By Jacqueline Burt Cote

Parents and educators trust experts to create effective curriculums for students, but these programs don’t always live up to their promise. While disputes often play out in school settings, a lawsuit filed last month took the debate from the classroom to the courtroom. 

In a case that is being closely watched by those in the education community, two families have filed a class action lawsuit in the Massachusetts Superior Court alleging that renowne literacy experts Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas, and Gay Su Pinnell used “deceptive and fraudulent marketing” to promote their reading programs while ignoring research on the importance of explicit phonics instruction. 

Reading programs developed by Calkins, Fountas, and Pinnell rely on techniques such as the three-cueing method in which students guess a word based on the first letter and context clues. At one time, this method was considered the standard for early literacy and was widely used throughout America to teach reading. That method has since been replaced by a scientifically researched and evidence-based approach that uses phonics to teach kids how to sound out words. The latter method has been adopted by 40 states; Massachusetts is not one of them.

The families who filed the suit have children who struggled to learn how to read in Massachusetts public schools. Speaking at a press conference, Carrie Conley explains:

Nothing is more painful than trying to help [your child], but not knowing how. 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.

Michele Hudak, another plaintiff, said that her son seemed to be reading at grade level until he reached the fourth grade, at which point he started having trouble getting through chapter books. The lawsuit noted that the boy tested well in earlier grades “solely because he could successfully guess words from pictures,” reported CBS News.

According to the complaint in the lawsuit, “less than half of all Massachusetts third graders satisfied the Commonwealth’s expectations for performance on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System English Language Arts exam” in 2023.

“Students from minority groups or with learning disabilities fared even worse,” the complaint continued. “Along with the direct impacts on children, families across the Commonwealth have scurried to procure remedial literacy instruction, the cost of which is out of reach for many. Even when families can afford remedial support, it often comes too late, sabotaging children’s educational development, career prospects, and fundamental sense of self-worth.”

In addition to seeking damages for the plaintiffs, the suit asks the court to order the authors and publishers to provide an updated early literacy curriculum based on what’s known as “the science of reading,” which includes phonics instruction.

Regardless of the outcome, the case will have wide-ranging impacts. With each side claiming the “research-based,” “evidence-based” high ground, the court will have to determine what those terms mean in relation to education materials, a field that liberally uses such terms to market products and programs, often with little accountability.

Related Smart Kids Topics

• Does Your Child’s Reading Program Make the Grade?
• Addressing Reading Issues