What Teachers Are Saying About the Lawsuit Against Lucy Calkins and Fountas and Pinnell

By Tanyon A. Duprey — December 19, 2024 1 min read

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Earlier this month, a group of parents filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts against the creators of some of the most popular reading curricula from the past few decades: Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas, Gay Su Pinnell, their publishers, and at least one university.

The lawsuit claims the materials were deceptively marketed, and has ignited reactions from many across the K-12 community.

On social media, educators expressed a mix of reactions: Some applauded the move and claimed that it’s long overdue, while others noted that many educators had been highlighting flaws in the approaches for years.

Some educators support the lawsuit over reading curricula

When there are deficits in teaching reading early in a student’s life, the results can be compounded as that student progresses. Educators who recognize this weren’t shy to highlight what they saw as flaws in the materials.

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It's about time there was some accountability in this ... 40 years—FORTY YEARS—of data show absolutely ZERO improvement in reading comprehension levels in 4th and 8th grade students; yet publishers like Houghton Mifflin and others continued to promote ineffective, harmful programs that did not teach children how to actually read, but instead how to RECITE. Enough is enough; as a teacher who is blown away by just how LITTLE my 8th grade students are able to read and infer, I welcome and applaud this lawsuit.

The irreversible damage has been done. We have too many current and former students who can't read, comprehend, or both. Hopefully, it doesn't take another 20 years to resolve ... I wish a parent would have spoken up in 2001 and beyond.

Good. Totally misled. Those people knew their program was not good and pushed it anyway.

Districts should be next! Damages for not identifying and intervening to provide FAPE [free appropriate public education] for students with LD’s!

Educators had concerns about the reading curricula, but limited options

Another camp of educators noted that teachers had warned about issues with the programs and were frustrated at being asked to teach them, but felt districts did not respond to their concerns.

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My district bought into this and wasted thousands of dollars. As professionals, we supplemented. But can you imagine being evaluated by a principal on this material knowing it's inferior? Then getting dinged for not teaching the ‘curriculum.’ They never listen to teachers and the higher-ups think they know more.

Districts and states decide what programs are required and teachers are forced to follow them.

If only teachers could sue the districts for adopting this faulty curriculum. We’ve spoken out against it for years, but they refused to listen.

It’s my understanding that teachers and administrators tried telling their counties and states that this won’t work, and the kids will suffer. Maybe everyone should have listened to the teachers.

Some see valuable elements in the reading programs

Some educators recognized pieces of the programs that they thought had value, but stressed that the main issue lay in the implementation of the strategies, rather than a lack in their validity.

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Ironically, those who actually know and understand the research would agree that the Calkins materials are among the best around—IF you also know and understand her model and how to use it. I can’t speak for Fountas and Pinnell ... Whole Language is language acquisition theory, not a curriculum. She does draw on some researched-based concepts about how children learn about language ... Additionally, she NEVER advocated for eliminating phonics. As all reputable research shows, there is MUCH more to reading than pronouncing words.

I was a fan of Calkin’s Art of Teaching Reading & Writing as standalones, however, as a curriculum not so much ... To take both standalones and expand them into grade-level curriculum was a big mistake ... The limited background knowledge many students possessed coupled with not having a formal phonics component placed many marginalized students at a disadvantage.

This is a good reminder to educators that they need to stop throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Whole Language had/has benefits. But throwing out phonics instruction was a mistake. Most of us who taught reading in the '90s knew the value of phonics and found ways to explicitly teach letter sounds/blending.

It’s most likely because those programs are not implemented as they were designed. The districts purchase the parts they want, use it how they want, then when it doesn’t work, claim it’s a faulty program. I know that [Fountas & Pinnell's Leveled Literacy Intervention] could have been great had all its components been used.

Whole Language was never meant to exclude incremental, scaffolded phonics instruction. The problem with Whole Language was the poor training and support that often accompanied it.

While I’m not a huge fan of the Units of [Study for Teaching] Reading and Writing, it isn’t because they are not based on research. Quite the contrary. And, for the record ... the teaching of phonics is a part of Whole Language and holistic teaching. How many times does this need to be said?

Abandoning of the basics was the first mistake

Finally, a few educators argued that invaluable basics of language learning were compromised or completely lost due to the adoption of these programs.

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This in a nutshell is the issue with education. Companies pushing their products on schools and districts ... There are fundamentals and basics for reading, writing, and arithmetic that should not, and cannot be abandoned when it comes to instruction.

I became an English teacher in 2007, and when Whole Language was being explained to me, I already knew it was a stupid idea ... When learning any foreign language at all, the very basis of learning a language is by learning vocabulary. That’s the bulk of what you do in Spanish 1, French 1, German 1, etc. Somehow, the Whole Language crowd thought that English got some magical exemption from that.