Standing before first graders in Albany last April, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced an ambitious goal: The state would overhaul literacy instruction and push third-grade reading proficiency from 45 percent to at least 60 percent. "We're turning the page on how we teach students how to read," she declared.
Her newly signed "Back to Basics" budget legislation mandated that every district adopt the "science of reading"—an evidence-based approach emphasizing explicit phonics instruction that teaches children the relationship between letters and sounds.
The law allocated $10 million to retrain 20,000 teachers, entrusting the funds to New York State United Teachers, the state's primary teachers union, to develop the professional development course. The union rolled it out last September.
But literacy experts who've reviewed the course say it contradicts current research and promotes teaching methods proven ineffective—strategies that could actually hinder student progress. The curriculum, they argue, relies heavily on the outdated reading approach Hochul vowed to eliminate.
The criticism comes as New York's reading scores decline while states that have invested in evidence-based literacy instruction see gains.
"There are just lots of inaccuracies and very old citations," said Susan Neuman, a New York University professor specializing in early literacy, after examining 18 sample slides. "We've spent $10 million on this? Can I get a refund?"
The problematic method, called "balanced literacy," contradicts science of reading principles. It treats phonics as merely one word-identification strategy among several, encouraging students to also use context clues, sentence grammar, visual word appearance and pictures. This technique, known as "three-cueing," amounts to guessing, according to some researchers.
A review of 68 studies published last year compared balanced literacy outcomes with those from "structured literacy," a science of reading-based method. The findings provide "strong evidence that [structured literacy] programs are more effective than [balanced literacy] programs in improving a range of literacy skills," researchers concluded.
Hochul's plan explicitly promised to discard balanced literacy. "With this budget, we're throwing out debunked reading instruction practices and getting back to basics, using phonics, reading comprehension and other effective techniques to set our kids up for success," her press release stated.
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The union's course was designed to arm teachers with evidence-based methods. Yet literacy advocates who completed it, along with national and state experts who reviewed portions, warn the training may actually set the state back by promoting balanced literacy and misrepresenting research on how children learn to read.
The concerns surface as more than one in five state school districts still use balanced literacy or other non-evidence-based curricula, according to new data. New York lags behind most states in adopting evidence-based instruction, according to organizations tracking state literacy policies.
More New York children are struggling with reading. In 2009, 29 percent of fourth graders scored at the lowest level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress—the Nation's Report Card—indicating they lacked even partial mastery of grade-level skills. That figure climbed to 34 percent by 2019 and 41 percent by 2024. Research shows these results are troubling: Children who can't read proficiently by third grade rarely catch up and are four times less likely to finish high school.
New York's trajectory diverges sharply from states like Mississippi and Louisiana, which have implemented comprehensive science of reading measures, according to a 2025 analysis by ExcelinEd, an early literacy advocacy organization. Those measures include continuous teacher training in science of reading methods and district adoption of research-based materials. The analysis found New York had enacted just two of 18 policies ExcelinEd considers essential for a comprehensive early literacy strategy—tied for last place with Maine and Illinois.
The union's training, launched September 18, was meant to address this gap. Lori Govenettio, a professional development specialist with the Syracuse-based Reading League, which advocates for evidence-based instruction, enrolled early to evaluate whether it could benefit teachers in her network.
Logging into the first October session, she was dismayed to find the instructor appeared unfamiliar with science of reading fundamentals. The instructor read from a script and was unaware of a prominent controversy in literacy circles about teaching sounds without corresponding letters. Later, a slide demonstrated using "running records"—a balanced literacy assessment tool—to evaluate reading ability. Yet Hochul's Back to Basics plan explicitly rejects running records as incompatible with science of reading.
Even minor details were problematic. An instructional video from a Taiwan-based company meant to demonstrate letter-sound correspondence contained pronunciation errors—"m" was voiced as "muh" instead of "mmm."
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Across the state on Long Island, literacy advocates heard similar reports. Deborah Aiello, founding member of the Long Island Literacy Coalition, said teachers told her the union's instructors seemed inexperienced with science of reading and promoted balanced literacy tools throughout the course.
National literacy experts who reviewed course excerpts shared with The Hechinger Report echoed these criticisms.
One slide, citing literacy researcher Isabel Beck and colleagues, categorizes word types. It labels "precision words"—terms like "cite" and "evaluate" used more in writing than speech—as not "usually requir[ing] explicit instruction." Beck said the slide inverts her research: Such words absolutely require explicit instruction. She identified three substantive errors on that slide alone. "I don't want my name on this," she said.
Tim Shanahan, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago and former chair of two federal literacy panels, flagged problems with five slides. One claims high-frequency words "can easily be decoded"—a false statement, he noted, since many common words derive from Anglo-Saxon spelling traditions and are irregular. "I think that would be a slide I'd say, 'Get rid of that or rewrite it dramatically,'" he said.
Another slide presents a "debate" between the "phonics approach" and "whole language approach," whose concepts were incorporated into balanced literacy. Both "aim to enhance students' reading skills and comprehension through different methods," it states. But scientific literature "really contradicts" whole language, said Mark Seidenberg, professor emeritus and cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "It has been abandoned in many parts of the country."
