Education

Class-action lawsuit filed over bogus reading instruction

December 16, 2024

Ray Carter

During this year’s legislative session, Oklahoma lawmakers voted to ban the use of the “three-cueing” method of reading instruction, which has come under fire as research increasingly suggests it does not teach children to read.

Proponents of the legislation argued it would prevent future educational harm to Oklahoma children exposed to a failed method of instruction. But lawmakers may have also limited the potential future financial liability of Oklahoma schools that might have otherwise faced litigation.

On Dec. 4, the law firms Justice Catalyst Law and Kaplan & Grady filed a class-action lawsuit in Massachusetts Superior Court on behalf of two parents whose children were allegedly harmed by their schools’ use of three-cueing instruction.

The complaint noted that, since the 1960s, research has shown phonics-based instruction is “critical to success in learning to read,” but said the defendants chose to either downplay or exclude phonics instruction in their reading programs and curriculum, which were widely used in Massachusetts schools.

“For years, Defendants hawked their defective goods and services to school districts throughout the country, including throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” the complaint stated. “This fraudulent and deceptive campaign has had devastating consequences. In 2023, for example, less than half of all Massachusetts third graders satisfied the Commonwealth’s expectations for performance on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System English Language Arts exam. Students from minority groups or with learning disabilities fared even worse. Along with the direct impacts on children, families across the Commonwealth have scurried to procure remedial literacy instruction, the cost of which is out of reach for many. Even when families can afford remedial support, it often comes too late, sabotaging children’s educational development, career prospects, and fundamental sense of self-worth.”

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.

Under the three-cueing method of instruction, students are encouraged to guess words based on associated pictures and context and to memorize entire words rather than learn to sound them out phonetically.

APM Reports has noted that three-cueing is a theory of instruction “that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked.” ExcelinEd in Action  noted that the three-cueing system “can be boiled down to this: Teachers using this method instruct students to guess.”

This year, Oklahoma lawmakers passed Senate Bill 362, which stated that Oklahoma public-school teachers “shall be prohibited from using the three-cueing system model of teaching students to read” starting in the 2025-2026 school year.

The complaint in the Massachusetts lawsuit noted, “Cueing methods have been roundly criticized for teaching children to guess rather than read. Critics have explained that cueing teaches kids ‘to read like poor readers rather than good readers.’ Indeed, even if children can fake the ability to read using cueing or other guessing techniques in the first few years of school, those strategies leave them unequipped when they reach higher grade levels. Thanks to Defendants’ success in selling their defective products, it is now common for teachers to see cohorts of third, fourth, or fifth graders who—despite having received alleged literacy instruction in earlier class years—do not actually know how to read.”

The two parents in the case say they experienced that outcome firsthand.

Karrie Conley’s child, identified as S.C. in the complaint, was taught to read through cueing. By third grade, the child “so struggled with her word-based math curriculum” that her mother transferred the child to a private school, the complaint noted, and the girl “still required year-round private tutoring from fourth through seventh grades to repair the damage done.”

Another of Conley’s children, identified as K.C., was also taught to read via cueing methods from kindergarten through second grade. The family also transferred that child to a private school.

The complaint noted, “Sending S.C. and K.C. to private school and securing literacy tutoring cost more than twice what Karrie paid to send another of her children to college.”

Michele Hudak’s minor child, identified as R.H., was also taught using cueing methods.

Despite “being unable to read,” the complaint said school officials claimed the youth could read at grade level “solely because he could successfully guess words from pictures.”

“When presented with chapter books in fourth grade,” the complaint stated, “it became apparent R.H. was far behind many of his peers—but the damage already had been done.”