Today’s Science of Reading (SOR) was born of a right-wing conservative phonics focus. A Nation at Risk helped advance that messaging, and one of the messengers was Robert Sweet, Jr.
As the country mandates the Science of Reading (SOR) and invests heavily in unproven programs, marketing disputes flourish over which best align with so-called evidence. These programs control teachers’ instruction through one-size-fits-all directives, delivered with manuals or online. It’s easy to see where this is going. States could spend millions more on reading programs that don’t appear to improve learning as teachers are driven out with tech.
During the Reagan administration, A Nation at Risk raised unfounded negativity towards public schools and teachers (See Biddle and Berliner, The Manufactured Crisis). Reading, already controversial, became a vehicle for attacking teachers, their teacher colleges, and public schools, furthering a school privatization agenda that continues to this day. Schools weren’t doing badly, but those who wanted to privatize them worked to make them fail.
The obituary of Robert Sweet, Jr. is glowing. I don’t doubt that, like many SOR enthusiasts, he believed he was doing the right thing. He became instrumental in the phonics movement, working later with the Science of Reading and Reading First promoter Reid Lyon to create No Child Left Behind and Reading First. Yet he’s rarely mentioned today.
Sweet wasn’t a qualified reading teacher. He taught physics, coached, and sold textbooks. He arrived in DC as a member of the US House of Representatives staff during the Reagan administration. He supported Reagan initiatives such as tuition tax credits, low-income voucher programs, student self-help reforms, education savings accounts, and other conservative school initiatives.
He met Dr. Onalee McGraw, a PhD political scientist and a Heritage Foundation representative. McGraw, unrelated to the publishing company, was a Reagan appointee to the National Council on Educational Research (See Robert Sweet interview 4.17 below).
The Heritage Foundation is behind today’s Project 2025. Lindsey Burke, who wrote the education part, works with Education Secretary Linda McMahon. Neither are educators.
McGraw wrote “Family Choice in Education: The New Imperative,” arguing that public schools were in decline, academics had been replaced by social engineering, and humanistic curricula and subjective values had taken over. She believed education was inherently religious, not value-free. She promoted vouchers, minimum competency requirements, and moral education classes.
Sweet initially didn’t see reading as a problem. He and his children learned to read. But McGraw introduced him to Michael Brunner, who convinced Sweet otherwise.
Brunner wasn’t a reading teacher either. He had a degree in library science becoming the director of Title I in Idaho. He connected with the Reading Reform Foundation, created after Rudolph Flesch’s Why Johnny Can’t Read. Brunner wrote Vowelectomy. He believed in the work of well-known reading expert Jeanne Chall, but didn’t think vowel and mixed digraph instruction took place early enough, waiting until the end of first grade.
Both Sweet and Brunner repeatedly claim that students aren’t learning to read and teachers and especially their colleges are failing to teach phonics.
But Berliner and Biddle in The Manufactured Crisis pointed to media claims as being distorted and hostile, describing reporters failing to address cited study details, indicating that research really showed that poverty was the leading cause of reading difficulties (see p. 10-11).
Sweet became the director of the National Institute of Education and later the US Department of Education, bringing Brunner to DC to work on reading. They commissioned a report, Becoming a Nation of Readers. It’s informative, covering phonics importance, but also comprehension, meaning, and environmental influences. Sweet complained it was unfocused (8.45 video below).
He commissioned another report by Marilyn Jaeger Adams Beginning to Read: Thinking and learning about Print. The book, still popular today, stresses the importance of phonics and whole language. I could not find what Sweet thought about Jaeger’s book.
Both Bruner and Sweet favored Spaulding, a reading program spun from Orton-Gillingham (OG). Sweet criticizes Reading Recovery, praising Spaulding at the end of this interview. OG remains popular in the Science of Reading, despite common knowledge that it has lacked high-quality, peer-reviewed studies of its efficacy for 50 years!
Bruner and Sweet traveled the country observing teachers, without being reading experts. They blamed colleges for failing teachers on how to teach phonics. While teacher colleges can always improve, generalizing the same criticism towards all is dangerous. I knew of excellent teacher college programs at that time. Brunner created his own reading program, Phonics Made Plain.
He authored numerous articles on reading, including a Republican policy paper “Illiteracy: An Incurable Disease or Educational Malpractice?” Sweet’s paper was supported by the U.S. Department of Education and the Center for the Study of Reading at the University of Illinois. It called for the restoration of the instructional practice of intensive, systematic phonics in every primary school in America.
Next, under President H.W. Bush, Sweet became administrator for the Juvenile Justice Department. Brunner writes Retarding America: The Imprisonment of Potential highlighting that juvenile crime is due to current reading methods (i.e. little phonics), while ignoring other variables. A good thing is that they establish reading programs in some detention facilities.
