This is speculation on my part: It is harder to train teachers to teach phonics, it's harder to teach students, and it requires more effort both on the part of

This is speculation on my part: It is harder to train teachers to teach phonics, it's harder to teach students, and it requires more effort both on the part of the students and on the part of their parents. But decades of evidence and multitudes of studies on reading comprehension tells us it works better for every student exposed to it. Couple the higher effort with the financial interest in producing new materials aimed at the easy road and you get corporate interests using emotional arguments like the easy methods are "more equitable" (which is untrue). The political argument was used as a sales tactic, and it fell on ears already predisposed to hear it. The result was administrators across the country representing corporate interests under the guise of righteousness. So no conspiracy but the usual profit motive couched in feel-good political language. But that's a guess.