Despite graduating from high school with “honors” and being accepted into the University of Connecticut on a scholarship, 19-year-old government-school victim Aleysha Ortiz cannot read or write. At all. Literally. And she’s hardly alone. Now, with help from an attorney, Ortiz is suing the city and the school board. And the national media is paying attention.
Ortiz moved to Hartford, Connecticut, from Puerto Rico as a young child and entered the local government school in first grade. She spent a full 12 years there, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. But instead of teaching her literacy or writing, government school staff bullied and harassed her, according to the lawsuit alleging “negligence” and “infliction of emotional distress” extending through many years.
“My time in Hartford Public Schools was a time that I don’t wish upon anyone,” Ortiz told News 8 WTNH, one of the first outlets to pick up the story. “Every first day of school, I would tell the teacher I cannot read and write so please be patient for me, so everyone knew. I would cry knowing the people who had big titles knew this was happening, and no one stepped up to do something about it.”
Ortiz is hardly alone. Another lawsuit in Tennessee was filed by a victim who graduated from government school with a 3.4 GPA — and no ability to read his high-school diploma, as the ruling observed. Last month a federal appellate court sided with him. “William’s most salient ‘circumstance’ for our purposes was that — with proper instruction — he can learn to read,” the court ruled.
This is actually very common. There are hundreds of public-schools across America that do not have one single student who ranks even “proficient” in reading on the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress. Less than one in three students nationally are at or above proficiency in reading or math, NAEP data show. And among adults, federal data show about half are in the bottom two of five categories, meaning they cannot really read.
According to her lawsuit, Ortiz took a test in sixth grade that showed her reading ability below a first-grade level. But it was not until one month before graduating with honors that the school acknowledged Ortiz “required explicitly taught phonics” to be able to learn how to read, just as virtually every child everywhere who is learning a phonetic writing system.
Of course, experts have been sounding the alarm on the exact same reading quackery that handicapped Ortiz since it was first tried and exposed in the mid-1800s in Massachusetts under government-school pioneer Horace Mann. This writer and Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld wrote a book a decade ago documenting the whole history of this deliberate creation of reading disabilities titled Crimes of the Educators.
A number of specific officials are named in Ortiz’s complaint. One in particular, a “special education case manager” and teacher who was supposed to help Ortiz, instead allegedly would “yell at, belittle, and humiliate her in front of other students and teachers,” according to the complaint. “Ortiz would frequently run to other teachers and/or administrators in tears and emotional distress,” the suit added.
The case is attracting enormous public and media interest. First, local outlets picked it up. Then, the national news. The New York Post did a fairly significant story on the scandal. Even leftwing outlets that normally defend the government-education monopoly from criticism at all costs such as CNN have now jumped on the story, too.
Newsweek also highlighted the explosive scandal. “Ortiz’s lawsuit underscores broader concerns about systemic failures in public education, particularly in providing adequate support for students with learning disabilities,” wrote Associate Editor Ashley Parks. “The case has drawn attention to how academic achievement is measured and whether special education students are truly receiving the skills they need to succeed beyond high school.”
Colleges are now under the microscope, too. “Additionally, it raises questions about how colleges assess applicants, especially those facing severe academic challenges,” continued Parks in her Newsweek piece about the scandal, noting that Ortiz was admitted to a major government university and even received a scholarship despite being completely illiterate.
Lawmakers are expressing grave concerns, too. “The student was allegedly denied services — over 12 years — due to lack of funding and roadblocks to learning at many levels,” wrote Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding and Sen. Eric Berthel, apparently oblivious to the massive tax funding for this fraud. “We continue to seek accountability as to how this student was illiterate when she graduated and how the system failed her year after year.”
The new lawsuit in Connecticut comes as purveyors of quackery posing as “reading” and “literacy” instruction are facing similar legal troubles in Massachusetts. As documented by The Newman Report in December, a public-interest law firm is suing various institutions, publishers, and individuals involved in crippling generations of American students with the same discredited teaching methods.
The government school district is not commenting on the case, citing the ongoing litigation. Its attorneys requested more time to file a response and now have until March 9 to answer the complaint. If Ortiz succeeds, it could open the floodgates as millions of government-school victims with whole word-induced dyslexia file suit.
Why parents continue to let their children suffer in government “schools” that fail to teach even the most basic of the basics remains a mystery. However, forcing taxpayers to hand over even more money to the tens of millions of victims will do nothing to remedy this horrific, systemic problem. Nothing short of radical change will suffice to address this national catastrophe.
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