08/20/2026
Brett Tingley recently posted a video on the Parents for Reading Justice page about Lucy Calkins attending The Reading League Summit. Brett even extended grace, saying she hoped Calkins came with good intentions.
Then came the defenses:
“Leave her alone.”
“Stop making this personal.”
“She was a pioneer.”
“The pendulum swings.”
“Science evolves.”
“When we know better, we do better.”
“There is no perfect program.”
“Every child learns differently.”
“She made a difference.”
“Her writing units were wonderful.”
“This is cancel culture.”
None of those statements address the actual issue!
Lucy Calkins was not simply a classroom teacher using the methods she had been taught. She was a highly influential professor, curriculum creator, author, institutional leader, and public authority whose ideas shaped teacher preparation, district purchasing, classroom instruction, and the reading lives of millions of children.
The research concerning phonemic awareness, decoding, word recognition, language comprehension, and the limitations of using context to identify words existed throughout the rise of balanced literacy. The National Reading Panel published its report in 2000. Researchers raised concerns. Dyslexia specialists were teaching differently. Parents reported the harm. This was not a case of the science suddenly changing. The warnings were there.
We must also ask:
What should influential academics and institutions reasonably have known?
When should they have known it?
Whose warnings were dismissed?
Why were those warnings disregarded?
Who was harmed?
What responsibility has been accepted?
What safeguards will prevent the same ideas from being repackaged and sold again?
People want everyone to forgive and move forward.
Meanwhile, where are the children? Where are the students who lost years of irreplaceable instructional time? Where are the families who spent thousands of dollars on evaluations, tutoring, advocates, and private placements? Where are the children who were called lazy, careless, unmotivated, or learning disabled after the instructional system failed them? Where are the adolescents and adults who still cannot read proficiently?
Apparently, everyone’s discomfort deserves protection except theirs. And let's be clear about one thing: Calkins has NEVER apologized.
A person may have created writing lessons that teachers loved and still bear responsibility for promoting a deeply flawed approach to reading instruction. Those truths can coexist.
Lucy Calkins has every right to attend, listen, learn, and change. The real question is whether education is capable of examining how prestige, institutional power, commercial influence, professional identity, and resistance to evidence allowed this to continue for so long. Because if our response is “leave her alone,” “everyone makes mistakes,” and “the pendulum swings,” then we have learned almost nothing.
And if we refuse to understand how this happened, it will happen again.
