Wednesday’s Ignorance As a Weapon of Control

Our Children Cannot Read and Write and It Is a Criminal Monstrosity Perpetrated Upon the Children of America

Every lawsuit filed in the past has been against local school boards and officials.  Every case eventually is dismissed based upon standing and/or immunity issues.  This time it is different.  With the bright legal assistance of Justice Catalyst, these families have filed for damages against the top peddlers of crap curriculum in primary and secondary schools across America.  If you search the internet for this story, all the regular, suspicious characters like every teachers’ union and organization in the USA is worried about this litigation.

For decades, publishers have made millions selling faulty literacy products lacking proven, scientifically backed phonics instruction

In 2023, less than half of all MA third-graders met expectations for Commonwealth’s standardized language arts exam

Plaintiffs seek accountability, immediate injunctive relief and damages for harm caused by defective literacy products

MASSACHUSETTS — Three Massachusetts children and their parents filed a major class action lawsuit Wednesday challenging the deceptive and fraudulent marketing and sale of faulty literacy curricula that have undermined the future of students across the Commonwealth.

The lawsuit, filed in Massachusetts Superior Court by Justice Catalyst Law and Kaplan & Grady, seeks substantial relief for the generations of students and families across Massachusetts harmed by the defendant publishers and authors’ discredited literacy products and deceptive marketing. The suit also seeks a court order requiring defendants to warn schools and families of the defects in their literacy products and other relief to fully remedy the situation so school districts have quality literacy instruction materials.

The lawsuit represents the latest challenge to the controversial, discredited early-literacy products sold and marketed by such figures as Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell under the banners of the Heinemann and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publishing companies. Since the mid-1990s, the defendants have made millions of dollars selling early-literacy products to thousands of school districts across the country, falsely marketing them as backed by and based in “research” and “data.” In recent years, Calkins, Fountas, Pinnell and their peers have faced a widespread backlash after a series of scientific studies and media reports revealed that their curricula have fundamentally failed to teach children to read.

Jordan Adams at Tom Klingenstein.com explains in detail how things became so screwed up and how to fix them at the local level.  This is essential learning.

First, curricula and instructional materials are a labyrinth. Reviewing this mountain of material, in short order — especially for the majority of school board members without education backgrounds and who serve in purely voluntary, non-compensated positions — is time-consuming at best, daunting at worst.

Second, many school board members, even conservative ones, aren’t interested in curriculum. Although a fatal disposition and a true dereliction of duty, it is unfortunately all too common among local board members, especially conservatives.

Third, district administrators and union leaders emotionally blackmail and berate any school board members who do try to take a stand for “not trusting” teachers, questioning the “experts,” “micromanaging,” and not “staying in their lane.”

For the states and boards that do take the time to review materials, the education blob throws up a new series of hurdles

For instance, the word “curriculum” means different things to different groups along the way. School boards (and states) may claim that they have vetted curricula, but this usually means they’ve only reviewed the student-facing text.

Following the successes of Libs of TikTok, Parents Defending Education, and some state laws in revealing what goes on in classrooms, however, most publishers and administrators are not so blatant as to put ideological content directly in the student-facing (and therefore parent-viewable) materials.

Instead, ideological content is found in the peripheries, in curricular guidance for teachers such as “teachers’ editions” or in a district’s customizable curriculum or learning management system (CMS or LMS), an online platform for teachers and sometimes students to access.

Every citizen ought to copy these articles and send them to their local school board members.