Interesting study, worth noting that UCL study isn't finding in favour of whole word vs phonics, but rather "[the findings] suggest that a balanced instruction approach is most likely to be successful", which seems reasonable and hopefully education boards develop an approach to get the best of both worlds. The NYT article I linked quoted the former State Superintendent of Education who spearheaded the Mississippi project saying "Each year we tweak our methods, but the goals always remain the same" so it seems they have mechanisms in place to react to the new research.

Yeah true, and yeah hopefully. The politics on this have gotten a little out of control but that seems pretty levelheaded.