Massachusetts Families File Major Class Action Lawsuit Challenging Deceptive, Discredited Reading Curricula

Justice Catalyst Law

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 4, 2024

Contact: Matt Lopez, Matt.Lopez@berlinrosen.com, (805) 377-2950

 For decades, publishers have made millions selling faulty literacy products lacking proven, scientifically backed phonics instruction

In 2023, less than half of all MA third-graders met expectations for Commonwealth’s standardized language arts exam

Plaintiffs seek accountability, immediate injunctive relief and damages for harm caused by defective literacy products

MASSACHUSETTS — Three Massachusetts children and their parents filed a major class action lawsuit Wednesday challenging the deceptive and fraudulent marketing and sale of faulty literacy curricula that have undermined the future of students across the Commonwealth.

The lawsuit, filed in Massachusetts Superior Court by Justice Catalyst Law and Kaplan & Grady, seeks substantial relief for the generations of students and families across Massachusetts harmed by the defendant publishers and authors’ discredited literacy products and deceptive marketing. The suit also seeks a court order requiring defendants to warn schools and families of the defects in their literacy products and other relief to fully remedy the situation so school districts have quality literacy instruction materials.

The lawsuit represents the latest challenge to the controversial, discredited early-literacy products sold and marketed by such figures as Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell under the banners of the Heinemann and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publishing companies. Since the mid-1990s, the defendants have made millions of dollars selling early-literacy products to thousands of school districts across the country, falsely marketing them as backed by and based in “research” and “data.” In recent years, Calkins, Fountas, Pinnell and their peers have faced a widespread backlash after a series of scientific studies and media reports revealed that their curricula have fundamentally failed to teach children to read.

“Because Defendants’ curricula do not contain the building blocks for teaching effective early-childhood literacy, huge numbers of children, including countless children in the Commonwealth, have suffered devastating and often ongoing setbacks in their educational development and life trajectories,” the suit charges.

The defendants named in the suit include Lucy Calkins, the Reading and Writing Project at Mossflower; Irene Fountas; Gay Su Pinnell; Fountas and Pinnell, LLC; the Board of Trustees of Teachers College, Columbia University; Heinemann Publishing; and HMH (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) Education Co.

The plaintiffs include Karrie Conley and two of her minor children, residents of Boxborough, Massachusetts, and Michele Hudak and her minor child, residents of Ashland, Massachusetts, on behalf of a putative statewide class of children and parents who were similarly injured by the defendants’ deceptive conduct. All three children received reading instruction with the defendants’ defective literacy products, injuring them and their families.

Individuals wishing to share their story can do so here. 

Defective Literacy Products Lack Phonics Instruction, Worsening Literacy Crisis

For decades, the defendants’ literacy curriculum lacked any meaningful instruction in phonics, the proven method of teaching students to “sound out” the word they see written on the page. Since the 1960s, research has shown a strong, causal relationship between systematic phonics instruction and reading success. Yet in the 1990s and early 2000s, Calkins, Fountas, Pinnell and their peers developed alternate reading curricula that omitted systematic phonics instruction in favor of the “cueing” method, which prompts students to guess words based on context from images and syntax. Teachers and researchers have heavily criticized the “cueing” method as hindering students’ vocabulary and reading comprehension skills. 

Despite conducting no rigorous research to validate their teaching methods, the defendants marketed their literacy products as having been based on “intensive research, testing and experience.” In recent years, scholars and scientists have begun to subject the defendants’ reading curricula to extensive testing—and the results have been damning. In 2021, leading nonprofit EdReports gave all of Heinemann’s early-literacy products the lowest ratings it had ever issued for K-12 language arts curricula. 

It took the defendants years to acknowledge these negative findings and to update their curricula to include limited phonics instruction. However, rather than providing these essential updates for free, Heinemann sold them to school districts as an update—charging thousands of dollars for belated revisions that did nothing to solve the underlying problems, never mind anything to redress the harms done to children and families like the Plaintiffs. 

While the defendants have dragged their feet in updating their products to include proven literacy methods, Massachusetts’ literacy crisis has worsened. In 2023, less than half of all third-graders in the Commonwealth met expectations for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) English Language Arts Exam. According to the Boston Globe, “roughly 70 percent of Black third-graders, 80 percent of Latino students, and 85 percent of children with disabilities did not meet the state’s benchmark.”

Read the complaint here.

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