A federal judge on Thursday struck down a lawsuitclaiming that “defective” teaching materials had prevented countless students in Massachusetts from learning to read well.
“The court begins (and ends) its analysis with the educational malpractice bar,” Judge Richard G. Stearns wrote in his order dismissing the lawsuit against educational publisher Heinemann, its parent company HMH Publishing and their best-selling authors Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell. For nearly five decades, courts nationwide have repeatedly ruled that educational malpractice is impossible to prove.
The suit, filed by Boston-area mothers Karrie Conley and Michele Hudak on behalf of their children, sought class-action status and argued that the defendants misrepresented their instructional materials as “research-backed,” and “data-based,” despite what the mothers argued was insufficient phonics instruction.
The authors and publishers named in the suit were at the center of the 2022 APM Reports podcast Sold a Story, which investigated why so many schools taught reading using methods that had been repeatedly discredited by cognitive scientists. Benjamin Elga, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in an interview last year that the podcast opened his eyes to “an injustice that cried out for redress.”
——
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?
