The Pathetic Literacy Program Survey
A Survey Designed for Damage Control, Not Truth
If you’ve had the misfortune of reading the district’s latest literacy program survey, you might have mistaken it for an honest attempt at gathering feedback. But let’s be clear: this was never about evaluating whether the curriculum is working. It’s a smokescreen designed to shift responsibility away from administration and onto teachers.
Rather than asking meaningful questions about student success or whether the curriculum is effective based on measurable outcomes, teachers were given a carefully curated set of questions:
How effective do you feel [product] is?
How confident do you feel in teaching [product]?
Do you need additional support in teaching [product]?
Notice anything missing? There’s no question about whether students are actually learning. No inquiry into whether literacy rates have improved. No data-driven evaluation of whether this program—one that was controversial even before its purchase—was worth the investment.
Instead, this survey is a classic bureaucratic maneuver: create an illusion of teacher input while ensuring that the only actionable result is more professional development—as if more training can fix a program that is fundamentally flawed.
The Curriculum Is Failing—And They Know It
This isn’t speculation. The evidence is overwhelming that Units of Study is an ineffective, outdated approach to literacy. The program’s entire methodology contradicts the principles of structured literacy.
For example:
It de-emphasizes foundational skills and relies on cueing strategies that have been widely discredited.
It does not support structured phonics instruction, meaning programs like Heggerty and FUNdations are being forced to operate in a vacuum with no meaningful reinforcement.
It actively discourages correcting spelling mistakes, under the absurd belief that doing so would hinder a child’s joy of reading and writing.
The result? A fractured literacy approach where core skills are taught in isolation, never properly reinforced, and sometimes outright contradicted during independent reading and writing time.
The district’s own pilot study of the curriculum before its purchase was a joke—a single classroom in each elementary school was given one unit to test. That’s it. No extensive review. No large-scale trial. No comparative analysis against other literacy programs. Just a rushed, flimsy trial to justify a predetermined decision.
Other Schools Are Moving Forward. East Brunswick Is Moving Backward.
The worst part? There are better options available.
Many schools across the country have transitioned to structured literacy programs that emphasize explicit, systematic phonics instruction—the very thing this district has refused to do. Budget-friendly, proven programs like Bookworms and Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) exist, and they work.
Yet, when pressed about potential alternatives, district officials couldn’t even ballpark the cost of a replacement curriculum—an alarming sign that they never seriously considered any option other than the one they had already decided on.
A Pattern of Deception and Avoidance
This isn’t just about literacy. It’s part of a larger pattern of East Brunswick’s administration dodging accountability.
Look at the Gifted & Talented program, which for years failed to comply with state law. Instead of admitting their failures, the district continuously presented differentiation as if it were a sufficient solution—when it never was.
Now, they’re running the same playbook with literacy. The administration is more committed to defending a failing system than actually helping students learn to read. And when confronted with real concerns, they respond with empty gestures like a rigged survey designed to produce a predetermined conclusion.
Teachers Deserve Better. Parents Deserve the Truth. Students Deserve an Education.
Teachers were never meaningfully consulted before this curriculum was forced on them. Their expertise was ignored. Their professional judgment was dismissed. Now, they’re being asked to complete a survey that treats their struggles as a failure of training rather than an indictment of the program itself.
The district had a choice: admit they made a mistake and work toward a real solution, or double down on bad policy and shift blame onto teachers. They chose the latter.
But here’s the reality—it’s not the teachers who need more training. It’s the administration that needs to listen.
And until they do, East Brunswick’s literacy crisis will only continue.
