Teaching Lucy

She was a superstar of American education. Then she was blamed for the country's literacy crisis. Can Lucy Calkins reclaim her good name?

- Helen Lewis

Until a couple of years ago, Lucy Calkins was, to many American teachers and parents, a minor deity. Thousands of U.S. schools used her curriculum, called Units of Study, to teach children to read and write. Two decades ago, her guiding principles-that children learn best when they love reading, and that teachers should try to inspire that love-became a centerpiece of the curriculum in New York City's public schools. Her approach spread through an institute she founded at Columbia University's Teachers College, and traveled further still via teaching materials from her publisher. Many teachers don't refer to Units of Study by name.

They simply say they are "teaching Lucy."

But now, at the age of 72, Calkins faces the destruction of everything she has worked for. A 2020 report by a nonprofit described Units of Study as "beautifully crafted" but "unlikely to lead to literacy success for all of America's public schoolchildren."

The criticism became impossible to ignore two years later, when the American Public Media podcast Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong accused Calkins of being one of the reasons so many American children struggle to read. (The National Assessment of Educational Progress-a test administered by the Department of Education-found in 2022 that roughly one-third of fourth and eighth graders are unable to read at the "basic" level for their age.) In Sold a Story, the reporter Emily Hanford argued that teachers had fallen for a single, unscientific idea-and that its persistence was holding back American literacy. The idea was that "beginning readers don't have to sound out words."