There’s a clash between parents and school officials in the affluent Wallingford-Swarthmore district over the reading curriculum

When she moved from Philadelphia to Swarthmore last year, Bridget Mead thought she wouldn’t have to worry about the schools.

Compared with the city school district — historically cash-strapped, with buildings closed because of asbestos and lack of air-conditioning — the suburban Wallingford-Swarthmore School District had most everything it needs, with enviable test scores.

So Mead was surprised to find herself concerned about something here that her children’s former elementary school in Fairmount had seemed to get right: the reading curriculum.

Along with fellow parent Mandy Ubele, Mead has organized close to 60 parents in the Delaware County district to push back on how students are being taught to read.

Across the country, schools are bracing against intensifying calls to reform reading instruction amid heightened awareness of what has become known as the science of reading. Experts say the education system has been largely out of step with research into how children learn to read — clinging to methods and instructional materials that emphasize exposure to books and independent reading, rather than the direct instruction in such skills as phonics that many kids need.

A movement demanding a more explicit approach to reading instruction — described as structured literacy — has gained traction in state legislatures, including in Pennsylvania, where a bill proposes to require that schools use “evidence-based” curricula. Area school districts, such as Philadelphia’s, have been making changes for years.

» READ MORE: A battle over how to teach kids to read is playing out in Philly-area classrooms. Parents are losing trust.

But some districts — particularly in wealthier communities where high test scores offer little motivation to change — continue to use programs criticized by science-of-reading advocates.

“We have seen success in the classroom with what teachers are using,” Ashwina Mosakowski, the district’s director of elementary teaching, learning, and innovation, told the school board in January, explaining why the district continues to use Units of Study — a reading program that experts say is deeply flawed.

At a school board meeting in April, Mosakowski told the board, “We have adopted the science of reading.”

The reading curriculum has been a recurring topic of debate at school board meetings this year. Mosakowski has acknowledged gaps in the Units of Study program, noting that Wallingford-Swarthmore teachers have made “so many modifications” since it was adopted 10 years ago. She told the board in January the district recognized that more changes were needed, and has since piloted a number of programs to add instruction in word study to the curriculum.

But parents such as Mead say the district is clinging to elements of an outdated approach.

“I’m just kind of outraged by the injustice of it,” said Mead, who has two children in elementary school in Wallingford-Swarthmore. In an affluent district such as hers, many families can afford to hire tutors, masking how many kids might be struggling. But those who can’t fall further behind — “that opportunity gap,” she said.

» READ MORE: Balanced literacy versus structured literacy: How schools teach kids to read

As she began talking to others in the district, Mead, a lawyer, found brewing dissent. She and Ubele, along with the other parents, signed a letter last fall asking the district for more transparency about its reading programs.

“Our concerns center around the lack of a cohesive, research-based literacy curriculum for the WSSD elementary schools, and particularly, for grades three through five,” the parents said in the November letter. The “current piecemeal approach to WSSD’s literacy curriculum is cumbersome for teachers, unnavigable for parents and guardians, and while it is particularly dangerous to students with learning differences and disabilities, it is a disservice to all students in our district.”

Ubele, who has two children in the district, has been asking questions for years about the district’s literacy instruction. A former elementary school teacher and literacy coach, Ubele said she had “faced a wall” when asking for information about her older daughter, a sixth grader, who has been struggling with reading since first grade. In addition to intervention provided by the district, Ubele’s older daughter has received help from outside tutors and specialists.

Ubele also developed concerns about the district’s overall approach, including when her younger daughter — who is a proficient reader — was having trouble with a spelling assignment. Ubele saw that the spelling pattern her daughter was working on didn’t match an accompanying word list.

She then learned from talking to her daughter’s teacher that teachers “were doing the best they could to, in her words, piecemeal things together for years” — cobbling together and trying to align different programs.

From repeated conversations with administrators, Ubele said, “I don’t think there is a solid understanding of how children learn to read, at the elementary level.”

Rachel Riley, a spokesperson for Wallingford-Swarthmore, responded to questions from The Inquirer with a written statement — saying that “the science of reading drives literacy instruction” in the district.

“We have kept abreast of the ongoing debates around literacy instruction and the shifts in literacy instructional practices,” Riley said. “As such we continue to enhance our own instructional practices to reflect current research on how students learn to read.”

In grades three to five, where Units of Study is used, the district has identified morphology — the study of units of words, such as prefixes and suffixes — as an area where more instruction is needed, Riley said. Any additional resource adopted will “work in conjunction with the current curricular materials,” she said.

It’s not unreasonable for schools to use supplemental resources to fill in instructional gaps, said Timothy Shanahan, a literacy expert at the University of Chicago. But Shanahan, who participated in a team of reviewers of Units of Study, said the program lacks more than morphology.

“It’s largely, you teach yourself to read by reading,” Shanahan said. That does work for some kids, he said, but for those who are struggling, “there isn’t enough support and guidance.”

Units of Study was created by Lucy Calkins, a Columbia University professor who helped popularize an approach to reading instruction known as balanced literacy. Calkins emphasizes fostering a love of reading in children, and her curriculum features child-driven activities such as silent reading.

But she has come under fire for having backed dubious methods — such as prompting kids to guess words they don’t know, rather than sounding them out — and downplaying the role of direct instruction.

“To me, it just has too many weaknesses,” Shanahan said of Units of Study.

He also questioned the district’s K-2 programming, which Wallingford-Swarthmore adopted in 2021. Presenting to the school board that year, Mosakowski said the district had selected three different programs, addressing phonics, phonemic awareness, and comprehension.

“It is unique to our school district,” Mosakowski said, describing the selection as “the best part of three research-based programs.”

Research has made clear that a combined or integrated program of phonemic awareness and phonics is better than adopting separate programs, Shanahan said. And from reviews of the Fountas and Pinnell Classroom’s interactive read-aloud collection — what the district described as its “foundation for literacy instruction” in grades K-2 — Shanahan said he “would have real concerns as to its adequacy for teaching reading comprehension.”

The district declined to answer specific questions about its programs, directing a reporter to past meeting recordings.

School districts with high test scores — which are partly the product of a child’s home environment — may still be missing opportunities for students to do better if they don’t reform their instruction, Shanahan said.

Mead said her daughter has a strong foundation from the literacy instruction she received in Philadelphia, recalling the phonics drills she overheard during pandemic Zoom lessons. But her daughter sometimes struggles, and Mead worries that without changes in the curriculum, she might have to enlist the help of a tutor.

“Now I’m having to advocate, like I never thought I’d have to advocate,” she said.