Brunner criticizes the All Handicapped Children’s Act (PL 94-142) throughout the book listed above implying children simply lack phonics instruction.
Sweet learns of the National Institute of Health and Human Development and met Reid Lyon. He seemed then to form the idea that reading must be based on scientific principal and one assumes he’s talking about phonics (11.58 video below).
In 1993, Sweet became co-founder and president of the now defunct National Right to Read Foundation which focuses again on phonics (12:41 video below). He still implied that teachers didn’t know about phonics.
But, public schools were working to accommodate children with reading difficulties in schools using phonics in resource classes especially after the 1975 passage of PL94-142. And phonics may have been taught later.
Sweet eventually helps pass the Reading Excellence Act in 1998 under President Clinton, although he doesn’t care for Clinton’s America Reads program where college students read to students (14.18 video below).
Under President G.W. Bush he collaborates with Reid Lyon, an advisor to the president, crafts language for the No Child Left Behind Act. Sweet becomes the primary author of the Reading First initiative which saw “scientifically based research” noted more than 100 times. Reading First turned out controversial.
Lyon immensely disliked educational schools, stating in 2002, a year after 9/11, You know, if there was any piece of legislation that I could pass, it could be to blow up colleges of education. He supports today’s Science of Reading initiative.
Around this time Reid, according to the NYTs, advised his former boss, Dr. Duane Alexander, about candidates for the National Reading Panel (Schemo, 2007). No early childhood teachers who teach reading were included on the panel. It’s controversial findings are still promoted by SOR enthusiasts, including some whom were on the panel. [I mention the lack of early childhood teachers but one teacher/principal was selected for the panel. Joanne Yatvin wrote many reports about her concerns about the panel itself. Minority View]
Robert Sweet and those described here were given much clout over teachers and how they teach. Yet after all these years, focusing heavily on phonics, and adding billions in technology often for SOR online programs, teachers, and their teacher colleges are still blamed as failing.
References
Berliner, D. C., & Biddle, B. J. (1995). The manufactured crisis : myths, fraud, and the attack on America’s public schools. Addison-Wesley.
Gursky, D. (1981, August 1). After The Reign Of Dick And Jane. Education Week, Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/education/after-the-reign-of-dick-and-jane/1991/08
Schemo, D. J. (2007, March 9). In War Over Teaching Reading, a U.S.-Local Clash. The New York Times, Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/education/09reading.html
This post is adapted from my panel presentation at the 2025 Network for Public Education meeting.
Nancy,
There was one experienced teacher-principal on the National Reading Panel: Joanne Yatvin.
She wrote sharp dissents from the Panel’s report.
Diane Ravitch
Thank you, Diane!
It’s interesting that most, if not all of these SOR proponents have zero background as reading specialists or teachers of reading. I am a retired reading specialist from Arlington, VA.
I’ve had several teachers mention this, and it certainly didn’t go unnoticed by me. When you study reading and actually teach children, it would seem to mean something. Thanks, John.
ICYMI: Science of Reading pathway
The Nevada Department of Education is pleased to offer free microcredential courses to all licensed Nevada educators. Microcredentials are certifications that recognize demonstrated mastery in specific areas of educational practice. They are competency-based, focus on demonstrating specific skills through evidence, and offer educators a way to validate and showcase their professional knowledge and skills.
Microcredentials (use this link: Microcredential Catalog)
· can be earned through everyday classroom work or personal professional development.
· are designed to allow educators to exhibit existing proficiency through authentic application.
· are self-paced and free of charge to all Nevada licensed educators.
· can be used toward license renewal and in most districts, salary advancement (depending on district-specific policies).
· provide a valuable way to validate expertise through meaningful professional growth.
Educators who earn a microcredential will receive a Nevada Department of Education certificate that denotes 7.5 clock hours. Earners are also awarded a digital badge.
The tasks within each microcredential are intentionally sequenced to reflect real-time engagement with the content. Work submitted should be planned and developed while working through the microcredential, not derived from prior experiences.
We encourage all Nevada educators to take advantage of this opportunity to showcase instructional practice through real-time engagement with students and staff while earning recognition for your expertise.
SB460: Science of Reading (Microcredential Catalog) (Science of Reading Information)
The Science of Reading pathway provides teachers who serve pupils in grades Kindergarten, 1, 2, and 3, with an alternative option for meeting SB460 licensure requirements. While only K – 3 teachers need to address the SB460 requirement, Science of Reading microcredentials are available for teachers PreK – 8th grade. The Science of Reading microcredentials meet all microcredential criteria described above.
The pathway includes six microcredentials (7.5 hours each). To meet SB460 requirements, educators must complete all six: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, Reading Comprehension, and Foundational Literacy Connections. The final microcredential, Foundational Literacy Connections, may only be completed after the first five are earned.
