19 year old Aleysha Ortiz graduated with honors from Hartford Public High School in 2024. She enrolled at the University of Connecticut, who admits students without requiring SAT scores. She is suing the public school because she can’t cope with the rigors of college. That is odd to me because I found college, with a handful courses being the exception, to be easy. Why is an honor student finding it so difficult?
Because she is illiterate. That’s right- she graduated with honors, but cannot read or write.
I met my wife just after I retired from being a paramedic in 2014. I was driving her nuts because I am a high energy guy, and it was killing me to sit at home every day. She talked me into working as a teacher- meaning that our schedules would line up, and we would have time that we could spend together. I started by teaching two classes a day, then progressed to full time for my second year. I taught high school for six and a half years. During that time, I saw a lot of this. How does this happen?
The Department of Education, that’s how.
Funding is tied to benchmarks. Special Ed students don’t have to meet them. The incentive here is to make as many kids special ed as possible. It needs to be done because not only do special ed kids bring increased funding per student, but missing the testing benchmarks means less money. The law is called Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). It says that it is unfair and discriminatory to treat students with intellectual disabilities (what used to be referred to as retarded) the same as other students. So this law was passed to make things more equitable. (Not equal, which is the same standard, but equitable, meaning that they have the same outcome.)
School funding for special education students says that they have to be permitted to pass, and that their diploma and transcript can’t say a thing about the fact that they were special Ed, or that they were passed without meeting benchmarks. In fact, my school district even had a policy stating that non-English speaking students couldn’t receive anything less than a C.
For all students, not just special Ed, teachers are under a microscope. I was once told that another teacher was obviously better at teaching than I was, because all of her students received A’s in her course. If more than 15% of your students received less than a C, you had to submit a written plan to school administrators on how you were going to get their grades up. If more than 15% of your students get below a C for two years in a row, you are fired. The only incentive there is to pass everyone in order to keep your job.
When I was put in charge of teaching Biology at my school, I was given 6 classes of it. The teacher who had been teaching that schedule before me had been fired. I was told that the school’s goal was to have half of the students pass the standardized test on Biology at the end of the year. They told me that they didn’t expect me to hit that goal the first year, but were hoping I could do it by year three. At the end of that first year, 67% of my students hit the benchmark. My evaluation? Meets expectations (in other words, average). Why was that? Because almost a quarter of my students had below a C. I countered by pointing out that my grades were an accurate reflection of my students’ abilities. That didn’t matter.
The goals are difficult, if not impossible. The only real incentive that students have is grades, and some don’t even have that as an incentive. If you remove any possibility of negative outcomes, many students just won’t do anything. That isn’t on the teacher.
The entire education system in this nation is broken. I know- I was teaching in it for more than 6 years. It isn’t just the teachers. Administrators don’t care about the kids who are discipline problems, so they don’t do anything about it. The parents and the teachers also play a huge role in the suckage that is our school system.
There is a liberal moron in the video above claiming that the problem is with inequality. Bullshit. The list is of reasons for the failure is long-
- There are kids who never come to school. You can’t make them. More than half of my students were chronically absent (meaning out of school more than 20% of the time). More than 10% of them were absent more than half of the time. In a 180 day school year, I had more than one student who were absent over 100 days.
- Their parents don’t care, and no one is prosecuted for truancy.
- There are parents who claim to “home school” but don’t actually bother to teach the kids anything. Yes, it happens. I know a few.
- Students who do come to school and care, largely are cheating their way through school using apps, Google searches, and other cheats. That is how the girl who is the subject of this post made it- she cheated using apps.
The truth is that not every kid is smart enough for college. Not every kid is suited for school. A school that has a student for less than 1100 hours a year can’t fix 18 years of around the clock bad parenting coupled with the handicap of losing the genetic lottery. All of the programs in the world won’t turn a student with a 75 IQ and no motivation into a scholastically successful person. In this case, the mother of the girl didn’t speak English and didn’t bother to learn- she passed her parental responsibilities on to the school district.
