Former high school honors student who says she can’t read, write sues district where she graduated

[ThatRobGuy]

Former high school honors student who says she can’t read, write sues district where she graduated

A college student who says she cannot read or write is suing the board of education and the city for negligence.

www.13abc.com

HARTFORD, Conn. (CNN) - A Connecticut college student is suing the Hartford Board of Education and the city of Hartford for negligence.

Nineteen-year-old Aleysha Ortiz says she graduated from high school with honors and earned a college scholarship, but she can’t read or write.

The 19-year-old began her freshman year at the University of Connecticut in Hartford this past fall.

 

[Chesterton]

She should have kept her mouth shut. Maybe she could've gotten her PhD by drawing pictures of flowers.

 

[iluvatar5150]

How did she get into college without being able to read or write? UConn uses the Common Application, which, as far as I understand, requires one or more essays to be submitted with the application. Did she cheat?

 

[RileyG]

How did she get into college without being able to read or write? UConn uses the Common Application, which, as far as I understand, requires one or more essays to be submitted with the application. Did she cheat?

That’s what I’m wondering too.

 

[RileyG]

Reminds me of Fantasia Barrino, winner of American Idol season 3, who was functionally illiterate despite dropping out of high school when she got pregnant with her daughter.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Reminds me of Fantasia Barrino, winner of American Idol season 3, who was functionally illiterate despite dropping out of high school when she got pregnant with her daughter.

idk... It's hardly difficult to imagine someone without formal schooling developing a skill that isn't really taught much in formal schooling.

OTOH, it's hard for me to understand how someone can, without cheating, claim to be unable to do Skill A and Skill B while still passing tests that require demonstrating both some degree of mastery of both A and B.

 

[RileyG]

idk... It's hardly difficult to imagine someone without formal schooling developing a skill that isn't really taught much in formal schooling.

OTOH, it's hard for me to understand how someone can, without cheating, claim to be unable to do Skill A and Skill B while still passing tests that require demonstrating both some degree of mastery of both A and B.

I agree. It doesn’t make much sense to me either. Maybe they cheated or the teachers allowed them to get away with it? Who knows?

 

[ThatRobGuy]

How did she get into college without being able to read or write? UConn uses the Common Application, which, as far as I understand, requires one or more essays to be submitted with the application. Did she cheat?

This article (or perhaps the other one I read about the subject) mentioned that she made use of Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text tools.


Although, I must admit, I'm still a little suspicious about the "can't read or write at all" claim if we're being honest.

Either her mother was seriously dropping the ball as well (even without any public schooling, kids still learn their ABCs and have at least some very basic spelling skills)


Without at least some basic reading ability, how has she been doing things like buying/ordering food and driving?

Not to mention, how did she manage to be able to find and correctly leverage the aforementioned Speech-to-Text tools with zero reading ability?
(unless a friend helped her get those tools set up on her phone?)

 

[durangodawood]

Kids have to exert themselves somewhat. They have to reach out and meet the teaching. No one can force feed them.

But... the rest of culture, digital life, home life, doesnt really support the necessary development of discipline.

 

[Hazelelponi]

This article (or perhaps the other one I read about the subject) mentioned that she made use of Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text tools.


Although, I must admit, I'm still a little suspicious about the "can't read or write at all" claim if we're being honest.

Either her mother was seriously dropping the ball as well (even without any public schooling, kids still learn their ABCs and have at least some very basic spelling skills)


Without at least some basic reading ability, how has she been doing things like buying/ordering food and driving?

Not to mention, how did she manage to be able to find and correctly leverage the aforementioned Speech-to-Text tools with zero reading ability?
(unless a friend helped her get those tools set up on her phone?)

When I was in highschool we found out in highschool music class that one of my classmates couldn't read or write.

Teachers kept passing him from one grade level to the next, instead of making sure he could tell an A from a C from an F.

My music teacher had me teach him his ABC's during my free period since he would learn from me, though I don't know what the school eventually did with him since he was only 2 years from actually graduating.

Teachers pass over and pass over kids, and many I'm sure graduate without basic literacy.

My thoughts are that the girl that got into college had to have cheated. Usually when teachers are just passing people over they are giving out D's in order to pass them to the next grade level.

In today's modern technological era, I'm betting she thought cheating was doing what she was supposed to, and now that she's in college, she's realized she doesn't know the basics and can't function without them in that environment.

 

[RileyG]

When I was in highschool we found out in highschool music class that one of my classmates couldn't read or write.

Teachers kept passing him, instead of making sure he could tell an A from a C from an F.

My music teacher had me teach him his ABC's during my free period since he would learn from me, but I don't know what the school eventually did with him but he was only 2 years from actually graduating.

Teachers pass over and pass over kids, and many I'm sure graduate without basic literacy.

My thoughts are that the girl that got into college had to have cheated. Usually when teachers are just passing people over they are giving out D's in order to pass them to the next grade level.

In today's modern technological era, I'm betting she thought cheating was doing what she was supposed to.

How did he get so far? I find that very stunning!

 

[iluvatar5150]

This article (or perhaps the other one I read about the subject) mentioned that she made use of Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text tools.


Although, I must admit, I'm still a little suspicious about the "can't read or write at all" claim if we're being honest.

