionary have met the days when kids can press a spell-check button on the computer.

The computer dictionaries include new entries like ``channel surfing,'' ``telephone tag,'' ``cafe latte'' and ``ebola virus,'' to keep pace with evolving vocabulary. Yet, most can't catch misused words such as ``for'' for ``four,'' or many words used in resumes, letters and other real-world pursuits, Sitton points out.

Sitton may not be a big fan of classroom spelling bees, but they have their champions.

Shirley Lai, 14, a national spelling bee veteran, said it's a good idea to emphasize the commonly used words during the elementary years but give spelling bees a central role in 21st-century school curriculum.

Lai, now a sophomore at Laguna Hills High School, credits the 1,200 SAT score she earned in the seventh grade, to her childhood experience on the spelling-bee circuit. She took 13th place in the 1995 national spelling tournament.

``All those words I memorized, they helped me with my SATs,'' she said. ``That's why spelling bees are so good.''