[Guess whose idea? Seperate source edited content: Dr. Victor Wakefield Appointed as Nevada’s New Superintendent of Public Instruction…In a move signaling a shift in Nevada’s education leadership…as a testament to his credentials and dedication to educational excellence… tenures at Teach For America (TFA), where he not only recruited leaders but also spearheaded training for new educators in Clark County, and later served as the National Vice President for Regions, during which he managed TFA’s pandemic response and emphasized the transformative potential of educational leadership.] Also, 4 years in the classroom as I recall..
Thank you for this.
I looked Wakefield up on Linkedin. He taught ELA almost 2 years with a BA in History and American Studies in a charter school. At least they could have stuck him in a history class, but anyway with that, no teaching experience that I can see in a public school, he did more work with Teach for American, got an impressive doctorate in entrepreneurial educational leadership from Johns Hopkins, but he has had no experience as a teacher in public education. Considering the many individuals I know with teaching experience plus in public school and advanced degrees in education, I would say I’m amazed at this appointment. But it it privatization at work. TFA has always been about that. Many of us knew at the time that placing bright young people, many from elite colleges, into the classroom with 5 weeks of training, and no ed. degrees, was weird. Sadder still, is that these young people likely went into TFA because they couldn’t find a job in their major choice, and then they are propelled into leadership positions to help end the professional educator path to leadership. They are pawns.
In addition, microcredentials are meant to end teacher ed. as we know it, and teach through tech mini skills that will not likely end well for America and its kids.
The weakness in this essay is not primarily political. It is epistemological. The piece attempts to discredit the Science of Reading not by carefully engaging its evidence, but by constructing a genealogy around it: Reagan, Heritage Foundation, vouchers, privatization, Project 2025, Teach for America. The implication is clear enough. If some early advocates of structured literacy had conservative affiliations, then the movement itself must be ideologically compromised. But this is a classic genetic fallacy. An idea does not become false because some of its advocates held political views one dislikes. The only serious question is whether explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension helps children learn to read. On that question, the evidence base is deep, broad, and decades old.
Jeanne Chall’s *Learning to Read: The Great Debate* appeared in 1967. Marilyn Jager Adams’s *Beginning to Read* became foundational in cognitive reading science in 1990. The National Reading Panel reviewed enormous bodies of research and concluded that systematic phonics instruction improves early literacy outcomes. Researchers such as Louisa Moats, Linnea Ehri, Keith Stanovich, Sally Shaywitz, Mark Seidenberg, Hollis Scarborough, Maryanne Wolf, and Tim Shanahan have contributed converging findings from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, developmental psychology, and classroom practice. One can debate implementation. One can debate over-standardization. One can debate the excesses of educational technology or the bureaucratization of literacy instruction. But the article largely avoids engaging the actual empirical center of the debate.
More striking still is the article’s attempt to frame the Science of Reading as a kind of covert right-wing project. This simply does not survive contact with reality. Phonics was not invented by conservatives. For much of the twentieth century it was simply considered a normal part of learning to read. Nor is the modern Science of Reading movement politically uniform. Support for evidence-based literacy instruction now comes from liberals, conservatives, centrists, urban districts, rural districts, dyslexia advocates, pediatricians, literacy specialists, classroom teachers, neuroscientists, and parents of struggling readers. Democratic-led states and districts including Massachusetts, Colorado, California, and New York City have adopted Science of Reading reforms alongside Republican-led states such as Mississippi and Tennessee. Emily Hanford’s reporting resonated across ideological lines because parents recognized something concrete beneath the politics: many children were not learning to read fluently.
The repeated emphasis that certain historical figures “weren’t reading teachers” is also revealing. Many of today’s leading advocates for the Science of Reading are, in fact, reading teachers, literacy specialists, speech-language pathologists, cognitive scientists, and education researchers. Entire bodies of peer-reviewed research support structured literacy approaches. The existence of some advocates outside colleges of education does not somehow invalidate the movement. Quite the contrary. The insistence on outsider status begins to sound less like an argument and more like an attempt at boundary enforcement — an effort to determine who is permitted to speak legitimately within an institutional discourse. Michel Foucault wrote extensively about this tendency within institutions: the way authority often protects itself not merely through evidence, but through the regulation of acceptable language, acceptable credentials, and acceptable critics.
Jean Baudrillard might have recognized something else happening here as well. The article repeatedly substitutes symbolic associations for material realities. The concrete question — are children becoming literate? — recedes behind a cloud of political signifiers. Reagan. Heritage. Privatization. Project 2025. Teach for America. The symbols begin to matter more than the outcomes. But literacy is stubbornly real. Children either learn to read fluently or they do not. Parents know this at a practical level that cuts through ideological framing remarkably quickly.
