A first-of-its kind lawsuit filed by Massachusetts parents argues that the creators of popular whole-language reading curricula used deceptive and fraudulent marketing to sell their materials.
Those prominent literacy specialists—education professors Lucy Calkins, and Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, and the publishers of their curricula—inaccurately billed their programs as research-based and ignored a consensus on the importance of explicit phonics instruction in teaching students to read, the suit argues.
The action, brought in the Massachusetts Superior Court, Suffolk County, by two parents from separate families, garnered strong reaction from teachers and parents hours after it was filed Dec. 4.
Here’s what you need to know.
1. The suit targets reading instruction methods like “cueing”
The lawsuit argues that the curricula developers used insufficient research to back the effectiveness of their methods while they “peddled a raft of products and curricula that sought to diminish and even exclude systematic and daily phonics instruction.”
The lawsuit claims the curricula, published by Greenwood Publishing Group, Heinemann Publishing, and HMH (formerly Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Heinemann’s parent company, caused significant harm to generations of students by emphasizing techniques like cueing, which prompts students to “guess” words based on context, rather than sounding them out.
It cites the findings of a National Reading Panel commissioned by Congress in 1997. That group argued in a 2000 report that evidence-based reading programs should be centered on systematic, explicit phonics instruction alongside developing children’s vocabulary and comprehension abilities.
The named defendants did not respond to requests for comment the day the lawsuit was filed.
2. The lawsuit takes a novel legal approach
This is not the first major lawsuit over children’s literacy, but it takes a unique legal approach that differs dramatically from past actions.
While previous literacy lawsuits have targeted school systems more broadly over issues like teacher training, poor learning conditions, and school funding, the Massachusetts suit targets the curriculum providers themselves.
The suit takes a consumer-protection angle, arguing that the publishers’ products did not align with the claims they used to sell them. It’s a little bit like suing a toothpaste company after learning that four out of five dentists didn’t actually recommend their product, or that a marketed ingredient didn’t actually improve gum health.
Some education policy experts are skeptical of the suit’s chances. Claiming that an educational approach is “evidence-based” is less cut and dry than claiming that a medical procedure can cure a specific illness, they said. After all, curricula aren’t drugs—their impact is in part a function of how teachers use them, whether those teachers have received training and support on the materials, and the working conditions of the classrooms they’re used in.
The plaintiffs seek class-action status, which would allow other affected families from the state to join the suit and seek relief. The suit asks for punitive and compensatory compensation to help families recoup costs for efforts like private tutoring and a court order “requiring defendants to warn schools and families of the defects in their literacy product.”
It is not known nationally how many districts have used the curricula in question—there is no national curriculum database and only a few states track these purchases.
3. The lawsuit comes amid a surging interest in the ‘science of reading’
Interest in research-based reading interventions and policies to reshape early literacy instruction have surged in recent years, propelled by a swell of media coverage of reading, much of it critical of the defendants’ work.
Both Calkins’ curriculum and those created by Fountas and Pinnell were the focus of “Sold A Story,” the award-winning podcast by APM Reports that detailed the genesis of the cueing method—in which students were sometimes prompted to read from context or picture clues, not always from sounds and letters.
According to an Education Week analysis, 40 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws or implemented new policies related to evidence-based reading instruction since 2013. Some of those laws explicitly ban cueing.
The underlying ideas that informed the cueing method date back decades.
Following the news of the lawsuit, some experts cautioned that increasingly entrenched “reading wars” will make it difficult for schools to identify and implement strategies that will more effectively help students learn to read.
“Although I can understand parents feeling they’ve been duped by publishers and authors, I worry that these lawsuits will make partisans in the never-ending and despicable reading wars dig in further,” said Claude Goldenberg, an emeritus professor of education at Stanford University. “The only real solution is for the education profession, particularly those who profess expertise in reading education, to call out the misinformation and downright falsehoods—which by the way exist on many sides of the wars, not just the one this suit is aimed at.”
Finally, it’s important to know that phonics—the focus of this lawsuit—is just one element that supports strong, fluent reading. Readers also need to develop the background knowledge and vocabulary needed to understand text, and how disciplines like history and science construct texts differently. And when students learn to write well, it can help bolster their reading abilities. (Calkins, in fact, was also known for a popular “writers’ workshop” model, but that is not a focus of the lawsuit.)
You can read Education Week coverage on all of these literacy topics in our collection of special reports.
4. Teachers had a strong reaction to the parents’ lawsuit
Reaction to the lawsuit was swift; it was Education Week’s most-read story Thursday, and emotional teachers took to social media to comment on their experiences with the curricula. Some said they felt guilty for using it, others blamed districts for adopting it, and still others felt that the fault for poor student outcomes lay in implementation, not intrinsically in the curricula.
“If only teachers could sue the districts for adopting this faulty curriculum,” said one comment on Education Week’s Facebook page. “We’ve spoken out against it for years, and they refused to listen.”
In the past, some teachers have described relearning how to teach reading as an emotional experience.
“I literally cried [after the training]. I knew I had let some kids slip through my fingers,” a teacher told Education Week in 2023. “Now I realized the holes, and what they were.”
Dig into related coverage on early literacy instruction
Want to learn more about early literacy? These links to past EdWeek coverage will get you started.
- Parents Sue Lucy Calkins, Fountas and Pinnell, and Others Over Reading Curricula
- Why Putting the ‘Science of Reading’ Into Practice Is So Challenging
- Which States Have Passed ‘Science of Reading’ Laws? What’s in Them?
- How the Largest School District Is Adjusting to the Science of Reading
- Lucy Calkins Revisits and Revises Her Reading Curriculum
