Illiterate Graduate Sues School Board

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A few weeks before high school graduation, Aleysha Ortiz had some stern words for Hartford Board of Education members at their meeting in Hartford, Connecticut on May 7, 2024.

“I felt like they didn’t care about my future,” she said, referring to her school. “I truly believe that you do not value me as a student and as a human being and that you do not care about my education.”

Ortiz was still awarded a diploma by Hartford High School and accepted at the University of Connecticut-Hartford despite never learning to read or write, according to a lawsuit she filed against the Hartford Board of Education in December 2024.

Due to language limitations, Ortiz had required an individualized learning plan since the first grade, the lawsuit states. It said she was supervised by a team of case managers and special education teachers during her entire academic career. By middle school, most of her academic skills were at kindergarten or first-grade levels, the lawsuit states.

A school social worker issued a report on Ortiz’s situation during the end of her junior year, on May 23, 2023. The report stated that Ortiz “consistently and persistently advocated for reading and writing supports; reported that she could not write and could barely hold a pencil; reported that she struggled to sit and write in class; and that she had to take work home to use talk to text on her computer,” the lawsuit noted.

The Epoch Times contacted Hartford Public Schools for a statement, but didn’t receive a response.

Recent state assessment results that show low literacy scores for students across the country, along with high graduation rates, suggest Ortiz may not be an anomaly.

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Public school literacy challenges, complicated by language barriers, special education requirements, and the use of assistive technology that can circumvent the learning process, could be a hot topic for education policymakers and legislators in the months ahead.

Jason Dudash, West Coast director of the Freedom Foundation think tank, said historical standards for reading and writing are eroding.

To receive continued state aid for special education and other areas, school districts must show some indication of performance improvement—and because they have more control over graduation rates than state standardized test scores, the gap can become pronounced.

“It goes back to the incentive structures of government,” Dudash told The Epoch Times. “Graduation doesn’t mean anything. You’ve turned a diploma into little more than a participation trophy.”

The Barbara Foundation for National Literacy reports that 130 million Americans, or 54 percent between the ages of 16 and 74, read below sixth-grade levels, and nearly one in five adults in the United States read below the third-grade level.

A student reads a book in the library at Yung Wing School P.S. 124 in New York City on Feb. 2, 2022. Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

Oregon Drops Requirements

In Oregon, students are no longer required to demonstrate reading or writing proficiency to graduate from high school. The state Board of Education, in September 2023 suspended state assessments of those essential skills through the 2027–28 academic year.

A 2022 state Senate report ahead of the board decision made several recommendations to the Legislature and State Board of Education “to consider in making Oregon’s graduation requirements mirror this same commitment to equity, access, and inclusion.”

“Although graduation rate trends are moving in a positive direction, substantial inequities remain, such as experiences of systemic bias, limited access to adequate educational resources and educational guidance, and support from practitioners, such as school counselors and teachers,” the report noted.

The report quoted a school counselor, who said action is needed to address “systemic approaches favoring white supremacy, middle-class values, (and) lack of access to support/resources.”

Oregon state Rep. Christine Drazen, a former Republican candidate for Oregon governor, opposed the suspension of the skills requirement.

“We don’t need watered-down expectations; our public schools need a plan to increase academic achievement among students,” Drazen wrote in an Oct. 19, 2023, letter to the state Board of Education. “Without that focus, they will continue to struggle.”

National Levels

The most recent report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card, notes that at least 50 percent of U.S. eighth graders were at the basic reading level in 2022.

New Mexico and Washington, D.C., had the lowest rates, tied at 57 percent, while New Jersey and Massachusetts were tied for the highest at 77 percent. Connecticut and Oregon were at 72 percent and 67 percent, respectively.

Proficiency rates, however, were far lower. New Mexico had the lowest in that category, at 18 percent; New Jersey had the highest, at 42 percent; Connecticut, at 35 percent; and Oregon, at 28 percent.

