In late 2024, two sets of parents filed an unusual lawsuit in Massachusetts. The parents are suing Lucy Calkins, the designer of an extremely popular elementary school reading curriculum that was adopted in both public and private schools across the country. Calkins estimated that one in four elementary schools in the U.S. mandated her curriculum. In 2019, 16% of K-2 teachers reported using the materials. The curriculum has devoted teacher fans, partly because of the emphasis on the love of reading.

The complaint is that Calkins, among others, knew the curriculum wasn’t based on the best science and used it anyway, to the detriment of students.

This lawsuit feels like a culmination of something that has been building for several years or longer. The “reading wars” — basically, the fight over the right way to teach kids how to read — has spilled out of academia (where the fight continues) and into the media. I’ve talked about this before in interviews with both Emily Solari and Emily Hanford. 

Over the past two or three years, discussion has turned to policy. Many states have passed laws about the “science of reading.” It sounds great — we love science — but some critics have complained that this is an overreaction. They ask whether newly approved curricula are really any more evidence-based than what was in place before. 

So what’s right? Here: the data. On what we know from science, and what is still unknown. 

Understanding the reading debate

Before moving into the details of what works, a quick primer on some terminology.

Phonics

Phonics is the activity of linking letters (or chunks of letters) to sounds. “Phonics-based instruction” refers to when reading is taught building up from this explicit letter-sound correspondence. When we teach kids to “sound out” words, that’s phonics. M says “mmm,” A says “aaa,” T says “ttt,” and together they say “mmm—aaa—ttt”: “mat!”  

Fluency in reading is built up from these basics. Kids are taught explicitly that (for example) when there is an “e” at the end of a word, it is silent but it changes the sound that an earlier vowel makes.  

Whole-language reading

Traditionally, phonics was used in reading instruction. However, several decades ago, reading instruction took a detour into something called “whole language” reading. These approaches ignored phonics, sometimes completely, in favor of exposing kids to richer texts earlier on, and effectively trying to develop reading skills through repeating exposures to text. 

Balanced literacy

This term is sometimes used to refer to an intermediate approach that introduces some phonics but still keeps a whole-language focus. This is essentially what Calkins’s curriculum is, although earlier versions of her program had even less of an emphasis on phonics.

How does your brain read?

If you are a fluent reader, you probably do not think very much about how you’re reading. For example: I’m writing this in the lobby of a hotel, and out the window I can see a sign that says, “Please refrain from smoking.” When I see the sign, I know what it says immediately. But how? What’s going on in my brain?

Here are three possibilities. First, I might just recognize all those words, so I’m reading by pattern recognition — these are all words I have seen before. Second, I might be reading by understanding context and doing some guessing. I know that smoking is not allowed in most places, so once I read, “Please refrain from sm…” I might just be filling in the “…oking” in my head. Finally, I might be reading by very quickly sounding out the words in my head.

For a fluent reader, these could all look the same, and you probably do not care too much about which one it is. After all, regardless of how, I get the message: do not smoke here. More generally, as long as I am able to read, it’s the same to me. However, a poor understanding of these processes is part of some of the errors we have made in literacy instruction. 

The actual answer to how we read involves both the first option — pattern recognition — and the third — sounding it out (phonics). We can see this in the wide literature in brain science on how people read. Studies (here is an example meta-analysis) show that reading involves both parts of the brain that are used for sounding out and parts of the brain that are used for visual recognition. Adults use more of the visual recognition than children, but both groups use both. 

The fact that you do some word recognition is not surprising, but the sounding out part is less obvious in your practical experience. We do not perceive ourselves to be chunking words and combining the sounds. But we are — and one way you know that must be true is that you can read unfamiliar words. 

What this means, though, is that phonics is not just an intermediate step in reading. It continues to be used throughout our reading journey. There are some approaches to reading instruction (like earlier versions of the ones mentioned in the lawsuit) that effectively assume that this is a step that can be skipped, since eventually you will not use it. That might be an understandable mistake, but it is a mistake nevertheless. 

What has been shown to most effectively teach reading?

Research has found that reading programs that involve phonics instruction are more effective. There is a very large literature about this issue. At this point, the value of phonics in a curriculum is widely accepted.  

Much of the literature on it focuses on classroom instruction activities, but there is one study that I find very clarifying, even though it is a slightly contrived context.

In this study, researchers took a set of adults who could already read and tried to teach them to read a new script. Rather than letters, it was a bunch of connected squiggles. Participants were taught to read in one of two ways. One group was taught to read with a “whole-word focus” — they were shown individual words written in the new script. Another group was taught with a phonics focus (here called a “grapheme-phoneme mapping focus” — image linked to sound). You can see what this means in the comparison below.

