https://www.city-journal.org/article/balanced-literacy-lawsuit-teaching-reading
After decades of failure, the tide is turning in the battle over how American children are taught to read. School districts had long invested in methods that encouraged students to “guess” unknown words rather than break them down phonetically—a flawed strategy that left a generation of students struggling to read. Criticism of these methods has a long history. Rudolf Flesch’s 1955 book Why Johnny Can’t Read advocated for phonics-based instruction, followed by Jeanne Chall’s The Great Debate and the National Reading Panel’s 2000 report, which emphasized the importance of phonics instruction and challenged other approaches. Despite these efforts, Balanced Literacy gained widespread traction. But since the 2022 investigative podcast series Sold a Story amplified how influential education publishers had promoted these unproven strategies as “research-backed,” half of U.S. states have passed literacy laws changing the way their schools teach reading. Now a lawsuit targets some of these strategies’ leading proponents—potentially forcing curriculum creators and publishers to answer for years of false advertising and failed instruction.
In December, two Massachusetts mothers filed a class-action against Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas, Gay Su Pinnell, their publishers, and the board of trustees of Columbia University’s Teachers College, accusing them of promoting “deceptive” and “defective” reading programs that failed their children. The plaintiffs argued that the curriculum was misrepresented in that it relied on discredited practices, and as a result, hindered their children’s ability to learn to read. The focus on curriculum marketing frames the issue as one of consumer protection rather than educational malpractice, potentially avoiding the legal complexities of the latter allegation. In a broader sense, the case highlights curriculum developers’ ethical and legal obligation to ensure their materials align with the evidence-based practices they claim to promote.
Each of the defendants played a pivotal role in transforming America’s approach to reading education. Calkins created the “Units of Study” curriculum, adopted in public school classrooms across the country. Fountas and Pinnell developed the Leveled Literacy Intervention, a small-group reading-instruction program. Both curricula used the three-cueing system, which encourages students to guess unknown words based on pictures, context, and first letters, rather than by decoding them phonetically. This “guessing” method, long discredited by cognitive scientists, was marketed as “research-backed,” without evidence.
The lawsuit is the latest chapter in the so-called reading wars. In 2001, then-President George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act, which required federally funded schools to adopt Reading First, a phonics-based approach. NCLB, partially inspired by the 2000 National Reading Panel Report, mandated that students be taught to read using these scientifically grounded methods. Progressives and teachers’ unions, however, rejected Reading First. Instead, they promoted Balanced Literacy, which framed teacher-directed instruction as outdated and focused on a student-centered approach to reading.
Reading First was the superior approach. In 2008, the Institute of Education Sciences conducted an impact study on Reading First that demonstrated that students schooled in the approach showed significant gains in the program’s goal areas: phonemic awareness, decoding, and fluency. While the study found that the strategy had no impact on students’ reading comprehension, this was not among the initiative’s goals. Media coverage emphasized the reading-comprehension finding, however, ignoring Reading First’s positive effects on core competency areas. This misrepresentation of the data, combined with political pressure from teachers’ unions, a recession, and initiatives to grant local control over curricula led Congress to defund Reading First in 2009. In its place, many public school systems adopted Calkins’s Units of Study and Fountas and Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy Intervention. Calkins’s ties to Columbia University Teachers College and support from teachers’ unions played a significant role in these curricula’s national adoption.
Fast forward to 2022, when the Sold a Story podcast exposed the failures of Balanced Literacy in public education to a national audience. The series revealed how curriculum developers Calkins, Fountas, and Pinnell had marketed their flawed methods as “research-backed,” even as national proficiency from the NAEP 2022 reading assessments showed that only 32 percent of fourth-graders read at or above proficiency level. These failures resulted in the Massachusetts lawsuit, which demonstrates parents’ growing demands for accountability within the education system.
How will today’s children be taught to read? The answer to that question depends on parents and policymakers’ actions. Almost 25 years ago, President Bush blazed the path with Reading First, ensuring that every public-school student, regardless of background, was taught using proven, science-based methods. States should draw inspiration from Bush’s crusade by banning discredited teaching methods and empowering parents to challenge schools’ curriculum choices. Every child deserves access to a proven method for learning to read—not to guess.
Jennifer Weber has a Ph.D. in behavior analysis and is the cofounder and co-owner of KIT Consulting, where she specializes in behavior analysis and education. She is an adjunct professor at Teachers College Columbia University and Nicholls State University and a member of the Adam Smith Society.