We waste a lot of time and effort on trying educate kids who don’t want to learn, and on students with disabilities that prevent them from ever being more than simple manual laborers. There should be an exam at the end of the year when a student turns 15 (9th grade). Those who excel go to a college prep high school, students who show aptitude for it go to vocational school, students who fail are done and can go get a job. If you or your parents want to stay in school after you have failed the exam, you can pay for it yourself and go to private school. Let’s stop wasting money trying to prove that every child has the same mental aptitude. You don’t need to know calculus to run a cash register or push a broom.
Educating a child is a partnership between the student, parents, teachers, and administrators. If any one of those links fails to do their job, the effort will fail and all of the money spent will have been wasted. Let’s stop spending gobs of money to get the end result where a child receives an honors diploma and still can’t read or write.
19 Comments
Billybob · April 11, 2025 at 8:08 am
Very, very well said.
If we are to continue as a nation painful changes must occur.
Himself · April 11, 2025 at 8:15 am
Mainstreaming was about the dumbest thing they’ve ever done. BTW – the smarter kids that ‘care’ use google and whatnot. The rest want an education, but the class is disrupted by the nitwit mainstreamed kid that shouldn’t be there. I was a technical trainer for years. And I can tell you that it only takes one dummy in the group to bring the whole class down. And those companies that sent them spent $3k + travel to do so.
Back in the day where I went, kids were seperated into herds – reading and math groups – 1,2,3. We were grouped by skill so we all could learn at the same pace. The disruptive and slow were sent to special schools on the short bus. We laugh at the short bus, but they were going where they could get the attention they need.
BTW – some that get to college can read, but just well under a level they need for college. I was listening to a Victor Hansen podcast where one of the subjects was remedial courses at Harvard because Johnny can’t read and compute. He said he taught an introductory course on ancient humanities where when he started the class, the students had like a dozen books they had to read – The Illiad, the Odessy – Homer, Thucydides, heavy chewy reading.
He said towards the end it was down to only three readings. He had a student come in and say he couldn’t do it. And while finding out why, Hansen discovered that the dude could read, just not comprehend. He had the guy read out loud. He struggled. Didn’t know what the word “wrath” meant. Wouldn’t look it up in the dictionary.
If you can’t read and comprehend, you can’t learn unless someone shows you. And you can’t learn abstract or critical thinking by being shown how it works.
Gerry · April 11, 2025 at 8:19 am
The next AOC.
I have a friend that teaches 9th grade in an urban school. He showed me their essays of which he was quite proud. Spelling, grammar and punctuation was dismal His thought was he got them to write so don’t discourage them by correcting the mistakes. I was this was 3rd grade work and you’re not improving anything.
Even if I wanted to, I could not hire anyone this illiterate.
Divemedic · April 11, 2025 at 8:40 am
Look at this- from an 10th grade student
https://areaocho.com/this-is-what-i-am-working-with
JimmyPx · April 11, 2025 at 9:07 am
I agree 1000% on what you said !
This BS on “everyone should go to college” is crazy and is one of the many things that has ruined education.
Just a few decades ago, only 25% of High School Student were college material.
We should do exactly as you suggest and I think in 8th grade do a test and you either go to High School and college prep or a trade school to prepare you for a job.
Now since everyone should go to college they have lowered the standards so low that college is now a joke. Many schools no longer study Shakespeare in College level English 101 and 102 because the students reading and comprehension is so bad they can’t do it !!
My brother has a friend who just retired as a college professor. He told me that in the last 5 years 75% of his freshman students were functionally illiterate. His dean told him that if they showed up they got a C and he was to do this OR ELSE. Why — most of those students were minorities and are a big funding source.
To show you how crazy education is, I have some friends who have a Downs Syndrome child.
She finally “graduated” High School at 21 and they were all proud that she was going to college.
I of course didn’t say anything but no shit a local college enrolled her and she’s attending !
Aesop · April 11, 2025 at 10:04 am
Her suit has merit. Hope she gets just enough to pay for getting her enough tutoring money to pass an independently-tested GED. Oh, and she cheated to get her diploma, right? Revoke it for cause, and halve any cash award before lawyer’s fees are awarded, as she bears equal blame with her district. Welcome to adult consequences, kiddo. And no college admission without an SAT score. The college/university is equally quilty of taking funds for letting in students – like her – they knew didn’t belong, and couldn’t cut it. Either fine them egregiously, and/or prosecute their administration, individually and collectively, for criminal fraud as well, with real felony convictions awarded, as well as sanctions. No fed-guaranteed college loan money for a certain number of years, for instance, should get their attention nicely.
