The author’s efforts to place responsibility for Ohio’s reading struggles into my lap, however, are unwarranted. He writes, “A recent survey from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce found that two of the most popular curricula statewide are Fountas and Pinnell’s Classroom and Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study,” and he goes on to denigrate both.
The truth is, however, that the same survey showed that just 6% of Ohio’s schools identify Units of Study as their curriculum. Eight times that number of schools — 395 districts — cite Heggerty’s Phonemic Awareness Curriculum, six times that number, Fundations, and three times the number use the basal textbook “Reading Wonders.” How can a curriculum used by only 6% of Ohio’s schools be responsible for the state’s literacy woes?
My curriculum has been continually developed and refined for 40 years, informed by classroom-based research, by rich assessments of children and by scholarship, results that have been verified through a careful study by the American Institute of Research. The data overwhelmingly indicate that schools partnering with us demonstrate meaningful improvements in student performance and that improvements deepen over time.
And this is also true for Ohio schools that use Units of Study. Many that report using the curriculum far outperform the state average. In fact, if you average the results obtained by all 48 schools that reported using Units of Study, third-grade reading proficiency in those schools outperforms Ohio’s 2022-2023 state average by 7.44%.
Contrary to the author’s assertion, I have never bypassed phonics. It is ludicrous to suggest that I want children to open a book and guess wildly at the words. I’d be happy to walk anyone through the newest edition of Units of Study in K-2 Reading to show how it incorporates the instructional practices promoted by the science of reading. The same cannot be said of many of the curricula, per an in-depth analysis from University of Connecticut Professor Rachael Gabriel, on that state’s short list of approved curricula, which share much overlap with Ohio’s curricula list.