Class Action Lawsuit Demands Accountability for ‘Defective’ Literacy Curricula Used by School Districts Nationwide

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A proposed class action lawsuit accuses the creators, publishers and promoters of certain reading curricula of peddling literacy training products and services that lack any meaningful phonics instruction, with efficacy claims supported by unreliable, methodologically flawed, theoretically unsound studies. 

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The 24-page lawsuit says that although the defendants have claimed since the mid-1990s that their literacy products and curricula are backed by or grounded in “research,” decades of research on the subject have been “overwhelmingly to the contrary,” supporting the essential role of phonics instruction in teaching children to read. The filing says the defendants, listed below, have “denigrated” phonics at worst and “paid mere lip service to phonics at best,” all while failing to warn parents and school districts that their literacy training products lack “the one thing essential to literacy success,” systemic phonics instruction.

Because the curricula at issue, which were sold to school districts across the country, do not include the building blocks to effectively teach early-childhood literacy, countless children have experienced catastrophic setbacks to their educational development, the lawsuit alleges. 

“This disaster is ongoing. Once children have passed the critical timeframe to learn reading skills through phonics, it is harder to catch up to their peers. Those who cannot catch up often suffer in silence. They display low self-esteem and behavioral difficulties, are anxious about participating in school activities, and hold negative attitudes about learning.” 

The class action suit says that although the defendants—The Reading & Writing Project at Mossflower; Heinemann Publishing; the Board of Trustees of Teachers College, Columbia University; Fountas and Pinnell; Units of Study curriculum creator Lucy Calkins; and Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, creators of the Fountas & Pinnell Classroom curriculum, Leveled Literacy Intervention and Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System—have attempted to improve their credibility by selling literacy assessments created to “validate” their offerings, those purported assessments to measure a child’s ability to read are “about as accurate[] as a coinflip.” 

“For years, Defendants hawked their defective goods and services to school districts throughout the country…,” the complaint says. “This fraudulent and deceptive campaign has had devastating consequences.” 

For example, in 2023, the lawsuit states, fewer than half of all Massachusetts third graders satisfied the Commonwealth’s expectations for performance on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System English Language Arts exam, with students from minority groups and those with learning disabilities faring even worse.

In addition to the direct harm caused to children, families in Massachusetts have had to obtain remedial literacy instruction, “the cost of which is out of reach for many,” the case emphasizes.

According to the complaint, commentators have described the defendants’ approach as “vibes-based literacy” that all but ignores expert, research-backed consensus about the crucial role of systemic phonics instruction in successful literacy education. 

The class action lawsuit says Classroom, Leveled Literacy Intervention and Units of Study all omitted structured phonics instruction, which the case describes as an “ideological aversion” that instead prioritized only brief “minilessons” coupled with large amounts of shared reading (whereby a teacher reads aloud to students and asks questions about the text), guided reading (whereby students select what to read on their own and then discuss with the teacher) and independent reading.

None of these independent reading situations include systemic instruction or practice with phonetic tools shown by undisputed research to help children learn to read, the filing stresses.

“The products did not put phonics at the center, or even to the side of, their curriculum,” the suit explains. “Many of their mainstream products did not include phonics at all.” 

Key components of the defendants’ curricula, the case says, are so-called “cueing” methods that purport to teach children to identify words using pictures and syntax instead of visual information from letters. According to the complaint, cueing and similar methods have since been discredited and criticized by experts for teaching children to “fake the ability to read” using guessing techniques. 

“Thanks to Defendants’ success in selling their defective products, it is now common for teachers to see cohorts of third, fourth, or fifth graders who—despite having received alleged literacy instruction in earlier class years—do not actually know how to read,” the complaint states. 

Per the case, the defendants conducted no rigorous research and collected no data to back their methodologies until the early 2020s. Eventually, the defendants, “worried about the loss of their lucrative revenue streams” and in the face of an “increasing drumbeat of outside criticism,” started to make cosmetic changes to their curricula, revisions that were “far too little and far too late,” the lawsuit reads. 

“Until very recently, Defendants did not disclose the flaws in their products, even though they knew—or should have known—that their curricula ran counter to the scientific consensus among educators, educational psychologists, and other experts. Remarkably, Defendants continued to promote cueing methods as effective pedagogical tools despite consistent research-backed criticism.”

The proposed class action suit detailed on this page looks to represent all children and parents and/or legal guardians of children currently or previously enrolled in kindergarten, first, second or third grade in a Massachusetts elementary school that bought, licensed, reproduced or otherwise employed any Heinemann or HMH early-literacy products marketed under the Fountas & Pinnell, Units of Study, Teachers College Reading & Writing Project, or Reading & Writing Project at Mossflower trade names, and who reached (or will reach) the age of majority on or after December 4, 2020. 

The class action complaint can be read in its entirety here. 

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