The end of "Teaching Lucy"?

Helen Lewis, "How one woman became the scapegoat for America's reading crisis", The Atlantic 11/13/2024:

Lucy Calkins was an education superstar. Now she’s cast as the reason a generation of students struggles to read. Can she reclaim her good name?

Until a couple of years ago, Lucy Calkins was, to many American teachers and parents, a minor deity. Thousands of U.S. schools used her curriculum, called Units of Study, to teach children to read and write. Two decades ago, her guiding principles—that children learn best when they love reading, and that teachers should try to inspire that love—became a centerpiece of the curriculum in New York City’s public schools. Her approach spread through an institute she founded at Columbia University’s Teachers College, and traveled further still via teaching materials from her publisher. Many teachers don’t refer to Units of Study by name. They simply say they are “teaching Lucy.”

But now, at the age of 72, Calkins faces the destruction of everything she has worked for. A 2020 report by a nonprofit described Units of Study as “beautifully crafted” but “unlikely to lead to literacy success for all of America’s public schoolchildren.” The criticism became impossible to ignore two years later, when the American Public Media podcast Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong accused Calkins of being one of the reasons so many American children struggle to read. (The National Assessment of Educational Progress—a test administered by the Department of Education—found in 2022 that roughly one-third of fourth and eighth graders are unable to read at the “basic” level for their age.)

The whole article is worth reading, and may help readers understand why reading instruction remains both cult-ridden and disappointingly unsuccessful.

This would also be a good time to reprint this 2003 Partially Clips cartoon:

That cartoon was mainly aimed at the pre-Calkins "Whole Language" ideology, though the Atlantic article quotes several critics who characterize Calkins' system as "a strategic rebadging of whole language”.

If you're interested in a deeper dive into the current situation and trends in U.S. reading instruction, see Foster et al., "On the Same Page — A Primer on the Science of Reading and Its Future for Policymakers, School Leaders, and Advocates", Bellwether 2024:

Reading is a life-transforming and essential skill. It does not come naturally; it must be taught. Nearly all children have the capability to learn to read, with the right teaching and support. And yet, just 32% of fourth-grade students achieved reading proficiency in 2022.

If you prefer to watch and listen, the same material is available as a webinar on YouTube.

I should note that I'm a co-PI for the new Using Generative AI for Reading R&D Center, which is just being set up — so you can expect more posts on this topic as things develop.

Some relevant past posts:

"Ghoti and choughs again", 8/16/2008 "Why isn't English a Bar Mitzvah language?", 8/19/2008 "The science and politics of reading instruction", 8/17/2012 "The Gladwell Pivot", 10/28/2013 "Faimly Lfie", 6/21/2017 "Julie Washington on Dialects and Literacy", 5/21/2018