Put all colleges on notice: anyone who doesn’t graduate 75% of their freshman class starts getting penalized that way, and any school who loses more than 50% of their entering class gets the entire administration and admittance departments prosecuted for felonious educational fraud, for acting as badly as the diploma mills on matchbook covers.
Defendants in this idiot’s suit should be every teacher who participated in the charade, from K-12, and every administrator in that pipeline, as well as the district(s) involved as a whole. Try them in year-group batches.
You rightfully hate qualified immunity for cops, so let’s make sure there isn’t any for get-along-to-go-along teachers and administrators either. Put them all on notice they have skin in the game for socially passing idiots. If she wins, prosecute them for criminal fraud, and upon that felony conviction, ban them from education for life. They don’t even get to teach crafts at the craft store. Ever. After their prison terms. Pour encourager les autres.
Do that ten or twelve times, and watch legit testing and scores rise, and kids getting flunked again, as they should. Then go after the parents of the serially truant for child neglect, and put the onus back on them too. Schools screamed and hollered they should be the primary influence on education (as if!), so hold them to that, or strip them of it, and never, ever let them make that claim again, anywhere, on pain of prosecution for alienation of affection and parental interference, with criminal penalties for any school officials attempting to assert such nonsense for anything less than physical abuse.
Then remove testing from the purview of the schools. Institute independent testing, by people with no stake in the outcome, other than accuracy, testing conditions, and strict fairness without cheating. Any squawks from the shitbirds or their parents get an immediate retest, the next day. Those results are final. Four strictly proctored tests a year, from a rolling test pool of 10,000 questions and problems at each step. I’m pretty sure the SAT folks could give a hand in that regard. If schools and teachers want to hold additional tests and quizzes in between, to assure themselves and the students that they’re mastering the material, more power to them. But the outside tests, plural, are final arbiters, at every level.
Kid fails one test, they’re flagged for extra attention and work. They fail two of four in any year, they get automatically recycled that day back to the prior year until they can pass through. Giant random rolling question pools, outside the knowledge or control of the schools, prevent “teaching to the test”, and the schools have to sweat it as much as the students.
Schools with low test scores lose principals first after two years, and teachers get only a five year pass to produce.
Chronically bad schools get turned over to outside teachers and administrators after 5 years, with military-style methods of instruction, and disciplinary remediation (read that as two hours of mandatory daily study hall until they claw their way back to at least straight Cs.) Make smart great again.
Kids get failed until they pass, period. Any kid more than three grades behind by third or subsequent grades gets crap-streamed into Special Ed, and can look forward to a career in either janitorial arts, or food service, unless they can claw their way to a GED by 21.
Identify truants as child neglect cases and prosecute the parent(s), pluck out those with bona fide dyslexia or other legit problems for true Special Ed., and let actual retards become retards again, and put them back in the short bus schoolhouse for individual attention.
And for the kids who don’t put out, teach them to say “Would you like fries with that?” the first day of high school or age 15, so when they flunk out by the end of 10th grade, they’ve got a leg up on their future careers.
Teachers at chronically underperforming schools get a 10% pay cut until they stop chronically underperforming. Start the newbies there, and they can’t promote out to nicer schools, until they’re not chronically underperforming. Five years of chronically underperforming = separation for unsuitability.
Kids with chronic discipline problems or any sort of violent tendencies get streamed into schools that are a cross between prison and boot camp, from 8 to 5 daily, until they either straighten up, or get kicked out and pointed towards ditch digging or pre-prison prep. Identify the problem players, and stream them out of the pipeline before they infect the other kids. No free rides. Any of the hard cases who demonstrate straight A’s and good behavior can get streamed out too.
Anybody who doesn’t speak and write English at grade level by 1st grade gets put in an immersive English-only program until they can compete on an equal footing with native speakers, and rejoin regular classes. Make English great again. Parents who object can take their foreign retard and leave, no charge, no questions asked, and no return unless they can demonstrate fluency before re-admission at grade level. Make fruit picking great again.
