An early literacy reform bill approved by the Massachusetts House of Representatives has intensified debate over whether some school districts and the creators of a controversial reading curriculum are seeking alternative routes to state approval.
Science-of-reading advocates describe the activity as a “back-door effort,” while supporters of the curriculum reject that and say the program is being scapegoated amid statewide declines in reading scores.
Rep. Ken Gordon, the House’s point person on education policy, said the curriculum would face an uphill battle under early literacy legislation passed unanimously in the House last month. The bill requires all districts to adopt state-approved, phonics-based materials.
At the center of the dispute is Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study, a workshop approach that encourages children to use context and sentence patterns to interpret unfamiliar words. Critics say these strategies conflict with decades of research supporting explicit, systematic phonics instruction — the foundation of the “science of reading” research base. Supporters of Calkins’ approach say it fosters student engagement, respects teacher expertise and has been wrongly blamed for falling scores.
Asked whether Units of Study could qualify as an approved curriculum under the House bill (H 4672), Gordon said the bill defines evidence-based reading as instruction supported by peer-reviewed research. Units of Study, he said, has not been submitted to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for review, and its use of “three-cueing,” (an instruction method that includes teaching kids to guess unfamiliar words) would not meet the bill’s definition of evidence-based learning. Supporters dispute that the curriculum uses three-cueing.
The House approved the bill in late October and Senate President Karen Spilka has said the Senate expects to take up a literacy bill “in the near future.” Formal Senate sessions are not scheduled to resume until January.
The statewide debate has been especially intense in Lexington, where parents for years have urged the district to abandon Units of Study, citing declining MCAS performance among vulnerable subgroups and increased reliance on private tutoring. Parents say district leaders have not acted with sufficient urgency. Jennifer Elverum, co-founder of Lex for Literacy, said she learned Lexington used Units of Study after listening to the “Sold a Story” podcast chronicling national criticism of its methods.
“You talk to parents and everybody has tutors. They’re paying a ton of money to make sure their kids can read and do math. It all just felt like something was wrong,” Elverum said.
She later acknowledged, “We have very wealthy families… we have wealthy parents that step in and pay for tutors.” Still, she said, 73% of students are reading at grade level.
When Lexington Superintendent Julie Hackett publicly opposed restrictive literacy legislation last session, arguing there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to literacy instruction, the parent group launched an opposition campaign. Parents later obtained roughly 60,000 pages of district emails and documents through a public-records request.
In those exchanges, Hackett discussed a meeting with Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler and then-interim Commissioner Russell Johnston about broadening the state’s definitions of “high-quality instructional materials.”
A December 2024 letter to administration officials — signed by Hackett, Lesley University professor emerita Nancy Carlsson-Paige and others — questioned why DESE was adhering so closely to a narrow list of approved curricula and argued for widening the state’s definition of HQIMs.
“Massachusetts has a healthy independent streak that has served us well in the past, as well as a strong track record of doing things right when it comes to public education. Is there a reason that we can’t expand what we believe is a narrow definition of HWIM to be more inclusive?” the letter says.
Elverum also pointed to emails from 2022 that suggest districts had been “working with Lucy to create that waiver document,” modeled on a process used in Connecticut, if the state ultimately excluded the program from its approved list.
Calkins’ team disputes the notion of a coordinated “workaround” strategy.
Amy Baker, vice president of operations at the Reading & Writing Project at Mossflower — the professional development organization associated with the curriculum — said talk of a “back-door” strategy misrepresents educators’ opposition to state-mandated curriculum.
“When there’s a push for something new, you have to demonize the old,” she said. “But there are educators in Massachusetts – and all over the world – who still use Units of Study because it works best for their students; there’s not a concerted, organized ‘backdoor’ effort like is being implied.”
DESE spokesperson Jackie Reis declined to comment on the meeting with district officials or whether the department would classify Units of Study as evidence-based under the proposed law.
“We don’t comment on bills that are still in progress,” she said.
Calkins herself framed the debate as an attack on educator judgment.
“Local educators are in the best position to make informed, thoughtful decisions,” she said.
She argued that on average, districts using Units of Study outperform the 3rd-grade averages on state tests and that many state-endorsed science-of-reading curricula lack strong peer-reviewed evidence, rely on scripted lessons or have been described as “culturally destructive” in recent research.
She also said many state-preferred programs limit student access to real books, instead having all students read the same passages and complete workbook-style questions, sometimes online. Lessons are “scripted down to the word,” she said, making it difficult for teachers to adjust instruction for students who are struggling or excelling.
“Educators, not legislators, should be making decisions about curriculum,” she said.
For many Lexington families, the debate is grounded in lived experience.
Kyle York, whose daughter has dyslexia, described years of evaluations, denials and legal fees while trying to secure an Individualized Education Plan because his daughter was struggling to learn to read under Lexington’s Units of Study model. The family ultimately hired an advocate and then an attorney, spending more than $10,000 before receiving services.
York said Units of Study’s emphasis on recognizing whole words allowed his daughter to “cover up” her underlying difficulties.
“[During] her dyslexia assessment… She could read the word ‘believe’ because it’s written all over classroom walls, she knew ‘imagine.’… She knew those words without ever actually understanding how to sound out the word,” he said.
Watching her struggle with reading homework was difficult, he added. “It breaks your heart.”
“I was so disgusted with how the school treated us,” York said. Administrators, he added, insisted “everything is fine, we’re using [Units of Study] and everything is great.”
Education Reform Now President Mary Tamer, part of the MassReads coalition supporting the legislation, said efforts to broaden definitions or create alternative approval paths undercut the bill’s intent.
“If this law is not implemented with fidelity, if educators are not willing to do right by children by getting on board and by following the science that goes back 50 years, we are doing an incredible disservice to children,” she said. With only four in 10 Massachusetts students reading at grade level — and far fewer in high-poverty districts — she said district-by-district flexibility “is not working.”
Calkins’ team connected the News Service with Dr. Maurice Cunningham, a retired UMass political science professor who wrote “Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization.” Cunningham said MassReads is a “coalition of billionaires masquerading as a grassroots effort,” citing funding ties from groups such as the Barr Foundation and Walton Family Foundation.
“Letting every district do what they choose is not working,” Tamer said. “This is not about adult preferences. This is about following the science.”
Hackett has defended Lexington’s reading program and argued against government interference.
“Teachers, not politicians, should decide what works best for their students,” she told Lexington families in a Nov. 6 message about changes to the district’s K–5 literacy pilot. She said she and other educators had “written op-eds, met with legislators, spoken at events, and held meetings with the Commissioner, the Secretary of Education, the Governor, and others” to advocate for flexibility.
But with the House bill advancing and Senate action expected, Hackett said “despite our efforts” the district must “be realistic about what’s ahead.”
Lexington had planned to pilot three programs this year, including a revised version of Units of Study. She said that portion of the pilot would end immediately because it “won’t appear on the state’s approved list.”
Hackett said Lexington’s educators have “seen results” over more than a decade using the curriculum and highlighted “bright spots,” including new decodable chapter books and a fifth-grade journalism unit that “turned classrooms into newsrooms.”
As the Senate prepares its own literacy bill, questions remain about how DESE will implement new requirements — and whether the department will revisit its definitions of high-quality instructional materials. While the legislation is unfinished, Gordon said its guardrails are clear: curricula must be supported by peer-reviewed evidence and cannot rely on guessing-based strategies.
