The lawsuit, shared with the Globe in advance, alleges the defendants ignored a plethora of research demonstrating the importance of phonics, or the relationship between letters and sounds, in creating, marketing, and selling their early literacy products and services. The omission of phonics from their curriculums was intentional, despite widely known evidence of its importance, the complaint alleges. “Defendants denigrated phonics at worst and paid mere lip service to phonics at best,” the lawsuit reads. A lawsuit represents only one side of a complaint. Representatives for the defendants did not return an immediate request for comment, though Calkins, Fountas, and Pinnell have in the past denied any wrongdoing. The Massachusetts lawsuit represents a new step in the early literacy advocacy movement and could spur new complaints like it nationwide. It follows several years of heightened debate surrounding the “science of reading,” a broad body of research demonstrating how the brain learns to read and which shows a firm grasp on phonics to be key to early reading success. At issue in the complaint is whether the literacy authors knowingly ignored scientific research and purposely sold “defective and deficient” curriculums to school districts across Massachusetts. The lawsuit argues the authors and their publishers did and in doing so broke a state consumer protection law . “Defendants knew or should have known they were committing unfair and deceptive acts,” the complaint reads. Rather than emphasizing phonics, or the sounding out of words, Fountas and Pinnell, longtime publishing partners, and Calkins have come under increasing scrutiny for their curriculums’ cueing directions, which instruct children to, for example, look at a picture for context in helping determine an unknown word. In Calkins’s curriculum, Units of Study, this skill has been called “picture power.” The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which considers the defendants’ curriculums to be low quality, has doled out millions of dollars in grant money to help local school districts purchase new materials grounded in reading science. A 2023 Globe investigation found nearly half of all school districts in the state were using a low-quality curriculum in their elementary schools, and, of those, nearly 3 in 4 were using either Calkins’s or Fountas and Pinnell’s materials. In addition to the authors, the lawsuit, which seeks class action status , names as defendants Calkins‘s company, The Reading & Writing Project at Mossflower; the board of trustees of Teachers College at Columbia University, which used to house Calkins‘s curriculum work; Fountas and Pinnell LLC; New Hampshire-based Heinemann Publishing; and HMH Education Co., a Boston-based publisher. In seeking class action status, the plaintiffs are asking to represent all children, and the parents of such children, enrolled in kindergarten, first, second, or third grade in Massachusetts schools that employed the defendants’ products and whose 18th birthdays fall on or after Dec. 4, 2020. The families, who are asking for a jury trial, are seeking several forms of relief, including actual and compensatory damages in an amount to be determined at trial. They also are seeking an injunction requiring the defendants to provide to the plaintiffs, including potential class action members, an early literacy curriculum “that sufficiently reflects and incorporates the science of reading free of charge.” “We’re laser-focused on how can we get the right curriculum for kids going forward in Massachusetts and hopefully beyond,” the plaintiffs’ attorney Benjamin Elga told the Globe. Since facing national scrutiny, including through the 2022 APM Reports podcast “Sold a Story,” Calkins and Fountas and Pinnell have each updated their curriculum materials to place a greater emphasis on phonics. Districts, however, have had to pay for the updated materials — a point of contention in the lawsuit. “Rather than provide these remedial materials to school districts for free, Heinemann sold them as an ‘update’ charging tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of having a marginally less defective early literacy product,” the complaint reads. “Simply put, our school districts have been bamboozled,” said Nancy Duggan, executive director of the advocacy group Decoding Dyslexia Massachusetts. The Massachusetts families each allege the defendants' actions caused their children grave harm. Konley, according to the complaint, had to enroll two of her children in private school in order to get access to phonics-based reading instruction. One of the children, identified as S.C., required year-round year-round private tutoring to address her reading deficits. Hudak’s child, R.H., was assessed with what the lawsuit alleges is a faulty Fountas and Pinnell reading assessment , providing the child’s school with inaccurate information about R.H.‘s reading level and instructional needs. “When presented with chapter books in the fourth grade, it became apparent R.H. was far behind many of his peers — but the damage had already been done,” the lawsuit reads. Heinemann, based in Portsmouth and now owned by HMH, has been the main publisher of Calkins’s and Fountas and Pinnell’s products, selling their materials to school districts across the country. The company made at least $1.6 billion in sales in the 2010s, according to a 2022 analysis by APM Reports . The literacy authors' personal net worths have not been disclosed. Fountas, a Belmont resident, is the director of the Center for Reading Recovery in the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University, according to the Cambridge school’s website. Research has found Reading Recovery, an early literacy intervention, may do more harm than good to struggling readers . “At the end of the day, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to reading and it is far easier to inaccurately scapegoat than it is to develop and implement the multi-dimensional solutions required to create positive change at scale in the real world. Heinemann and our authors are committed to giving teachers the tools they need to be responsive to individual student strengths and needs.” This story is developing. Check back for updates.
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