Another Progressive Educational Model Gets Discredited

The director of Teachers College Reading and Writing Project for Columbia University, Lucy Calkins, has long been an influential figure in education. Almost a third of U.S. elementary teachers use her curriculum, hundreds of thousands of educators have received her training, and her philosophy of reading instruction has influenced countless more. Hopefully, due to a recent New York Times article eviscerating her products, her name will become equally infamous in the average household.

Calkins bases her popular curriculum, Units of Study, around the practice of the reader/writer workshop model — wherein students choose their own books and writing projects — and balanced literacy, which is an approach to reading that rejects phonics. Reading experts pan both for their lack of science-backed reading and writing instruction. In response to rising pressure, Calkins has created new curricula, which include a “20-page guide for teachers summarizing 50 years of cognitive research on reading.”