Joshua Dunn

For several decades, the high priestess of the balanced literacy movement has been Lucy Calkins of Columbia University, who directed the now-defunct Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. Calkins once estimated that her Units of Study reading curriculum had been adopted by as many as one in four U.S. elementary schools. Irene Fountas of Lesley University and Gay Su Pinnell of the Ohio State University have also been primary purveyors of balanced literacy, through their Fountas and Pinnell curriculum. At the core of the trio’s approach was an article of faith: the key to literacy instruction is getting children to love reading. This was supposed to be accomplished by having teachers read aloud to them and then letting children choose which books they wanted to read, according to their own interests. The curricula also relied on “cueing,” in which students guess at words based on “context clues” instead of sounding them out.

While these concepts made intuitive sense—antipathy toward reading wouldn’t seem likely to engender learning to read effectively—the evidence in their favor was underwhelming. In fact, one can’t learn to love reading unless one learns to read, and literacy instruction based on good feelings has not been up to the task. While the programs’ problems have been documented for many years, awareness of these shortcomings didn’t penetrate the public consciousness until the education journalist Emily Hanford produced the 10-part podcast Sold a Story, launched in 2022. Listening to the series leads one to the inescapable conclusion that Calkins, Fountas and Pinnell, and their followers have inflicted reading deficiencies on millions of American children.

In 2022, in response to criticism, Calkins released an updated version of Units of Study that put more emphasis on phonics and drew from science-of-reading research. The following year, Columbia’s Teachers College dissolved Calkins’s Reading and Writing Project. School districts throughout the country, including New York City, turned away from balanced literacy.

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notes and links on balanced literacy

 overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?