Gay Su Pinnell

Gay Su Pinnell (born June 28, 1944) is an American educational theorist and a professor emerita at the School of Teaching and Learning at the Ohio State University. She is best known for her work with Irene Fountas on literacy and guided reading, a teaching framework that laid the groundwork for the Fountas and Pinnell reading levels. Pinnell was a prominent figure featured in Sold a Story, a podcast by APM Reports, that investigates the way reading is taught in schools, specifically focusing on the influential authors and a publishing company that promote a disproven approach to reading instruction. The reporting highlights the experiences of teachers who felt misled by what they were told was the correct way to teach reading. It also investigates the company, Heinemann, and the authors, including Fountas and Pinnell, who have been instrumental in promoting this approach. These authors and their materials have been widely adopted in schools, leading to significant financial gains for the publishing company Heinemann. The report also explores the concept of "balanced literacy" and how it has been criticized by those advocating for "The Science of Reading". The report notes that 65% of fourth graders in the US are not proficient readers, and discusses how the methods promoted by Fountas and Pinnell can be detrimental to some children's reading development. In 2024, a group of parents filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts, which alleged that a group of professors and their publishers, including Pinnell, used “deceptive and fraudulent marketing” to sell their popular reading materials. Provided by Wikipedia