Lucy Calkins, Fountas & Pinnell, and Heinemann Are Being Sued by Parents
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses a landmark lawsuit where parents are suing literacy curriculum publishers for producing materials that failed to teach their children to read.
Key Takeaways
- This lawsuit is a first - Parents are directly suing curriculum publishers for the harm caused by ineffective reading programs
- The science was clear - These programs contradicted decades of research on how children learn to read
- Accountability is coming - If this lawsuit succeeds, it could fundamentally change how publishers develop and market educational materials
Transcript
Lucy Calkins is being sued.
Fountas and Pinnell are being sued.
Heinemann is being sued as part of a class action lawsuit over their reading curriculum.
And the Soul to Story folks at American Public Media have a good article that kind of explains what's going on with this class action lawsuit in Massachusetts.
over the inability of those materials to successfully teach all kids to read.
And this is a really interesting case because it's the first that I know of, first case in which parents are trying to hold a curriculum company or a book, you know, a publishing company accountable for student learning outcomes.
especially interesting because the publisher is not actually the school district.
The customer of the publisher is the school district, and the school district is responsible for teaching the students to read.
And maybe they didn't have enough phonics.
So it's a really interesting case.
Let me know what you think about this.
I personally...
don't see this case succeeding, again, because the parents are not the customer of the publisher, and it's the school district's responsibility to teach reading, and I think, you know, there's always the kind of buyer beware aspect of any product, but at the same time, you know, maybe this is a good thing if it makes publishers more honest, if it makes them stick to the evidence a little bit more closely, because I think a big part of the accusation here is is that they knew better.
They knew better than to teach strategies like guessing or using context clues rather than phonics and sounding out the words.
So I think this will definitely be groundbreaking.
Again, my guess is it's kind of going to get tossed pretty early on, but let me know what you think about this lawsuit against Heinemann, Lucy Calkins, and Fountas and Pinnell.