Page Turner

Fans of Open Court and other prefab reading curricula say the approach works wonders. But for how long?

When she first heard the news five years ago, Kim Lattimore thought good teaching was doomed. The Los Angeles Unified School District had just announced that her struggling urban elementary school would test Open Court Reading, an off-the-shelf curriculum designed to supplant the hodgepodge of texts and teacher-selected trade books that had guided instruction for a decade. With its carefully sequenced lessons, intense focus on phonics, and standardized instructional strategies came a reputation for lock step uniformity and inflexibility, and that rubbed Lattimore and other...