Two Moms in Massachusetts are suing the publisher and authors of the Lucy Calkins Units of Study curriculum because its promoters called it “research-backed” and “data-based” when it wasn’t. They won’t have their children paying the price for “denigrated phonics at worst and paid mere lip service to phonics at best” according to a report by American Public Media. The question is, are these two Mom’s alone?
Adopting an unsupported curriculum for a skill as important as reading might seem risky to some. It wasn’t in River Forest District 90. Not when a rouge board echoed the same phrases as they implemented a forty-year-old debunked theory on literacy instruction. They were de-tracking grades K-8.
De-tracking is removing practices that differentiate instruction for ability level, and these board members could not fathom hurt feelings among reading groups. They crookedly concluded the towns minority students were poor readers, and white students were either good readers or had money for tutoring. Like wolves, they had sniffed out this racism nobody else could see and now would solve it by switching to poor performing curricula.
The move to de-track K-8th would have graduating eighth graders fit into new lower standards at OPRF, a high school on the precipice of “de-tracking” freshman year. A name common among the mediocrity at the three-school system (Districts 90, 97, and 200) is Ralph Martire – teachers union lobbyist, board president of District 90, and soon to be board member at OPRF District 200.
Martire led de-tracking at OPRF that began in 2022, and it’s lower standards are something those students now call “teaching to the middle”. The K-8th feeder district in Oak Park (97) is wrestling with similar issues – should the district equalize outcome or keep instruction that would help students learn as much math as they can. That discussion happens October 10th, 2024.
The situation in Massachusetts is bad, but no worse than River Forest, IL where “Research based”, “evidence based”, and other farcical phrases were parroted by River Forest District 90 leadership operating under an ambiguous and deceptive list of board recommendations. It was shared by one parent at a board meeting how their fifth grader had to be tested outside the district to understand his delayed learning was linked to poor decoding skills, a fatal flaw of Units of Study.
Reading proficiency plummeted, and the district’s champions of mediocrity did all they could to sell the story and distract families from the truth, until they couldn’t. Thank you, Emily Hanford, lead investigator of “Sold a Story” who carefully pulled back the wool on this national naked wolf.
So, in a tiny quaint town on the edge of Chicago, where references to Mayberry can land you on the naughty list, where tutoring has become trendy, we’ll see if residents form a class or take a pass on bad decisions in the next school board election.
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