What the authors found is that those who are trained with a whole-word focus are faster at reading the set of words they are trained on. But: when it comes to words that are unfamiliar to them, they are no better than chance at guessing what they mean. Meanwhile, those who are trained with the image-sound correspondence do better on unfamiliar words. Having a sense of shapes matching to sounds is how people are able to read new things.

All of this points very strongly to the importance of including phonics when teaching reading. By extension, reading curricula that do not involve any phonics instruction are not as effective. “Whole language” teaching, which rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, excluded phonics in favor of an approach that assumed reading happens by word recognition and some guessing. 

This led to, among other things, an overuse of cueing approaches, where students are encouraged to guess a word based on context clues (pictures, the first letter, the context). Although research in the 1950s argued that this kind of guessing might be the core of how reading works, it isn’t. The whole-language approach especially fails struggling students, who may learn enough through memorization and context to get by but do not develop the tools to read unfamiliar material. 

What do we not know about teaching reading? 

There is widespread agreement that reading instruction should include a significant dose of phonics. This does rule out some curricula — including earlier versions of the Calkins curriculum — that include no or minimal phonics instructions. 

However, there are significant remaining gaps in our knowledge. The use of the phrase “science of reading” — as in “this curriculum is based on the science of reading” — may lead one to think that we have detailed information about what works best. In fact, for the most part there isn’t much evidence focused on particular programs.

Many, many reading programs involve some phonics. But it cannot be all phonics all the time, and not only because phonics is dry. Reading involves being able to decode words (that’s where the phonics comes in) but also to understand context and comprehend. There has to be more — books to read, writing activities, other text exposure.

How you incorporate these, the balance, how they are mixed — this all varies across curricula. Exactly what the best way is to structure this is an open question. One has not been shown to be clearly better than another. 

It’s important to note that choice of curriculum and approach are going to matter much more for kids who are struggling than for those who are not. The reality is that even without explicit phonics, most kids will learn to read. Where the curriculum really matters is in cases when reading doesn’t come easily and kids need more support. We don’t want to leave any kids behind, and we need more research directly comparing approaches to get there.  

What are states doing, and is it working? 

In the past several years, at least 40 states have passed laws requiring schools and districts to use a curriculum that adheres to the “science of reading.” By which is meant, basically, use phonics. Reflecting the lack of clarity in the last section, the acceptable curricula vary widely across states. 

The bulk of these laws are too new for us to evaluate how successful they are. In principle, what we may learn is very rich — if districts adopt different curricula, we might actually be able to see what works. This would require knowing which districts use which resources, which is surprisingly difficult.

There are several states that were early adopters — Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee — and have seen some success. Among other things, these are the states with the most robust post-COVID recovery in reading scores. This is interesting and suggestive, but more detailed analysis is necessary. 

What can I do as a parent?

Most kids learn to read in school (and at older ages than you might think). Many parents wonder what they can do — either to make sure their school is doing a good job or to scaffold on their own at home. 

(To be clear, the expectation should not be that parents teach their children to read. This should happen at school, and one criticism that many parents have levied at reading instruction is that they have had to fill in for schools. However, for various reasons, parents do ask this question.) 

On the issue of how to ensure that your school is doing a good job: given how much uncertainty there is about the “best” curriculum, the main question you can ask is how much time is spent on phonics and what their phonics approach is. If you find there is no or very minimal focus on phonics, ask why that is and learn more.

On the question of what you can do at home: if you want to help your child with reading, there are a couple of good, parent-friendly approaches. (First, though, remember that most kids do not enter kindergarten reading and you really do not have to teach your 4-year-old to read.) One is the Bob Books, which focus on sounding out letters. A second is Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, which is more of a curriculum and is easily followed by many parents. 

Finally: remember that one thing you can absolutely do that is both helpful and fun is to read to your kids. If you do nothing else about reading, do this.  

The bottom line

• Research shows that phonics (linking letters to sounds) is an essential part of an effective reading curriculum. Programs that deemphasize phonics are less effective, especially for readers who are struggling.
• There is still a lot we don’t know about the best methods for teaching reading. More research directly comparing approaches is needed, especially if it focuses on the group of kids who need more support. 
• Parents can ask their child’s school about their reading curriculum, particularly whether there is a focus on phonics. To support reading at home, parents can use various programs and resources, but the most important thing to do is regularly read aloud to their child. 

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