Almost all reform orthographies are better in at least one respect:  They are more consistent than the traditional orthography.  Proposals to reconnect spelling and pronunciation have been advanced since 1500 but the only reforms that can be said to have "caught on" have been those with a special application such as shorthands and i. t. a.'s (Initial Teaching Alphabets).

The Saxon Spanglish alphabet has 18 vowels.  R, Y and W are semi-vowels.  They serve as vowels unless followed by a vowel. 
 

The major deterant to widespread adoption has been the lack of resemblance between orthographies that are near 100% alphabetic and the traditional one which is about  50% alphabetic. kan U rEd xis? kaen iu rid dis?

Since new codes are typically developed to optimize a particular dimension, it is almost impossible to rank or choose between them. Consistency and ease of use are important dimensions. Ease of use would include being able to read the reform script without a key.

There are several ways to compare alternate notations for English.

The original letter matrix borrowed the conventions used by Pitman in Alphabets and Reading. The one below returns to an alphabetical arrangement - grouping the long & short vowels with the closest blend or diphthong.  Letter Matrix with clickable sounds

The ultimate question is "Which grapheme should be associated or paired with which phoneme?" The project does not answer that question but provides an easier way to examine alternative proposals phoneme by phoneme. 

By comparing a wide variety of proposals, it should be possible for researchers locate problem pairings and to arrive at more informed conclusions.<next screen>   <jump to alt. notations chart>   <augmented alphabets>

Words that look the same are not pronounced the same [e.g., dose, rose, lose [do's, ro'z, luz] - done, gone, one, tone [dun, gon, wun]. 

Syllables and words that are pronounced the same [e.g., oh, owe, bow, beau, whoa, foe, fro] are not spelled the same.

The solution seems obvious, just spell each sound one way [o' bo' wo', fo' fro'].

Novices often think that they are the only ones who ever came up with this solution. Even some of those who publish books on the topic often seem unaware of the hundreds of others who have suggested more systematic notations.

The problem is to find a code that will be easy enough to read for those familiar with the old code and consistent enough with the more alphabetic orthographies of other languages to facilitate learning. It is the quest for tri-codal compatibility that makes the task difficult.

The one area where there is no need to reinvent the wheel is with respect to the English phonemes. The significant speech sounds for English were identified over 100 years ago. 

Novices typically underestimate the number of significant sounds particularly sounds that have never been associated with a particular letter or digraph such as schwa.

One should realize that the phoneme is a range of acoustic values that are treated as equivalent by a community. It is not a discrete sound segment with clearly defined boundaries. 
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By definition, a phoneme is a difference in sound that makes a difference in meaning. bi.d and bi:d [bead] are the same C-V-C except for the slight difference in the long [free] and short [checked] vowel. Any time a difference in sound yields a difference in meaning, you have found a phoneme.

A phoneme is usually defined as a minimal contrastive sound unit of language. Two phones (sounds) are realizations of different phonemes if they produce phonological contrasts -- if they figure in at least one minimal pair.

All spoken languages are phonemic.  Writing systems are phonemic to the extent that they accurately map the significant sound categories of the language.

Spelling reform proposals differ with respect to (1) how much of the TO, the erratic system to which we have become accustom, they try to retain, (2) the extent to which they limit themselves to the traditional Roman character set, and (3) how close they adhere to the alphabetic principal. All of the 8 listed proposals are more alphabetic, phonemic, and systematic than TO 

The letter matrix project tries to answer the question [How best to graphically represent spoken English?] by comparing a wide variety of orthographic reform proposals phoneme by phoneme.  It allows one to examine the alternative graphemes that have been associated with each phoneme in the inventory of significant speech sounds. <next screen>

Children are also taught that the long vowels "say their names." While it is true that "ei, i: ai, ou, iu" are all long, most are blends of pure vowels. The long vowels recognized by linguists are quite different as shown in the chart below

The easiest way to memorize the vowel phonemes is to group them into four categories: checked, free, blended, and vowels combined with schwa. Each column has six entries.

Sample texts written in different notations