Nationally, 98 percent of public schools reported that at least some students were behind a grade level in both math and English Language Arts, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

A teacher is teaching second graders during a math class at Stark Elementary School in Stamford, Conn., on Sept. 16, 2020. John Moore/Getty Images

Meanwhile, NCES reports that the high school graduation rate for U.S. high school students in 2022 (the latest data available for that category) was 87 percent, up 7 percent from 2012.

Meanwhile, the Northwest Evaluation Association has determined public education has not improved since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The association is a nonprofit K–12 assessment and research organization that works with state education departments and school districts across the country to develop state tests, administer supplemental tests to measure progress within one academic year, and identify areas in which teachers can improve instruction.

The Northwest Evaluation Association’s most recent assessment of 7.7 million students in grades 3 through 8 across all 50 states determined that average reading scores declined by 36 percent between the fall of 2023 and the spring of 2024. It also found that, based on English Language Arts scores, most middle school students don’t have the necessary vocabulary knowledge and decoding skills to read words when they finish elementary school.

Globally, test results released on Dec. 10, 2024, from the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIACC) for the 2022–23 school year rank the United States 14th in literacy out of 31 industrialized nations. More than 50 percent of U.S. residents ranked at or below Level 2 on a five-level, 500-point scale. Level 1 is defined as being able to read short, simple paragraphs, while Level 2 means the reader can navigate multiple pages and identify targeted information from various points of the text. Level 3 means the reader can assess, understand, and evaluate the entire text before them.

The assessment, based on scores of working-age populations between the ages of 16 and 65, measures the cognitive and workplace skills necessary for individuals to participate in the 21st-century economy.

“There is a dwindling middle in the United States in terms of skills,” NCES Commissioner Peggy Carr said in a Dec. 10, 2024, news release. “Over time, we’re seeing more Americans clustered at the bottom levels of proficiency. The result has been a widening skills gap between adults at the higher and lower skill levels compounded by a growing number of very low-skilled adults. In fact, the U.S. gap in numeracy between the highest and lowest skilled adults is the widest among all countries.”

Low Proficiency at Hartford

At Hartford Public High School, 27.4 percent of the students reached the proficiency rate in English Language Arts, while its graduation rate in the 2022–23 academic year was 69.7 percent.

Statewide, the English proficiency level was 63.9 percent and the average graduation rate was 88.4 percent.

Students line up for the Uvalde High School graduation ceremony in Uvalde, Texas, on June 24, 2022. Jordan Vonderhaar/Getty Images

The school’s rate for “demonstrating post-secondary (college) readiness” was 10.8 percent compared to the state average of 44.3 percent.

And Hartford’s college entrance rate in the 2022–23 academic year was 28.7 percent, versus the state average of 68.4 percent, according to the Connecticut Department of Education.

The per-pupil cost at Hartford Public High School last year was $30,853.

In the 2022–23 academic year, more than a quarter of the district’s more than $452,000,000 annual budget for all schools was spent on special education, the Connecticut Department of Education reported.

Forty-three percent of the students on that campus were still learning English, and 65.1 percent were chronically absent.

Carol Gale, president of the Hartford Federation of Teachers union, said the Ortiz case has provided teachers and principals “a springboard” to discuss ineffective policies.

That includes the rule that every student automatically receives a minimum score of 50 in every class during each marking period, regardless of whether they attend class, complete assignments, or score zero points on tests, she said. With that minimum score, students still can pass a course if they do better in subsequent marking periods when the overall passing grade-level score is 60.

The Hartford district has also failed to enforce a policy stipulating that 20 unexcused absences in a year results in a failed grade level, Gale told The Epoch Times.

“Some have passed with 40 or 50 absences,” she said.

Gale, an English Language Arts teacher by trade, said union leaders in other districts shared the same concerns.

“It seems to me this is allowed simply to embellish graduation rates,” she said. “We perceive our district to be lowering expectations for our students. I mean, what have you really passed? I don’t know if we are setting them up for success in the real world.”