They are, indeed, atrocious in their ultimate effects, and WL is still around. Every now and then NEA discovers that the students in one district or another are learning to read 2 or 3 years ahead of other districts and WL gets imposed again. My wife is an elementary ed teacher who has experienced that. The quicker teachers descended n the used book stores (before the WEB) and scoured old book catalogues for phonics primers because the school board confiscated all the official ones they had been using in one day. The next year and, at great expense of course, they went back to actually teaching phonics.
that's absurd.
I believe the NEA would indeed do this, but it is patently absurd.