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A lawsuit filed in Massachusetts state court accuses famous literacy specialists Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas, and Gay Su Pinnell and their publisher Heinemann of pushing reading curriculums they knew didn’t work.
Adopting a consumer protection approach, the lawsuit charges the curriculum authors with “deceptive and fraudulent marketing.” The filing alleges they willfully ignored decades of research into more effective practices and used shoddy studies to prop up their own work, then charged school districts for updates when they were forced to admit their materials were not effective.
“Think about that: If your car is broken, and it’s the fault of the manufacturer, the manufacturer recalls the part and fixes it,” said attorney Ben Elga, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. “They do not charge you for their failure. It’s outrageous.”
The lawsuit also names Heinemann parent company HMH, previously known as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Teachers College at Columbia University.
The plaintiffs, who are seeking class action status and inviting other families to join the lawsuit, are two Massachusetts families whose children struggled to learn to read. One of the parent plaintiffs, Karrie Conley, said in the lawsuit that due to her school district using Calkins’ Units of Study curriculum, she had to spend more on private school tuition and reading tutors for two of her children than she spent to send her older child to college.
“Nothing is more painful than trying to help them, but not knowing how,” she said in a Wednesday press conference announcing the lawsuit. “So many times I’ve asked myself, How did it get like this? I trusted that when I was sending my children off to school, they were getting instruction that had been tested and proven effective. I trusted that these so-called experts were actually experts.”
The lawsuit comes as many states are overhauling their approach to reading instruction to better align with decades of research into how children learn. What’s known as the science of reading calls for explicit phonics instruction that helps students connect letters and sounds, as well as texts that help students build the background knowledge to understand what they read.
Calkins’ Units of Study curriculum and Fountas and Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy Intervention and other materials instead relied on exposure to books and promoted discredited methods such as three-cueing, in which students use the first letter of a word and various context clues, including pictures, to guess what a word might be.
These curriculums were widely used in American schools, with Calkins in particular achieving near legendary status among teachers. Critics say these instructional methods are largely to blame for American students’ low rates of reading proficiency. Journalist Emily Hanford’s work on reading instruction and her podcast Sold a Story helped push these pedagogical debates into the public eye.
Calkins later acknowledged she made mistakes and changed Units of Study to include more phonics instruction. But critics said the changes were not sufficient. Units of Study was once the most widely used elementary curriculum in New York City schools, but the nation’s largest school system abandoned it as part of a reading overhaul. Last year, Teachers College disbanded Calkins’ Reading and Writing Project.
Fountas and Pinnell, meanwhile, have largely stood behind their work.
A lawsuit represents one perspective on a complaint. Representatives of Heinemann, Teachers College, and Calkins, Fountas, and Pinnell could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Heinemann has previously defended its products and all three authors.
Dozens of states have adopted new curriculum standards that encourage or require that schools use evidence-based reading instruction, but others, including Massachusetts, have not.
Elga, the lead attorney and founding executive director of Justice Law Catalyst, has a background in consumer protection and antitrust cases. He said he believes this is the first time that a consumer protection approach has been used to advance an education policy agenda.
“Consumer law is very broad, so there are a lot of cases that challenge products that don’t do what they say they should do or are marketed in a deceptive way,” he said. “This is the first case we’re aware of applying those laws to this type of product.”
The lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages and injunctive relief, including that the defendants provide an early literacy curriculum that reflects the science of reading at no charge.
Families have previously sued states and school districts over rock-bottom literacy rates, alleging that government entities have failed in their obligation to meet students’ basic educational needs. These “right to read” lawsuits have resulted in settlements in Michigan and California that sent millions of dollars to districts with low reading levels but without mandates on how to teach reading.
Elga said he sees school districts as victims alongside students.
“It’s our contention that one of the major problems here is that the school districts have been the victims of this faulty marketing,” he said. “So we wanted to bring a case that challenged the people who were actually distributing these types of materials.”
Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.
