Ass't Superintendent Says That Scarsdale Schools Use a Range of Materials to Teach Reading

Once considered a literacy guru, over the last few years, Lucy Calkins, who developed the “Units of Study For Teaching Reading,” has become the recipient of some harsh criticism. Despite the curriculum’s aim “to prepare students for any reading and writing task they will face and to turn kids into life-long, confident readers and writers who display agency and independence,” critics say the curriculum underplayed the importance of using phonics to teach students to read and write and blame the use of it in classrooms for low standardized tests scores.

After a podcast aired in the fall of 2022 which denounced Lucy Calkins’ work, other media outlets began to cover the issue reigniting a long history of “reading wars” which debate the best approach to teaching students to read. While critics of Units of Study say that a focus on phonics is the most effective path to early reading success, proponents of Calkins’ theory (which emphasizes student choice, context and comprehension over phonics but maintains phonics should be taught) believe in order to create life-long readers with a love of reading, that beyond word decoding, it is important to immerse children in meaningful reading experiences and give them opportunities to deepen comprehension through rich conversations, exposure to a range of nonfiction and literature, and time to read voluminously books of their choosing.

Even though Units of Study included some focus on phonics, it seems its vulnerability was not centering phonics or "balancing enough" in that direction. In recent years, it appears that Calkins’ Units of Study has evolved to include more phonics instruction.

Though there are advocates that fall staunchly in one camp or another, there are many educators who believe in taking a more holistic approach to teaching reading and writing which includes both a focus on phonics and whole language instruction. This more comprehensive literacy method for reading instruction looks to be the approach that the Scarsdale School District has long implemented in elementary classrooms.

After a recent Board of Education meeting where a parent expressed concern about the District’s announcement that it will pilot a new program “The Reading & Writing Project at Mossflower” (founded by Lucy Calkins), we reached out to Dr. Edgar McIntosh Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment for clarification. Dr. McIntosh shared the following response:

“Thank you for inviting me to address the parent's concerns regarding the district's literacy instruction tools. Some parents are worried about our continued use of the Units of Study in Reading from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project (TCRWP) developed during Lucy Calkins' leadership. Her early materials were criticized for lacking sufficient word decoding instruction, such as phonemic awareness, phonics, and sight word recognition, potentially failing to meet all students' needs. As educators, we recognized validity in these criticisms.

The units promote critical thinking, verbal reasoning, student choice, and are reinforced by the TCRWP scholarship, positive aspects overlooked by media coverage of Lucy Calkins. Scarsdale teachers have always had a practice of supplementing units with decoding resources.

Over the past few years, Scarsdale has focused on enhancing reading instruction by emphasizing cohesive word decoding and implementing data-driven support structures for all students. That has led us to pilot (or “try-out” in multiple classrooms before adopting) several literacy tools from various publishers and companies. The result has been our integration of a range of word recognition resources across our schools, while also maintaining the Units of Study language comprehension focus.

It should be noted that the new Units of Study have been updated to integrate word recognition more seamlessly, align fully with the NY State teaching standards, and reflect Scardale’s core values of student choice, inclusivity, and agency. We appreciate that the Units are not a scripted curriculum, allowing us to adapt the materials, use them flexibly to match our students' needs, and innovatively infuse STEM and social studies content when appropriate.

The primary reading assessments we've incorporated for early readers measure both language comprehension and word recognition. Educators use these assessment results to pair student skills and needs with the instruction and texts that will work best. This expands the Fountas & Pinnell (F&P) assessments, traditionally used to evaluate a child’s reading level based on comprehension, by adding phonemic awareness (the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words) and phonics inventories (assessments of a child's ability to decode words using letter-sound relationships). These additions ensure a more balanced evaluation of both word recognition and language comprehension.

The March 3 Board Meeting featured a curriculum Cabinet Update that included the attached slides. Some community members became concerned when they saw Lucy Calkins' name on the teacher newsletter- inviting teachers to try out recent updates to the units through her new organization, Mossflower.

Those who had followed the negative media coverage wondered why we would further explore materials associated with Lucy Calkins. This led to false speculation that we had a contract with Mossflower, were compelled to use her materials, and - because the newsletter was aimed at and accessible only to teachers - that we were not being transparent about our practices.

Our district is not compelled to only use one resource, publisher, or set of materials. Our decisions to use materials for instruction happen after a process involving the exploration of resources, collaboration, experimentation, and consensus building amongst our educators. We engage outside experts, consult neighboring districts, and invest time and energy into internal research. That said, we will continue to examine resources from Mossflower and other organizations as part of our exploration process.

Dropping the Units of Study and switching to a scripted program would undermine a thoughtful and iterative process by which we have arrived at a place of alignment of reading instruction that makes use of multiple tools supporting word recognition and language comprehension. Such a drastic move would be educationally, ethically, and financially irresponsible.

In my March 3 Cabinet Report, I highlighted the importance of tenacity and humility in curriculum change. We must be tenacious in adhering to the science of student learning, regardless of the latest podcast, headline, or social media post. Maren Aukerman, a Werklund Research Professor at the University of Calgary, offers a compelling analysis of bias in literacy reporting I've linked here.

The role of humility is essential, too. Recently raised concerns teach me that we need to communicate more clearly and more frequently about the process we use to improve curriculum and the rationale for our changes. We have made updates to the ELA portion of the district website and will look for more opportunities to invite and answer questions from parents.

Our research-based exploration of materials from a range of sources will continue and our priority is to always measure using a lens that is critically aimed towards what will work best for all our students.

What’s more Dr. Sue Luft, one of the District’s ELA Coordinators who facilitates the review of materials, adds, "Of all the recently published materials we have previewed, the Units of Study closely embrace the Lifelong Practices of a Reader which cultivate the habits, mindsets, and behaviors that turn students into real readers for life."