Reply to Lucy Calkins/Fountas & Pinnell being sued for selling ineffective reading programs

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to "Lucy Calkins/Fountas & Pinnell being sued for selling ineffective reading programs"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Parents in Massachusetts are actually suing them.  The crux of the argument is that 1-the reading programs they sold to school districts across the country don't work because there is no phonics component and 2-they KNEW the reading programs didn't work.

[b]Doesn't Fairfax still use these programs?[/b]  I was forced to when I was a teacher, and we would get into trouble if anyone found out we were teaching phonics (which many of us did in secret).

I wish Fairfax parents would sue them.  [/quote]

Clearly you’re not in FCPS. If you were, you’d know that no one has used Caulkins in years and that EVERYONE in the county is using Benchmark which has explicit phonics instruction. [/quote]

Benchmark is absolutely terrible.  MCPS FINALLY got rid of it this year and has Amplify CKLA, which has been a game changer. My school piloted the "new and improved" Benchmark with new photics instruction, and it was much worse than what we have now. Farifax is not doing teachers and kids a service by using Benchmark.[/quote]

FCPS went through a yearlong process to select a program from a list approved by the state. Their choices were limited. One factor was the publisher’s ability to provide materials for the 9th largest school system in the country. My vote would have been for Bookworm, but there’s no way that publisher could have met the needs of such a large district.

So far Benchmark has been fine. It may not be what you used in MCPS since Fairfax asks for modifications.  It’s definitely increased the rigor. [/quote]

DP and while I wish FCPS was using CKLA, everything I've heard (we're out of FCPS for private now) is that Benchmark is hands down better than what we had. This is from families who supplement with homeschool phonics and knowledge based literature curricula, so they have pretty high standards.

What you think is terrible depends on what your expectations were. Ours in FCPS were through the floor low.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics