Achievement data aside, there’s a major misunderstanding—even among “experts”—about what it means to deliver effective explicit reading instruction. All explicit instruction is not equal.

The lawsuit is somewhat surprising to me, but also not. I commend Lucy for facing it head-on, even if I think her response and curriculum changes are essentially lip service. I hear the same issue over and over… yeah, phonics is important and our schools are teaching it. What’s the problem?

…Without a substantial investment in educational research at federal and local levels in the form of funding and committed participation in research, I’m not sure we can expect the same.

A challenge in education is that we don’t have rigorous evidence available for many (most?) instructional practices. We’ve studied some programs but haven’t focused on specific practices with a few exceptions (e.g., explicit instruction).