Judge dismisses lawsuit challenging ‘balanced literacy’ approach to teaching reading

BOSTON (AP) —

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a group of Massachusetts parents who claimed their children were harmed by contested reading curricula designed by three prominent literacy experts.

The parents, in their December lawsuit, accused Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas, Gay Su Pinnell and their publishers of using deceptive marketing and questionable research to sell curricula which, instead of emphasizing proven phonics instruction, relied on strategies that they said left their children struggling to read.

The lawsuit was filed as states around the country, in response to poor reading scores, have been reemphasizing phonics instruction while moving away from the defendants’ “balanced literacy” approaches that rely on practices such as cueing, which prompt students to use pictures and context to predict words.

In dismissing the suit last week, a judge in Boston said that issuing a decision would require the court to assess the quality of the curricula. Judge Richard Stearns’ order noted that the lawsuit acknowledged that the defendants cited research supporting their products, but he said finding the research inadequate, as the parents claimed, would mean delving into the experts’ approach to instruction.

“The court rightly recognized that decisions about how best to teach reading should be made by educators,” Calkins, a faculty member at Columbia University’s Teachers College whose curriculum is called Units of Study, said in a statement. “I’m glad that the lawsuit has been dismissed so we can all turn our attention to the urgent work of teaching America’s children to read.”

Pinnell and Fountas, whose approach is known as “Guided Reading,” did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment. Attorneys for the parents also did not respond to an emailed request for comment.