Paulo Freire, ironically, is relevant here too. Freire believed education should remain grounded in the liberation of actual human beings rather than the preservation of institutional systems. One reason the Science of Reading gained traction is that many families, including working-class families and parents of children with dyslexia, became frustrated with systems that often seemed evasive about literacy outcomes while insisting on ideological and pedagogical orthodoxies. The movement did not arise solely from top-down political projects. It also arose from accumulated practical dissatisfaction.
In the end, the essay feels less like an empirical critique than an attempt at narrative containment. Rather than directly confronting why so many teachers, researchers, clinicians, and parents across ideological lines came to support more explicit literacy instruction, it tries to recast the movement as morally and politically suspect. But ordinary parents are not particularly interested in the symbolic genealogy of phonics instruction. They care whether their children can read confidently, fluently, and independently by third grade. That material reality remains stubborn. And it is ultimately what collapses the article’s premise.
Teachers want to do what they believe, or are led to believe, is right, and as time goes on, we’re seeing that the SoR isn’t working, like in the past. We’ve been here before.
Teachers are also in a troubling spot with the push for online instruction, SoR is about that, and AI. Many of us predicted this for years! Many of the same people promoting SoR would jump at the chance to kick teachers out and replace them with screens for instruction. Phonics lends itself to this.
This blog post was a historical review, and I used citations to support my points.
Jeanne Chall, whom I wrote a whole post about, believed that phonics instruction should begin in first grade, NOT Kindergarten, and that children move at different paces.
I am not against phonics, just its overuse and lack of individualization for the children who need more of it.
I stand by what I wrote.
A note on the rhetorical move first, because it matters.
“Many of the same people promoting SoR would jump at the chance to kick teachers out and replace them with screens for instruction. Phonics lends itself to this.”
That sentence introduces an accusation as if it were a fact and then proceeds as though the accusation has been established. The structure is the same as “when did you stop beating your wife.”
The presupposition is smuggled in, and the burden of disassembling it falls on whoever objects.
This is Brandolini’s Law in action: producing this kind of claim takes a sentence, refuting it takes paragraphs. And the people best positioned to push back — parents who actually watched this happen in their kids’ classrooms — generally do not have time to write paragraphs.
That asymmetry is the whole reason these claims circulate unchallenged.
So, specifically:
My daughter was in balanced literacy classrooms. Units of Study. Take-home sight words. Leveled libraries. And screens, constantly. I volunteered in the classroom. I saw it.
Screen time was substituting for direct instruction and small-group work. Children who should have been getting teacher attention were getting tablets. That experience was part of why we left our local public school.
The Lucy Calkins / Teachers College curriculum that defined that classroom is published by Heinemann, which is owned by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which was taken private in 2022 by Veritas Capital — a private equity firm whose portfolio is built primarily around defense and government technology contractors.
If the concern is hedge-fund-owned ed-tech displacing teachers, the concern has real targets. They are not located where the original post places them.
On Jeanne Chall: I do not believe she argues what you claim she argues, and I am going to leave it there.
John Cleveland’s comment is the one in this thread worth taking seriously.
His concern — that the transition to structured literacy is removing guided reading, choral reading, comprehension strategies, and background-knowledge work — is real and shared by mainstream Science of Reading advocates.
Scarborough’s Reading Rope, the most widely cited framework in the field, treats word recognition and language comprehension as inseparable strands.
Tim Shanahan, Hollis Scarborough, Natalie Wexler, and Daniel Willingham have written extensively about the centrality of knowledge-building and comprehension alongside foundational instruction.
If schools are cutting those things during the SoR transition, that is a real implementation failure, and the criticism is shared by serious structured literacy advocates.
The disagreement is not whether comprehension matters. It is whether children can comprehend text they cannot decode.
The original post argued that the Science of Reading is a right-wing conservative project tied to Reagan, Heritage, vouchers, and Project 2025.
The comment defending the post argued that SoR is about replacing teachers with screens.
Neither claim survives contact with the actual instructional reality in the classrooms where balanced literacy is taught at scale.
The genealogy proves only that some advocates had conservative affiliations. The screens claim has the institutional facts inverted.
And the underlying empirical question — whether explicit foundational instruction helps children, especially struggling readers and children with dyslexia, learn to read — has converging evidence on one side and a political genealogy on the other.
I have followed the push to replace teachers with screens for years. Look at any of the many online SOR phonics-focused programs, and you’ll see screens with teachers reduced to being guides. I taught Direct Instruction. All you do is follow the manual. It is easily placed on a screen. Dozens of online programs do this.
The heavy emphasis on phonics used to be a conservative issue. It has expanded more now, with Dems on board, but it is still fairly right-leaning.
Most of the people you have mentioned as experts in this comment and the other one are connected to some online program one way or another. Or they have their own teacher training or student online programs, mostly unproven.
