News
New York Spent $10 Million on Reading Instruction That Experts Say Doesn’t Work. The Heckscher Foundation Funded the Alternative.
A new Hechinger Report investigation raises a question about New York’s $10 million effort to retrain 20,000 teachers on science of reading-based instruction: did the state hand that money to the wrong people? The state awarded the contract to the teachers union, whose resulting course literacy experts say still promotes the discredited “balanced literacy” methods Hochul promised to eliminate. The Hechinger Report notes that a high-quality science of reading course already existed and was even showcased to a National Governors Association delegation in 2025. That course, a 10-hour microcredential developed by The Reading Institute in partnership with Brooklyn College and CUNY, was made available free to 2,500 NYC teachers with funding from us.
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