Anybody in education currently gets one strike against them, and any squawks from them are grounds for termination for the first 10 years. The education system’s problem is more than 50% the fault of the people who run it. Turn administration of the system over to consortium of business and military leadership. You wanna bitch to a general who’s been teaching functional retards to pass classes for his entire career, and the businessman who’s going to have to employ the product, go right on ahead.
Any teacher with a teaching credential who can’t cut it after five years is out.
Any administrator with an Ed.D. or Ph.D. who can’t perform to spec within five years is also booted.
Just as college isn’t for everyone, neither is education.
Some people should be selling cars or real estate.
But anyone who consistently exceeds expectations gets higher pay and faster promotions.
And anybody who so much as whispers anything about race or anything else other than hitting their assigned markers gets fired for cause, on the spot, and banned for life.
Adminstrator, teacher, student, parent: same-same.
One allegation of racial unfairness is an immediate boot to the curb, no appeal.
Stop the bullshit, and go back to teaching fundamentals that worked until progressivism f**ked it all up and shat in the pool, for decades.
Call back in twenty years and see if that plan works better than the current 70-year disasterpiece.
Noway2 · April 11, 2025 at 10:06 am
“ There should be an exam at the end of the year when a student turns 15 (9th grade). Those who excel go to a college prep high school, students who show aptitude for it go to vocational school, students who fail are done and can go get a job.”
Amen. I’ve been saying something like this for years. The difference is that I would say give them a shovel instead of they can get a job.
I was a HS honors student, calculus, physics, chemistry, etc, from a good public high school in an affluent, conservative place in NE Ohio, and I still found college to be challenging, though you are correct, that a lot of it was easy too. I did go for electrical engineering, which had about a 75% attrition rate.
JimmyPx · April 11, 2025 at 10:21 am
To see how far our education system has fallen, this is an 8th grade exam from 1912.
https://www.bullittcountyhistory.com/bchistory/schoolexam1912.html
Cederq · April 11, 2025 at 10:39 am
I found that to be true, once I got into college after five years of service, college was a breeze compared to grade school and high school. Of course I was an avid reader growing up, I had a book in my nose and my parents subscribed to magazines like National Geographic, Reader’s Digest and because of my nerdy love of reading bought a subscription of Scientific American for me to read. My dad was a highly ranked Air Force officer we had the Air Force Magazine delivered as well back in the day, Life, Look, I devoured them when they arrived. I probably spent as much time at the library as I did at home. That prepared me for my chosen career and an ability to succeed. All that with being schooled in California school system in the 60s and 70s because I wanted to learn.
SoCoRuss · April 11, 2025 at 10:53 am
Agree, But its not cheating if its standard practice and allowed. She used the system so take that for what its worth.
If she has a lawyer worth a shit, she should go for full lifetime future earnings potential she would be denied due to school malfeasance and pain and suffering due to embarrassment and having PTSD now. I’m sure she would have cured cancer she is so talented.Hope she gets a 100 million from the district. Maybe that would wake these fools up.
But I agree with Gerry, she could be the next AOC, following the same path. Every time I see these wetback parents that cant speak English, it drives me nuts. My brother in law is Cuban, nice guy BTW, they came over on boats after Castro in the 60’s. His parents never learned english but are citizens? Live just outside NYC so that explains a lot of why. I have only been to their homes twice, after those 2 times it was decided I shouldn’t EVER go back. I just cant keep my mouth shut on this shit. You want to live in American learn the fucking language! No one going to any other country is allowed to get away with the crap we allow here. Other countries mandate learn our language or get the fuck out.
Fundamental Transformation · April 11, 2025 at 11:29 am
And manufacturing is going to return to a collapsing fourth world turd?
Those people are long gone or in retirement.
SiG · April 11, 2025 at 12:25 pm
This is reinforcement for those of us who have been saying the Department of Education was formed in the 1970s and the only thing about education that has gone up since then is how much we spend on it. Tear it down, and salt the Earth under it.
The other side of that is high school grads not being prepared for college isn’t completely new; I remember reading in the early ’80s some stories from Chemistry professors talking about remedial classes for public school kids. Being unable to read seems much more common than it used to be.