What specifically do you disagree with me about Jeanne Chall? I wrote a whole post about her work. I spend a lot of time ensuring that I get my facts correct. I included citations. If you find anything incorrect, let me know, and I will change it.
https://nancyebailey.com/2025/06/01/challs-missing-stages-of-reading-development-in-the-science-of-reading/
I’m sorry your daughter had a tough time. Although, from what you write, and because I did not teach her, I am relying on your anecdotal information. This is another problem with SOR. All the accounts about children and their reading problems are hard to evaluate due to lacking info.
I worry that many parents expect their kindergartners to be reading, and when they aren’t by first grade, it is assumed they have a problem. We never expected kindergartners to read so early in the past.
What I have always assumed, based on my own experience as a parent and teacher, is that children are different, and each should be evaluated for what THEY NEED in reading. Mark Seidenberg, whom I believe you mentioned, wrote something similar recently. Some children need little phonics instruction, a little probably for spelling, but others need a whole lot more.
And yes, the SOR is adding more. The obsession with such a long push and so much phonics has been detrimental. Comprehension has been pushed aside or put on hold in favor of phonics, and I disagree with this, as do many. Many of the additions are coming from the balanced literacy camp as well.
I appreciate the civil tone of the exchange, and I think there are real concerns embedded in some of the implementation critiques being raised — particularly around over-standardization, excessive screen time, loss of rich comprehension work, and the danger of reducing teachers to technicians. Those are legitimate debates.
But I also think several rhetorical and logical problems remain unresolved in the replies above, and it may help to name them directly and precisely.
First, there is a recurring genetic fallacy throughout the original essay and subsequent replies. The argument repeatedly traces the genealogy of the Science of Reading through Reagan-era conservatives, Heritage Foundation figures, privatization advocates, vouchers, Project 2025, Teach for America, and related actors. The implication is that these associations somehow undermine the validity of explicit foundational literacy instruction itself. But the origin or political affiliation of some advocates does not determine whether an instructional approach is empirically effective. The relevant question is not who supported phonics politically in the 1980s, but whether explicit instruction in decoding, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension improves literacy outcomes for children today.
Second, there is substantial guilt-by-association reasoning throughout the discussion. “Phonics,” “Science of Reading,” “AI,” “screens,” “online programs,” “privatization,” “Direct Instruction,” and “teacher replacement” are frequently grouped together as though they form a single coherent ideological project. But these categories are analytically distinct. One can support structured literacy while opposing excessive screen-based learning. One can support explicit phonics instruction while rejecting scripted curricula. One can advocate for cognitive science-informed literacy instruction while also defending teacher autonomy and rich literature-based classrooms. The repeated associative framing tends to collapse distinctions that matter.
Third, several claims rely on broad insinuation rather than clear evidentiary standards. For example:
> “Many of the same people promoting SoR would jump at the chance to kick teachers out and replace them with screens…”
That is a rhetorically powerful sentence, but it introduces motive attribution as though it were established fact without specifying who precisely is being described, in what proportion, or with what evidence. The structure places critics in the position of disproving an implied accusation that was never rigorously demonstrated in the first place. That kind of framing can create more heat than clarity.
Fourth, there appears to be an asymmetry in evidentiary treatment. Personal classroom observations from parents are dismissed as “anecdotal,” yet broader claims about privatization motives, screen replacement, and the ideological intentions of Science of Reading advocates are often advanced with similarly inferential reasoning. If anecdotal evidence is insufficient in one direction, the same standard should apply consistently in the other.
Fifth, there is a noticeable motte-and-bailey shift in the exchange. The original article strongly frames the Science of Reading as a movement intertwined with conservative political projects and privatization efforts. But when challenged on empirical grounds, the defense often retreats to a narrower and much more defensible position: that phonics can be overused, that instruction should be individualized, and that comprehension and background knowledge matter too. Many mainstream Science of Reading advocates already agree with those narrower claims. The difficulty is that the narrower implementation critique is not equivalent to the broader ideological critique advanced at the outset.
Sixth, the repeated emphasis that certain historical figures “weren’t reading teachers” or “weren’t educators” risks drifting into a kind of credential-boundary argument rather than remaining focused on evidence. Expertise matters enormously. But educational research has always been interdisciplinary, involving psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists, speech-language specialists, classroom practitioners, and cognitive scientists. The validity of an argument cannot be determined solely by whether its advocates originated inside colleges of education.
Finally, I think John Cleveland’s comment is actually the strongest and most substantive concern raised anywhere in the thread. His point is concrete, pedagogical, and empirically discussable: if schools are narrowing literacy instruction so aggressively that guided reading, oral reading fluency, knowledge-building, discussion, and comprehension work are being diminished, then that is a serious implementation concern. But that critique is fundamentally different from arguing that the Science of Reading itself is primarily a covert ideological project.
