Overview:
The suit, filed by Boston-area mothers Karrie Conley and Michele Hudak on behalf of their children, was filed in December, targeting literacy authors Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas, and Gay Su Pinnell, along with their respective publishers.
BOSTON — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a group of Massachusetts parents who argued that their children were negatively affected by three reading programs, including Units of Study and Fountas and Pinnell, developed by three well-known literacy experts.
The suit, filed by Boston-area mothers Karrie Conley and Michele Hudak on behalf of their children, was filed in December, targeting literacy authors Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas, and Gay Su Pinnell, along with their respective publishers. The complaint alleged that these educators promoted and profited from instructional materials that downplayed phonics—an approach grounded in decades of research—in favor of methods that the parents say led to reading difficulties for their children.
However, in a ruling last week, U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns determined that the case could not proceed. In his opinion, he wrote that evaluating the claims would require the court to weigh in on the academic validity of different teaching philosophies—a task outside the court’s role.
“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.
At the heart of the case were concerns about so-called “balanced literacy” strategies. These include techniques like “cueing,” where students use images or context clues to guess unfamiliar words—methods that have come under increasing scrutiny as school districts across the country reevaluate how reading is taught. In contrast, many states have begun reasserting phonics as the foundation of reading instruction in response to the troubling performance of students in literacy assessments.
Stearns further noted that the plaintiffs acknowledged that there was research that supported the programs, and the lawsuit would require the court to find “some purported inadequacy in that research.” That judgment could not be made “without delving into the merits of defendants’ approaches to literacy education,” Stearns wrote.
The judge also noted that, although the plaintiffs disagreed with the evidence presented by the defendants, they acknowledged that the curricula did include references to supporting research. Deciding whether that research was adequate, Stearns said, would mean the court would have to assess the merits of an educational methodology.
Since the 1970s, courts have typically ruled that claims of educational malpractice do not constitute a valid legal cause of action. Even when a duty of care can be demonstrated, judges have been cautious about overruling the decisions of local education authorities. A 2018 analysis by the Brookings Institution reviewed approximately 80 cases of alleged educational malpractice from the preceding 40 years, and only one had been successful. That suit came down to a Montana law, with the state Supreme Court ruling that a duty of care to students was outlined in the state constitution.
Lucy Calkins, whose widely used curriculum Units of Study is published by Heinemann and affiliated with Columbia University’s Teachers College, welcomed the court’s decision.
“The court rightly recognized that decisions about how best to teach reading should be made by educators,” Calkins said in a prepared statement. “I’m glad that the lawsuit has been dismissed so we can all turn our attention to the urgent work of teaching America’s children to read.”
Fountas and Pinnell, known for their “Guided Reading” framework, did not respond to requests for comment. Attorneys representing the parents also declined to provide a statement.
