It’s a war of words in a new lawsuit that aims to control how elementary-age students are taught to read in Ohio. A popular national reading organization, Recovery Council of North America, filed its lawsuit against the state of Ohio and Governor Mike DeWine in an effort to block a bill that would overhaul the current reading curriculum.

This new lawsuit is one of many initiatives designed to push back against the state's adoption of the “Science of Reading.” The Science of Reading is built on a broad base of educational research that contends teachers should rely on scientifically backed best practices to teach students how to read.

The Science of Reading is rooted in five components which include phonetic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. It's believed that every component plays a critical role in how students learn how to read and better understand the information they're reading.

At the heart of the lawsuit is a budget bill passed in July 2023 that seeks to overhaul reading instruction in the state. Under the bill, all schools throughout the state must adopt a reading program that is approved by the state by the 2024-25 school year. Over the past couple of years, the state began moving away from the current reading model, known as the “three-cueing approach” to the popular and widely adopted Science of Reading approach.

Unlike the Science of Reading philosophy, the three-cueing approach encourages new readers to use more than just phonetic awareness to decipher a word. When new readers come across an unfamiliar world, they're encouraged to use context clues like an accompanying picture to determine what the word could be.

Many proponents of the science of reading say that phonemic awareness, reading fluency, comprehension, and other critical reading skills are lost in the teachings of the three-cueing approach.

While three-cueing has long been used in early elementary education, the advancement of educational research has pushed many educational organizations throughout the state and across the nation away from what many educators call a dated and ineffective approach. The three-cueing approach is currently used throughout the nation; however, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Virginia have laws on the books that ban the teaching method.

In an effort to block the new budget bill, the Reading Recovery Council of North America argues that the bill violates the Ohio Constitution, which says that a bill can only be about one subject. Additionally, the lawsuit says that the bill infringes on the Ohio Board of Education's ability and power to set education policy.

Over the state’s two-year operating budget under the bill, $86 million has been allocated for educator professional development while $64 million and $18 million have been reserved for curriculum/instructional materials and literacy coaches, respectively, in an effort to implement the Science of Reading.

The lawsuit also takes issue with the bill's vague definition of a three-cueing approach, explaining that the law doesn’t “articulate a clear standard for assessing what teaching models or methods might be categorized under the state’s ‘three-cueing’ approach. Because there is no defined method or teaching model, the budget bill is “unconstitutionally vague.”

“If permitted to take effect, it will allow the General Assembly to disguise a policy-based law in a must-pass appropriations bill,” the lawsuit explains. “The literacy curriculum statute intrudes on classroom teaching and learning programs, models, methodologies and materials.”

Throughout the year, Governor DeWine has defended the state's efforts to improve reading education. “I truly believe there’s nothing more important than the science of reading, and making sure that every single child in the state of Ohio, as they are learning to read, has the benefit of the science,” DeWine shared during a March event.