Those High-School grads didn't learn to read (or not learn to read, as the case may be) when Davis was Governor. No party is clean on this front.
There's evidence for and against either method. I wonder if maybe SOME kids learn better one way and SOME kids learn better the other way? Perhaps the real task is figuring out which group a kid falls into.
I'm not a big fan of one-size-fits-all in almost ANY area, and I really don't like it in education.
Mom was a reading teacher, K-3rd, for 20+ years and would say evidence supporting the whole language approach is bogus and has been trumped up. She said occasionally she would run into a child who didn't do well with phonics but not very often.
As far as one-size-fits-all, I think some times it can't be helped. When it happened to my son (he needed a bigger challenge in math), I felt it was my responsibility to get it done, not the schools, and I did it myself.
I think a lot of parents are ducking their own duty when it comes to teaching their kids skills in education. I and my husband read to our kids all the time. My son's first sentence was "Mommy read book".
We see the government trying to usurp parents' rights and I think they think they can try to get away with it, because they have seen how parents neglect their responsibilities.