Lessons from the Balanced Literacy superintendents’ revolt against curriculum improvement
With all eyes on the Massachusetts reading bill, I’m republishing my 2024 column on the state's Balanced Literacy holdouts.
Yesterday, a pioneering literacy bill passed the Massachusetts house with unanimous support (!). I was honored to have the last word in the Boston Globe coverage.
Soon, I’ll publish two new pieces related to the developments in Massachusetts (a bellweather state). In the meantime, I’m resurfacing this piece on the Balanced Literacy Resistance, originally published in February, 2024.
Spoiler: some of these names will resurface.
Balanced Literacy has deep roots in Massachusetts, but in recent years, the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has worked to improve reading instruction with its Mass Literacy initiative. One of its signature efforts: a grant program to incentivize districts to move away from flawed programs. In fact, DESE named the weak programs by name (a model other states should follow). Now, proposed legislation would require districts to use one of the evidence-based options.
The reading outcomes in Massachusetts compel this action. The Boston Globe’s Mandy McLaren reported that 47% of Massachusetts districts and 65% of wealthy districts use a weak Balanced Literacy program, and more than half early readers show signs of reading difficulties.
In Lexington, one of the districts cited in the reporting, parents are protesting for a move away from TCRWP Units of Study, one of the programs on DESE’s list of bad programs. Superintendent Julie Hackett seems unlikely to heed those calls. Instead, Hackett has been leading the protest movement against curriculum reform in Massachusetts. It’s a cautionary tale.
Hackett authored an open letter to Governor Healey to resist new curriculum mandates. The letter doesn’t make a case for improvement, cite data for its positions, or anything we might expect from someone with a plan to improve reading proficiency.
But another issue jumps off the page: the letter really only makes one point to support its case, and it’s inaccurate.
Hackett’s letter claims that EdReports favors basal reading programs – in fact, right up until it was published and sent to the governor, drafts claimed that EdReports exclusively favored basals – and that it “excludes” programs with teacher and student choice. Neither is accurate.
The reality: half of the curricula earning “all-green” on EdReports are “knowledge-building” curricula. Knowledge-building programs are fundamentally different from basals. Most were developed in the last decade, to meet the expectations of new state standards. All are built around whole texts, and earn recommendations from literacy experts.
Basal programs round out the EdReports all-greens, but the basal approach can’t be said to dominate.
Either Hackett is trying to lump the new generation of curricula in with basal readers to dismiss them (“everything that isn’t Balanced Literacy is a basal reader!”), or she is unaware of the emergence of an important new category of curriculum options. I’m not sure which is worse.
In fact, Lexington is just getting into a curriculum review process, its first in years. Its review teams will be looking at different programs this spring. Why would a district take the lead on this kind of letter and make confident assertions about the landscape before they have even looked properly at the latest options? Seems like a fair question.
Hackett’s comments on teacher choice and student choice are also a misrepresentation. EdReports rates programs based on alignment to state standards, and has no criteria specific to teacher and student choice. Multiple choice-oriented Balanced Literacy programs have been reviewed.
However, Massachusetts standards expect all students to work with texts at their grade level, because this is best for their reading growth. A growing body of research supports this approach. It’s basically impossible to give all kids high doses of work with grade level texts AND to have time for the leveled reading groups and independent reading blocks in Balanced Literacy approaches. We should expect Balanced Literacy curricula to earn weak reviews, because they don’t design for large doses of grade level work for all students.
To support reading comprehension, curriculum should be intentional about building background knowledge in science, history, and the arts from the earliest grades. Massachusetts standards expect this, too. Knowledge-building requires systematic curriculum. It is practically impossible to give children broad exposure to science and history topics in elementary grades in a situation in which each teacher is choosing his or her own texts and topics of study. It’s easy to see why: if multiple teachers in a school choose to teach about colonial America each fall and plant life cycles each spring, children repeat the same learning grade to grade. You need a common curriculum across grades to maximize knowledge-building, and that’s impossible when teachers are doing their own thing.
A growing number of studies back the knowledge-building approach. Nell Duke, cited in Hackett’s letter (!), joined researchers’ calls for knowledge-rich curriculum in early grades, teaming with fellow researchers to explain the case. These approaches are overdue in our classrooms.
Hackett’s letter doesn’t get into any such detail about reading instruction, and what the research tells us. She simply critiques curriculum mandates as “one size fits all” teaching. It’s a rhetorical device that doesn’t match today’s curriculum landscape. High-quality curricula all include resources for differentiation (tailoring reading instruction to the varied needs of students). And both EdReports and CURATE offer a variety of quality options. Schools have a choice of research-aligned resources designed to reach our diverse learners. It’s time to mandate that districts use them.
When you hear pleas to avoid “one size fits all” teaching, that’s simply code for, “We want to do whatever we please.” When more than half early readers in Massachusetts show signs of reading difficulties, and nearly 30% of K-3 students are at high risk of reading failure, why should we listen?
To support the comprehensive reading legislation, contact Massachusetts legislators here.
The Lessons
Beyond lessons on the rhetorical devices that Balanced Literacy devotees will use to resist change, I see other opportunities to learn from Massachusetts.
For advocates of high-quality curriculum, I see an important lesson. EdReports allowed too many flawed basal programs to earn its top ratings. This makes it too easy for opponents of change to use “EdReports promotes basals” rhetoric. The sooner EdReports responds to the legitimate concerns about its all-green category, the better.
DESE would do well to look into those concerns, and to tighten up its CURATE list before new legislation goes into effect.
And DESE must recognize the need for intensive professional learning for MA teachers, superintendents, and even school boards. This letter makes clear that misinformation is rampant in some MA districts. It must be tackled at all levels. Tennessee offers nice models for nurturing district leader support of curriculum change (via PLNs and more), and for increasing educator embrace of knowledge-building curriculum, generally.
Lastly, Science of Reading advocates must get better at articulating the issues with Balanced Literacy curricula beyond phonics and cueing. We need to spend more time explaining that Balanced Literacy, with its leveled reading groups and leveled independent reading, is promoting tracking in kindergarten. That’s a compelling reason to ask teachers to give up some choice – but we barely talk about it.
We must spend more time connecting the needs of English Learners with knowledge-building curriculum.
Equity matters to educators – in Massachusetts especially. Let’s explain the ways that Balanced Literacy programs are designed inequitably if we want to reach the signatories of Hackett’s letter and show those programs the door.
Updates
On the MA bill: As of February 7th, references to CURATE have been omitted from the bill, but the ability of the state to require districts to use quality curriculum remain intact. This is precisely what I would have hoped for.
According to locals close to the bill, CURATE was the number one source of pushback on the draft bill, because it earned opposition from multiple sides. Some Science of Reading advocates spoke out about their concerns with the quality of some of the materials. I’m glad to see that DESE will have another opportunity to ‘Know Better, Do Better’ on curriculum reviews. And I’ll once again remind advocates that EdReports misses are a huge risk area, and must compel attention. Please follow the Curriculum Insight Project for more on that.
This post last updated on 2/14/24.