The New York State Department of Education declined to address these criticisms, questions about who reviewed the course, instructor qualifications or content suggesting balanced literacy aligns with science of reading. The department referred all inquiries to New York State United Teachers and the governor.
"NYSUT advocates for structured literacy and science of reading-aligned instruction and practices. We do not advocate for balanced literacy in our course," said Jaime Ciffone, the union's executive vice president. The course enables educators to have "deep discussions around the shift from balanced literacy and why that's no longer evidence-based," she said.
The slide referencing running records has been removed due to confusion it caused, Ciffone said. "The beauty of this course is that we're able to have the flexibility to take in the feedback and reflection and make any adjustments."
The Hechinger Report pressed Gov. Hochul on whether she had explored adopting proven science-of-reading programs already in use — such as an introductory course for New York City teachers showcased to National Governors Association officials in 2025 — instead of funding a new training from scratch.
Emma Wallner, a spokesperson for the governor, said in an email that the state education department and the teachers union are continuing to refine the training. She added that the governor's office "remains engaged in supporting the rollout of the Science of Reading" to ensure successful statewide implementation.
Literacy advocates argue that the course content reveals how deeply balanced literacy remains entrenched across New York.
Hochul's 2024 plan mandates that districts annually certify their use of science-of-reading-aligned curricula and teaching methods. But state law reserves curricular and instructional control for local districts. That means individual districts — not the state — make the final call on whether their methods meet the standard, according to state guidance.
Many districts claiming alignment are actually mixing balanced literacy with science-of-reading principles, said Jeff Smink of EdTrust-New York, a nonprofit that launched a 2024 campaign targeting the state's "literacy crisis." As of December, 147 districts — roughly 21 percent — were still using curricula rooted in balanced literacy or lacking an evidence base, according to records the organization obtained through a freedom of information request.
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Research on blending these approaches is sparse, but experts are skeptical. Shanahan said balanced literacy programs typically have fundamental flaws that can't be fixed by adding phonics, making it "hard to imagine that it would be a sufficient response." Neuman, the early literacy professor, was blunter: "When you take two systems that are so diametrically opposed, what you're doing is adding to children's cognitive load in a very dramatic manner."
One family describes how a balanced literacy curriculum derailed their children's reading development. The Indian River Central School District serves the area around Philadelphia in north-central New York. Anne, who requested her middle name to avoid potential retaliation, lives there with her husband and their second- and third-grade children.
Despite nightly reading sessions at home, both children have struggled since kindergarten. When Anne and her husband reviewed their second grader's oral reading assessments, they noticed the child was guessing at words rather than decoding them — reading "the" as "a," "a" as "my," and "the" as "my." Tests the child passed included pictures that provided visual clues. When Anne printed the same text and covered the images, her child couldn't read it.
Alarmed, the couple hired private tutors last May who use structured literacy grounded in the science of reading. Both children have since made more progress than in the previous three years combined, Anne said. In late January, she watched her older child independently read a new book for the first time. "He was so excited," she said. "It was like a lightbulb moment."
But tutoring costs $330 weekly. The family is depleting their savings and uncertain how long they can afford to continue, Anne said.
Tanya Roy, a literacy coach in the Indian River district, said all kindergarten through third-grade students have received at least 20 to 30 minutes of daily phonics instruction since 2016.
However, the district also employs the cueing system, including having students identify words using accompanying pictures, she confirmed. Irregular words like "the" must be memorized because they can't be sounded out, Roy said. That contradicts two core science-of-reading principles: that even irregular words can be decoded by memorizing only the irregular portion, and that whole-word memorization undermines students' grasp of letter-sound relationships.
State data reveal the extent of the district's reading challenges: 56 percent of fourth graders score below proficient in English, compared with 46 percent statewide.
Frustrated by districts' reluctance to abandon balanced literacy, two Democratic state legislators introduced bills last year requiring the state education department to create a list of evidence-based reading curricula — as several other states have done — and provide grants for districts to purchase them. All teachers would complete 35 to 50 hours of training on using approved curricula, and both bills would prohibit cueing.
The measures remain stalled in committee, and an unnamed state education department spokesperson voiced opposition last October. "A one-size-fits-all mandate is not the answer," the official told the New York Post.
Assembly sponsor Robert Carroll said parents and administrators deserve input on school operations. "But that doesn't mean we shouldn't make sure that schools and teachers are providing the best practices and best instruction," he told The Hechinger Report.
At the federal level, legislation advancing through Congress would redefine permissible literacy instruction, effectively prohibiting approaches like three-cueing in programs receiving federal reading funds.
Until roughly three years ago, New York was doing "absolutely nothing" on the science of reading, said EdTrust's Smink. The state has since made progress, "but a lot more work needs to be done to catch up with the rest of the country."
Update: This story has been updated with comments from a NYSUT official, who responded after publication.
Contact editor Meredith Kolodner at 212-870-1063 or [email protected] or on Signal at merkolodner.04.
This story about phonics and the science of reading was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our weekly newsletter on K-12 education.
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