Illiterate in College
I just watched this news story about the young lady that got passed through with honors and now attends UConn but doesn’t know how to read. She relies on text to speech readers and other computer tools to read to her.
I get that so many Americans are angry at the school system for passing her along and not implementing her IEPs in a productive way, but I also see this from an educator and parent perspective. Sometimes it’s impossible to be what a student needs due to restrictions from higher up.
I remember getting called in and having to spend an enormous chunk of time on extra paperwork due to failing a quarter of my students. I notified parents and tried to give so many chances, so the extra paperwork out of nowhere felt like punishment for me, especially after admin told me that it would happen every time I failed an exorbitant amount of students. The next year I was told that failure wasn’t an option and the rules changed again.
So when people are calling for the firing of teachers because of a student like this story having total illiteracy, not knowing all the facts, it’s like an invisible boogeyman to blame for the totality of academic failure in America. (They are roasting these educators on another platform.)
As a parent, I also went through finding out that educators were casting my child off to the side to play, draw or nap as they did whatever else. I self corrected and worked hard to get my child up to level. Some educators express their surprise at how intelligent they are and it shocks me to think if I didn’t intervene I would probably be on this same illiteracy track.