While I accept that it could be the case here - and having read up a bit on it rings true - there is a real danger of “educated” people often liberal with a slight to conservative or neoliberal, to tell people how education really works and that alternatives are wrong or false, often on grounds that are very flimsy or completely propagandistic.

True, but at least in this case it seems pretty clear cut that phonics is definitely superior to Reading Recovery & it’s derivatives, as well as that Reading Recovery was pushed in large part due to a similar kind of “market disruption” mentality that guides a lot of modern Tech corporations (even down to forming cults of personality around their equivalent of “innovators”).

Basically, Dr. Marie Clay came up with the Reading Recovery theory back in the 70s out of a genuine desire to help kids who were struggling to read, but her methodology was flawed, and she did so in an era where there really hadn’t been much research into how people learned to read, so no one could really dispute whether her theory was correct or not at that point. Despite this, her theory became heavily pushed due to it being the shiny new thing that promises to revolutionize teaching, and of course, a large part of this push was definitely coming from companies that produce educational material looking to make money off of selling this program to teachers & schools. It wasn’t until the 90s that research was finally done that disproved Dr. Clay’s theory, and by that point, there was enough people & money invested in Reading Recovery that it became a classic case of science having to fight an uphill battle against entrenched capitalist interests.

Also, the class aspect of this push is kinda interesting, as this new method of teaching reading seems to have been largely pushed onto kids from wealthier background first. However, the negative effects of Reading Recovery style programs were often masked by the fact that wealthier families could afford to pay for private tutoring when they noticed their kids were struggling. I.e., while these kids from wealthier background were being taught how to read via Reading Recovery methods in the classroom, their private tutors were teaching them to read via phonics. But from the outside view of teachers, school officials, policy makers, and proponents of Reading Recovery programs, it seemed like everything was fine and the Reading Recovery was working well, leading them to start pushing these programs more into schools with kids from background that aren’t nearly as wealthy. And naturally, it was only once the Reading Recovery programs started leaving the protective shield provided by the wealth of the labor aristocracy & petite bourgeoisie that its damage started becoming more apparent.

(Ironically, this also seems to have resulted in many wealthier school districts actually being more inclined to stick with Reading Recovery than poorer school districts, as their wealth continues to leave many parents, teachers and school officials oblivious to the damage that these programs would be doing to their kids without the counterbalancing force offered by private tutoring.)

Of course with all this said, it’s still worth acknowledging that Reading Recovery isn’t solely responsible for the increase in illiteracy seen in modern US society. People from poor and/or minority communities were already experiencing lower literacy rates compared to communities of wealthy white people long before Reading Recovery was a thing, so having the resources necessary to successfully implement educational programs definitely matters just as much as implementing “correct” educational programs.

tl:dr: Absolutely be skeptical of libs trying to push “correct” or “innovative” educational programs (because they’re often blind as to how class differences can effect such programs), but at least in this case it seems pretty clear cut that Reading Recovery is bullshit that was being pushed under the guise of innovation.