RE: “I don’t think schools were anywhere near centralized enough at the time to put such a policy into effect.”
I think it was the progressives who were centralized enough and organized enough to push this thing into the schools. That is, the schools didn’t pull the policy into the school. The far-left pushed it in there, by the simple device of overwhelming all opposition. You see the same pattern now with Common Core. Schools are not being asked, they are being ordered.
I think it was Flesch in his first Johnny book who mentioned the mysterious disappearance of all phonics texts from American libraries. This is really creepy. But all it would take would be a cell of Commies who would just methodically steal the books and burn them. Six months later teachers can’t even find a good book on the subject.
American schools have always had tremendous diversity, for good and bad. But all the estimates I see suggest the first look-say books were introduced during 1930; more than half of the schools were covered by 1931; and by 1932 and 33, it was a mostly done deal. This was the depth of the depression. But the schools systematically destroyed millions of good reading books, and spent a fortune on new ones. What can you conclude but that the progressives really, really, really wanted look-say because they knew it would make the country weaker.
I will defer to your research. Before my time, anyway. As I said earlier, I quite literally cannot remember not knowing how to read.
My Mom used to have a picture of me bent over a book in the backyard, utterly absorbed, at the age of 3. It was The Jungle Book. No pictures.
Made no difference to me how they taught reading. Though I still remember being punished for hiding The Lord of the Rings inside my “reading workbook” in 2nd grade.
There I was, reading when I was supposed to be learning to read. Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird had a similar experience. Learning to read in an unapproved way.
LOL