Interesting, short read giving an overview of how the debate over teaching phonics became a civil rights issue.
EXCERPT: Phonics instruction was a civil rights issue — beyond theory, research, and the scientific method. Just about every pedagogical strategy was lined up politically in the following decade. Also identified as “conservative” were a specified curriculum, direct teaching, assigned expository writing based on reading, assigned literary texts (especially if they were by dead white males), grammar study, specific writing skills, and indeed, anything requiring a teacher’s judgment. Ironically, strategies damned as “conservative” tended to be supported by research as useful for low-income children.