In the end, I do not think the central issue is whether phonics matters. Virtually nobody serious argues that phonics plays no role in literacy development. The real questions concern calibration, sequencing, implementation quality, individual variation, and how foundational skills integrate with language comprehension, knowledge-building, and authentic reading experiences.
Those are important debates. But they are best served by engaging the empirical claims directly rather than relying on symbolic genealogies, associative framing, or ideological implication.
You keep alluding to John Cleveland’s response and yet a lot of what has been missing is from Balanced Literacy! Those of us who are older roll our eyes when we hear SOR enthusiasts promoting this, but we are glad they finally get it.
Yes, I believe all those groups you mention have been about undermining professional teachers and public schools. I suggested before that you read Berliner and Biddle The Manufactured Crisis.
And yes, there are many non-certified-outsiders who are pushing for school reforms that are stunningly bad for children, like the loss of recess. Retention is one, and direct instruction of kindergartners and a push for reading mastery at that time is another.
Maybe the tide is turning since many parents are starting to wonder about online instruction like iReady, and these programs often highlight SOR.
“You keep alluding to John Cleveland’s response and yet a lot of what has been missing is from Balanced Literacy! Those of us who are older roll our eyes when we hear SOR enthusiasts promoting this, but we are glad they finally get it.”
Let’s start here, by accepting the approach taken in your post.
Why are you defending a nuclear weapons contractor that runs ICE’s IT systems?
Because if we take your genealogy argument seriously, that is exactly what you are doing right now.
Let me unpack that.
The curriculum you are defending is owned by Veritas Capital.
Balanced Literacy at scale meant Lucy Calkins / Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, and Fountas and Pinnell.
Both are published by Heinemann.
Heinemann is owned by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
In 2022, HMH was taken private by Veritas Capital in a roughly $2.8 billion deal.
Veritas Capital is not a generalist private equity firm.
Its own marketing describes it as investing “at the intersection of technology and government.” It has $54 billion under management. Its portfolio is a single coherent complex:
Peraton. Veritas’s flagship holding. Holds the contract to build HART, the Department of Homeland Security’s central biometric database — the IT system ICE uses for immigration enforcement, fingerprints, iris scans, facial recognition, and the surveillance infrastructure underpinning the current deportation regime.
Peraton, continued. Holds a $360 million contract running to 2039 to perform nuclear safety analysis on Air Force ICBM software. Subcontractor on the management of Sandia National Laboratory, which works on nuclear warhead modernization — W76, W80-4, W87-1, B61-12.
Peraton, continued. Holds Army hypersonic weapons testing contracts. Holds a $249 million Navy contract for missile defense and hypersonic test vehicles. Recently awarded a multi-billion-dollar White House-led contract to modernize FAA air traffic control infrastructure.
DynCorp. Acquired by Veritas in 2004. Private military contractor whose employees were tied to a Bosnia sex trafficking scandal in the late 1990s. Veritas rebranded it Athena Innovative Solutions after a related Congressional bribery scandal involving its sister acquisition MZM.
MetroStar. Acquired by Veritas in late 2025. AI-enabled digital transformation for the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community.
Gainwell Technologies, Cotiviti, Aretec, Vangent. Federal healthcare data, Medicaid systems, government IT services, federal contracting infrastructure.
This is NOT a diversified holding company. It is a single unitary complex built around one thesis: extracting long-term federal revenue from defense, surveillance, biometrics, nuclear weapons, hypersonics, immigration enforcement, federal healthcare data, and — since 2022 — AMERICAN ELEMENTARY LITERACY INSTRUCTION.
The implication.
The curriculum that dominated American elementary literacy instruction during the period you are defending was, by the end, owned by the same private equity firm that owns the biometric database ICE uses to deport people, the contractor that performs nuclear safety analysis on ICBMs, the hypersonic weapons testing firm, and a private military contractor whose previous incarnation was tied to human trafficking abroad.
If the concern is that literacy instruction is being shaped by actors whose primary interests lie outside the classroom — private equity, federal contracting, ed-tech consolidation, the displacement of teacher judgment by purchased systems — that concern has real targets.
They are not located where the original post places them.
That is a genealogy too. It does not get a pass simply because it is the genealogy of the incumbent.
Applied consistently, genealogy cuts in multiple directions.
Phonics has been advanced by figures across the political spectrum — some conservatives, many liberals, dyslexia advocates, pediatricians, neuroscientists, parents.
Balanced Literacy was, by the end of its dominance, owned by a defense, surveillance, and nuclear-weapons private equity complex.
Neither genealogy by itself tells you whether children learn to read.
That is the point. Genealogy is an argument about association, not effectiveness.
Applied consistently, it does not produce the conclusion the original post wants.
Now let me address the other points in your reply.
