re: Meet Aleysha Ortiz. She's a student at U of Connecticut and she's illiterate

If one is of normal intelligence and makes it to 19 without knowing how to read and write while attending American schools for 12 years they are mostly the responsible ones.

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It looks like she’s filled multiple law suits against the district.

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Someone did on her behalf. She would need to know how to read and write to do it herself.

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I wonder if her parents advocated for her or tried to teach her how to read.

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That is where the problem starts. Her parent(s) were either horribly uninvolved with her education (not even going over homework with her. Ever.) or they helped cover for her (how could she get enrolled in college without SAT/ACT? who filled out her paperwork to enroll? who filled out tuition assistance, wrote checks, etc?).

The next step is the failure of pretty much every teacher and/or counselor she ever had. No one advocated for her, at least not in any sort of lasting effort. LINK

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Ortiz was diagnosed with a speech impediment and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in early childhood and has been classified as a student with a disability for “as long as I can remember,” she said.

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Ortiz also wasn’t taught how to tell time or how to count money. She can barely hold a pencil because of unaddressed issues with hand fatigue and disputes about school-based occupational therapy, she and her attorney said. She learned basic math, like addition, but has no other math skills.

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Accommodations in her Individualized Education Plan, which spell out what services students will receive that school year, allowed her to audio-record classes and meetings with school leadership because of her inability to read or write in high school.

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Despite this, she received her diploma this spring after improving her grades in high school — with help from the speech-to-text function — and getting on the honor roll.

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She’s from Puerto Rico so it’s not like she was never exposed to English. I wonder if she can read any Spanish?

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That's largely irrelevant considering she came to the states when she was 6. Let me say that again: 6. If anything, at least to me, it underscores the complete and utter failure of the school system she was in and points to a willingness by the family to just go along as long as she kept moving to the next higher grade.

Time for a little soap-boxing...

This, to me, points out the utter failure of the particular brand of liberal mindset that's taken over not just education but the philosophy surrounding education in general. It's not so much about actual learning as it is about the gaining of titles that is supposed to represent learning. It's like an old episode of Cheers where Sam and Woody start competing to get better-sounding titles than the other, they are so busy trying to outdo one another that they completely overlook that the titles mean nothing (no extra pay, no perks, no step up on a management ladder, etc). This is why the graduation rate (the percentage of US citizens who have graduated from high school) continues to rise while the quality of education seems to be falling. The focus has become more about the numbers and the degree rather than "Can Little Suzy Read At Her Grade Level?"


/rant off

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He said the fella invited him out to celebrate his anniversary of sobriety and handed him a gift.....it was Dexters superbowl ring he had hocked for a song when he was high. Fella had tracked it from the hock shop to who had ended up with it, told him the story of Dex and got it back.

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hadn't heard that story, pretty cool