Either her mother was seriously dropping the ball as well (even without any public schooling, kids still learn their ABCs and have at least some very basic spelling skills)


Without at least some basic reading ability, how has she been doing things like buying/ordering food and driving?

Not to mention, how did she manage to be able to find and correctly leverage the aforementioned Speech-to-Text tools with zero reading ability?
(unless a friend helped her get those tools set up on her phone?)

Thanks, I missed the part about the TTS apps. I can buy the driving - my 4yo can correctly interpret several traffic signals.

Making honors in HS, getting accepted to college, and then pursuing a lawsuit all suggest she's got some decent cognitive abilities. I was going to speculate about this being an English-specific thing (since her mother barely speaks it) or her having a learning disability that gives her difficult with reading and writing, but not speaking, and then I found this cnn article via reddit and it looks like it might be both.

Obviously, the school failed her, but it looks like it's a little more complicated than them merely not teaching her to read. Schools are notoriously bad about providing the required support to kids with special needs - I've got multiple friends (all educated professionals fwiw) with kids with varying degrees of handicaps who've been getting jerked around by their schools for years.

 

[MehGuy]

I have read the average IQ of a college undergraduate has been falling for decades. Used to be around 119 or a little over a standard deviation and now it's pretty much average at 102.

Undergraduates' average IQ has fallen 17 points since 1939. Here's why.

A new analysis shows that undergraduates' IQs have decreased over the past four decades as attending college has grown more common.

bigthink.com

 

[RileyG]

I have read the average IQ of a college undergraduate has been falling for decades. Used to be around 119 or a little over a standard deviation and now it's pretty much average at 102.

Undergraduates' average IQ has fallen 17 points since 1939. Here's why.

A new analysis shows that undergraduates' IQs have decreased over the past four decades as attending college has grown more common.

bigthink.com

That’s doesn’t surprise me, sadly.

 

[MehGuy]

That’s doesn’t surprise me, sadly.

I have no problem with more people going to college even those with average IQs but a decent chunk probably have no real reason attending one and are just racking up debt.

 

[durangodawood]

....I've got multiple friends (all educated professionals fwiw) with kids with varying degrees of handicaps who've been getting jerked around by their schools for years.

No one wants to properly fund it.

 

[RileyG]

I have no problem with more people going to college even those with average IQs but a decent chunk probably have no real reason attending one and are just racking up debt.

In my case, I agree. It’s unfortunate so many schools say college is the best option for most. It’s really not.

 

[Hazelelponi]

How did he get so far? I find that very stunning!

That's what these large class sizes do. When you have 1 teacher for 30 students the kids who learn better non-traditionally simply fall through the cracks and teachers don't care enough/have enough time to make sure they are learning too and then just pass them into the next grade so they don't have to deal with the problem.

Small class sizes makes a huge difference, even for the more traditional students, but especially for non-traditional learners.

 

[MehGuy]

In my case, I agree. It’s unfortunate so many schools say college is the best option for most. It’s really not.

Yeah. I can't imagine how poor education will be 30 years from now. I remember one teacher lamenting the corruption in the education system. She said she found an old textbook from the 1950s and was surprised how advance the vocabulary was compared to textbooks of today. She was sick to her stomach.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Thanks, I missed the part about the TTS apps. I can buy the driving - my 4yo can correctly interpret several traffic signals.

Making honors in HS, getting accepted to college, and then pursuing a lawsuit all suggest she's got some decent cognitive abilities. I was going to speculate about this being an English-specific thing (since her mother barely speaks it) or her having a learning disability that gives her difficult with reading and writing, but not speaking, and then I found this cnn article via reddit and it looks like it might be both.

Obviously, the school failed her, but it looks like it's a little more complicated than them merely not teaching her to read. Schools are notoriously bad about providing the required support to kids with special needs - I've got multiple friends (all educated professionals fwiw) with kids with varying degrees of handicaps who've been getting jerked around by their schools for years.

It mentioned that they moved here from Puerto Rico, I wonder how old she was when they moved.

I can understand why it would be tough for a school to be able to effectively teach a person, who's much newer to English than their peers, who moved here at like 12-13 years old. Short of offering some sort of remedial English class, specially designed for the kids who are in the "English is the 2nd language" situation -- which would be different than the needs of a student who needs remedial English due to cognitive/learning issues.

A 6th or 7th grade student could be in a situation where they don't even have any learning disabilities at all, it's just a case where the just started learning written English 2-3 years prior, which means they'll be way behind the curve compared to their classmates on that one aspect.

So, from a school's perspective, they can't really hold the rest of the class back to account for the fact that 1 student only has the "written English" prowess of a 3rd grader.


I'm still thinking through how the logistics of this would've even worked ...even with using TTS apps.

I know it's been a few decades since I've been in High School, but I would imagine on things like test day, there's still a "no talking" policy, and if TTS was indeed how she was getting by, did nobody else notice the Siri voice reading the questions out loud, or hear her dictating her answers to those questions in order to be able to scribble down the answers? (Obviously, homework is a different story because there's nobody else around to see/hear it happening... but in-class assignments and tests would be rather tricky to covertly leverage TTS without at least someone catching on to what's happening)