On Cleveland and comprehension. The claim that the comprehension elements he identified — guided reading, choral reading, metacognitive strategies, background-knowledge work — were Balanced Literacy’s contribution to the field, and that SoR advocates are belatedly catching up, does not match the documentary record.
Scarborough’s Reading Rope (2001) modeled language comprehension and word recognition as the two inseparable strands of skilled reading. It predates the SoR movement by two decades.
The Simple View of Reading (Gough and Tunmer, 1986) made the same structural argument forty years ago.
The National Reading Panel report (2000) covered comprehension instruction explicitly.
Hollis Scarborough, Tim Shanahan, Daniel Willingham, and
Natalie Wexler have written about knowledge-building and comprehension continuously throughout this period.
Balanced Literacy’s distinctive contribution was not comprehension. Comprehension has been central to reading science for sixty years. Its distinctive contribution was the three-cueing system: teaching children to guess words from context, pictures, and syntactic cues rather than decoding them. That is the specific practice Hanford’s reporting and the structured literacy movement objected to. It is also the practice Lucy Calkins publicly walked back in 2022.
On iReady. This is worth unpacking carefully because the chronology matters.
iReady was launched by Curriculum Associates in 2011.
By the late 2010s — well before SoR became a mainstream policy movement — iReady was reaching roughly 13.5 million students across all 50 states. Nearly half of American K-8.
The dominant elementary literacy curriculum during that exact period was Calkins and Fountas and Pinnell — i.e., Balanced Literacy.
Emily Hanford’s “Sold a Story” aired in 2022. The mainstream SoR policy shift dates from roughly that point forward.
The screens-replaced-teachers transformation you are attributing to SoR was already complete before SoR was a policy movement. iReady was adopted at massive scale by districts whose core literacy approach was Balanced Literacy. The platformization of American elementary education happened during, and was compatible with, the curriculum you are defending. SoR did not bring screens into the classroom. Screens were already there.
The screen problem is real. I share the concern. But it cannot be attributed to the movement that arrived years after the platforms were already entrenched.
The pattern across this thread.
Genealogy challenged → screens.
Screens challenged → “many of the people you mention are connected to online programs.”
That challenged → credentialing.
Comprehension cited → “they are making it up as they go along.”
Now → tenure, Balanced Literacy retroactively claims comprehension, iReady as evidence.
Each is a different argument. None has been defended on its own terms before the conversation moves to the next.
What I am not arguing.
Not defending scripted curricula, excessive screen time, kindergarten reading mandates, retention policies, the loss of recess, or the reduction of rich classroom experience.
Several of those concerns I share.
What I am arguing is narrower: the claim that the Science of Reading is fundamentally a right-wing privatization project does not survive a consistent application of the genealogical standard the original post invokes. Applied honestly, that standard points the other direction.
John Cleveland’s concern remains the most substantive one raised in this thread.
I have never used Lucy’s program or promoted it. It apparently lacked a phonics component and left children, like your daughter, at a disadvantage. I can understand why parents would be upset, and she said she’s trying to fix it. But I also disagree that Units of Study and F & P are all bad. Caukins and F&P employ more than reading. They include writing. The Science of Reading has always seemed to lack much emphasis on it. Or it’s extremely measured and formulaic.
I’ve always been interested in Invented Spelling which has been helpful for reading and writing for many children.
As I think I said, and I think you likely agree, the kind of evaluation of a child should look at what they know and what they need. Seidenberg said as much. I know children who need little phonics. Others need more and are lost without it.
Direct instruction has gotten way out of hand and I’m glad to see the incorporation of other methods. Scarborough is fine, but hasn’t always led to a comprehension focus. I also would say there’s an auditory component where children with auditory discrimination difficulties have difficulty with phonics.
I also see many parents cheering for OG, or variations of it, a program lacking supportive research after fifty+ years! Some children might do well, but I simply don’t know if it’s true or why.
I can’t speak to Heineman’s takeover that you mention. It sounds bad, I agree, but they have published wonderful books in the past. I would give every teacher if I could the works of Nancie Atwell and the late great Kylene Beers, and many more. I once attended a teachers workshop based on the work of Donald Graves (a Heineman author). It was great! He was well known for his writing workshops. It helped me incorporate writing that interested my students! I didn’t abandon morphograph instruction but it all became richer.
Online, screen programs, iReady, Amplify and more have been in play for years. And I don’t doubt the publishers go where the wind blows.
