Spelling practices in school districts and regions across the United States and state spelling standards

The authors sent a survey during the 1996-97 school year to 670 school districts in 41 states requesting information on spelling instructional practices to ascertain whether spelling texts are still widely used in the United States given the current emphasis on developmental spelling in the primary grades and the March, 1996 publication of the NCTE/IRA standards. In addition, a search of the reading/language arts standards in 50 states in 1998 revealed that most states do have spelling standards, but only a few coincide with the CTE/IRA Standard 6 which mentions spelling