According to research, yes. Children who are taught to read by "guessing" are demonstrably worse readers, even when evaluated years later. I don't think there's much of a battle going on outside of the effort it takes push the fix out everywhere.
Is anyone left defending the thoroughly flawed system? I doubt there's very much pride wrapped up in it. The folks who invented the whole word system meant well. The biggest factor is probably the fact that there isn't a giant corporation whose quarterly profits depends on selling the materials for and teaching the flawed system for their income. Amazing that.
By this article's data and other data linked, reading scores have been FALLING since 2015 (2013 for other scores) - and through 2024. This cannot be because of NOT adopting some reform. Something else has to be in play. You cannot damage some production result merely by NOT introducing some change. That's insane. "According to research" has some explaining to do.
I'm not saying that changing the teaching method would or wouldn't help. I'm saying that something ELSE had to actively happen that caused the measured drop.