Most of those you mentioned have done podcasts for Amplify, which I assume means they support the program. Amplify came from Rupert Murdock. Do you know the story there? Yet if you look up Amplify on my blog you will find a very thorough well-read post by Tulsa Kids editor Betty Casey. https://nancyebailey.com/2020/01/24/problems-surrounding-amplifys-core-knowledge-language-arts-to-teach-reading/
About the National Reading Panel, please look at who was on that panel and what programs they’ve supported since, and please read about Joanne Yatvin the only educator, a principal at the time, who recused herself. I’ve written two posts hoping for a new panel but it would have to include teachers (at every level) this time and parents. If that were to become a reality and I had a chance I’d recommend you, Brian. I think it should be serious but fair debate. But the fact that the original NRP left out teachers seemed quite political. And most teachers I know cannot fathom another panel, because they know it has become unjustly politically engrained as if there were no problems with the first panel.
We will have to disagree about the Science of Reading as being a right-wing money maker. I think I gave some proof here with this Robert Sweet post. That’s not to say some Democrats aren’t supportive of the Science of Reading too. But many of them have also signed on to school choice!
Here’s an article by one of my favorite researchers, Elena Aydarova. I was on a panel with her at an NPE meeting last year and it was such an honor. Elena wrote this article and I think she puts in words my thoughts perhaps better than I did. I have learned so much from her. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/730991.
She and well-regarded co-authors also have this book coming out: Manufactured Outrage The Conservative Industrial Complex’s War on Education and How to Fight Back.
And as I think I said before, I also agree with John Cleveland’s concerns, so at least we share that. Take care. And I hope your daughter is doing well now and back on track.
Hi Nancy,
I was thinking about what Mr. Brian was saying about phonics instruction, and I think I’ve heard every argument for or against–and I don’t think there is any credible reading specialist who would say phonics is not a part of the reading process. What I’m concerned about (and I saw this as the transition to SOR was taking place at my old school) is not so much the phonics instruction that 1st and 2nd graders are getting, I’m concerned with what is being removed–such as, guided reading, choral reading, and meta-cognitive reading strategies that might come in handy during the actual reading of connected text. Not to mention comprehension activities for both fiction and non-fiction–creating background knowledge or activating what might be there before the reading process takes place. I could go on and on as you might expect.
John
Thanks, John. Excellent point. I am heartened that the SoR enthusiasts are beginning to add more comprehension activities. As important as phonics is, reading instruction is multifaceted, and those strategies you mention are important. These activities need to address student interests. I am not sure how adults can expect children to find reading interesting when there is so much phonics drill at such an early age.
ICYMI:
Decoding Is Not Enough: Connecting Word Reading to Meaning in Early Literacy
Many teachers and school districts are implementing strong phonics instruction to teach young children to read, meaning more students meet literacy benchmarks for foundational skills. But by third grade — when they are expected to understand more complex texts on state literacy assessments — far fewer demonstrate proficiency. In other words, early success with word reading does not always translate into later success with comprehension. Contributors Anna Jennerjohn, Sara Rutherford-Quach and Lauren Cassidy lay out why that is and how schools can turn it around.
https://www.the74million.org/article/decoding-is-not-enough-connecting-word-reading-to-meaning-in-early-literacy/
That came from this site: ‘All this and more, today at The 74.’
Good morning!
We have a double dose of literacy coverage to start your day: Jessika Harkay digs into new research about the persistent refusal among some teachers to fully commit to the science of reading, and contributors Anna Jennerjohn, Sara Rutherford-Quach and Lauren Cassidy explain why, even when teachers embrace phonics, early success with reading words does not always translate into later success with comprehension.
Emily Tate Sullivan looks at the skyrocketing number of kids nationwide who are on waitlists for childcare, and contributor David Brown critiques the way schools are approaching the nation’s civics crisis. And, in case you missed it, we’re reupping Lauren Wagner’s report from Springdale, Arkansas, on how sharing students has proven to be a winning strategy for one elementary school’s third grade teaching team.
All this and more, today at The 74.
Thanks. They used to argue that the science was settled. Now they seem to be making it up as they go along. I can tell you that many educators with professional degrees who are older are rolling their eyes. We have always known this about comprehension…and it was confirmed again with Reading First!
Also, THe74 has quite a history if you’re interested.
Interested, yes. When you have a moment would you share a thought or two on The74 that gives perspective from your always valued insights. I am new to their newsletter, and I try to understand what education websites ‘are up to’. Thank you.
Sure. There’s actually a pretty good Wiki post about it. It was Co-founded by former CNN host and education reform activist Campbell Brown who as I recall used to be vocal about her criticism of teachers and public schools and whether teachers should get tenure. If you look at the Wiki report it covers the corporations that have not been friendly towards public education or teachers. I hope this helps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_74#:~:text=Co%2Dfounded%20by%20former%20CNN%20host,under%2018%20years%20of%20age.
Thank you. You must realize that you are invaluable to the understanding of education in our country.
How kind! Thank you so much.
I try to distill, and use, what works best for my K-5 Special Education students.
I always tried to do that too when I was teaching. But while my school districts had favored programs I think there are more now that must teach what they’re told.