A former student, Aleysha Ortiz, is suing the city of Hartford and the local board of education. Ortiz alleges she graduated without learning how to read or write. She claims it was due to negligence and lack of proper support for her developmental disabilities.
The lawsuit claims Ortiz was denied necessary testing for dyslexia. It also claims she was removed from special education curriculum and only tested for developmental disabilities on her last day of school, revealing significant unmet educational needs.
I hate to go ‘Boy, I don’t buy it’ but, uh, I kinda don’t?
This is one of those things that COULD happen, as long as every teacher, every administrator and the state itself were all intentionally trying to make it happen.
CT has standardized tests that are required to be taken to progress through school, so how can someone who can’t read or write pass those?
And EVERY teacher she had from first grade on just accepted the fact she clearly was unable to read or write, and thus was almost certainly not doing any work, and just decided that’s a-ok and we’ll just pass her along anyways without doing anything?
Somehow feels like there’s a lot more to this story than just her side as presented by that article.
(without looking into it to verify) isn’t this likely because of “no child left behind”?
if it is, they’re doing it wrong. it means to help everyone graduate, not abandon everyone and set the bar so low everyone auto-graduates
No Child Left Behind was designed to defund schools. If it wanted to fix things, poor test results would result in a investigation and overhaul of the district. Instead it just punished the school with less federal funds.
The double bind of working in a “D” or “F” rated school were how many of the factors were completely outside of our power.
You can’t do much when 1/10+ of your student population is absent on a good day, when they hate their teachers getting their bags searched by them as soon as they walk in the door, when students just fucking vanish without anyone caring (deported/shot/dropped out). It really fucking stings to finally make some progress with a kid - like when you finally figure out that the reason they haven’t turned in an assignment the entire the semester is because they are completely and utterly illiterate, and despite being a fucking chemistry teacher you have to do something - and then they disappear without a trace the next week.
There are some names I’ve seen in the news that gut me.
The students you give your standardized test to aren’t even the same ones you began the school with. It’s not measuring anything you or the school did.
And these schools - which are the ones that need the fucking money instead got punished. Got funding cuts. It can’t be that the task was impossible, it’s that you didn’t spend enough money on educational consultants to make sure that all bellwork has an ACT question on it.
Me: “My kid has a learning disability. Can you give her some reasonable accommodations?”
My Kids School: “But does she really though?”
Me: “Uh, yeah. She has a diagnosis. From a psychiatrist. Also, you have noticed her grades are abysmal, right?”
School: “They’re not that bad. She’s actually doing pretty well.”
Me: “She has mostly D’s and F’s. Is that seriously what you consider ‘pretty well’?”
School: “…”
I’m doing some major paraphrasing but this is the gist of actual conversations with my daughters school administration. I’m not saying I believe it’s very likely that someone could graduate without being able to read and write. I’m just saying that in some school districts, there’s a greater than zero percent chance of that happening.
they have been doing it for decades, even our school passed people with that kinda grade to graduation. not surprised at my local CC i see people struggling with arimethic courses.
I graduated many years ago now, but I did graduate with someone who could not read or write. He was a sport prodigy, so they lied to keep him playing. It definitely happens.