SoCoRuss · April 11, 2025 at 12:45 pm
Speaking of wasting money and wetbacks. Appears the MIGA Messiah has changed on another promise made to the true believers. First it was mass deportations, then it was criminal aliens first then maybe the rest and now he has said its OK for illegals to stay if they have jobs and are needed!! WTF, I guess the only promise him and congress have actually kept is making the Zionist Israeli Jews masters of the world because GOD said so not to mention the money taken or the kiddie videos. So just another lying POL what a surprise, color me shocked… MERIKA,MERIKA,MERIKA….. There are no words for this shit anymore…
Henry · April 11, 2025 at 3:02 pm
Thanks for highlighting the problems with our education system. There’s plenty of blame to go around, and teachers and administrators unions haven’t helped. We also screwed up by eliminating tracking, something that worked well for many decades. “Himself” is right that mainstreaming was a big mistake. Colleges willingly accepted unqualified students in order to grab the tuition income, and remedial courses to compensate for missing high school skills made it that much easier for the high schools to give the kids diplomas and send them off. Bush’s No Child Left Behind didn’t do the country any favors.
Steve · April 11, 2025 at 3:19 pm
“There are parents who claim to “home school” but don’t actually bother to teach the kids anything. Yes, it happens. I know a few.”
There’s also the flip side. Homeschooled kids who are bored to tears by the AP classes and who are disgusted at the immaturity of kids their age. Where I live, if they sign up in fall, they are sentenced to having to attend the whole year, but we did allow her as many sick notes as she wanted.
Both kids got perfect ACT, though, obviously, completely unrelated to public school. Which, admittedly, was quite good, even by state standards, but still sadly deficient.
Danny · April 11, 2025 at 4:23 pm
You were doing a proper job as an educator … what were you thinking? 😀 We really have a problem and nobody is doing anything about it. Much like … well everything in the gov’t.
Last summer, our grandkids (ages 6 and 9) were in our care four days a week during July. My wife and I went to a local educational supply store and got handwriting guidebooks and math flash cards. We already have a number of books at their level. We worked with them on those basics – math, reading and handwriting because we realized they were not getting what they needed at the public school.
DrBob · April 11, 2025 at 4:41 pm
Spot on!
I taught a senior high school class for a semester and the laziness was unbelievable. It was completed abetted by the principal who changed the curriculum because “the students don’t like sitting in lectures’. Oh, sweet lordy Jesus!
Your point about splitting the high school track – college prep and trade school prep is what the Germans do, or at least did. We need the same. But it can only happen if the feds get their nose out of the educational system.
Lad the non-Impaler · April 11, 2025 at 9:15 pm
Reminds me of a story told by a family member around Christmas.
She handed the checkout guy at a Stop & Rob a handful of change and was told, “I don’t do change. How much is here?”
They can’t read, write or count.
There is one gas station chain in Phx, (Quik Trip), that actually counts back your change to you properly. ONE! Everyone else just reads the register and fakes it.
You know, the folks who give you a stack of bills then tries to pile the coins on top of that.
We’re doomed…
Georgiaboy61 · April 12, 2025 at 1:33 am
Been there, done that! I am a veteran of the high school science teacher rat race as well. Young and naive, I took a job in a racially-mixed high-school near Atlanta, GA (I am a native of that state, but hadn’t lived there in years). Let me tell you: I sure had my eyes opened. Four sections of chemistry; mostly sophomores and juniors but a few seniors, too.
Supposed to be bright students – the cream of the crop. I discovered that half of them could not read, write or compute at the sixth grade level. How had they made it so far? Social promotion. “Failing upward,” isn’t that what it is called?
Discipline was a full-time job, and I spent much of my time putting out fires, so to speak, rather than teaching. Why? Because Admin wouldn’t get the hardcore trouble-makers out of the room. As often as not, I was blamed for “poor classroom management” or some such rot.
Or a parent or student would accuse me of racism.
A few kids were there to learn, I did my best to help them – but the fact is that they got cheated by their classmates out of having a better experience.
Then there were the kids with other things on their minds. ONe young cat got murdered over Christmas break for his Air Jordan shoes. A student of mine, a young woman, was mugged for her “bomber jacket.” Teen pregnancy and drug use were endemic; violence was always just around the corner. I was threatened with a knife several times; nothing happened thank goodness, but neither were the punks who did it punished.
I’ll never forget the two students of mine who decided to study “human anatomy and physiology” – a.k.a. premarital sex & pregnancy – instead of chemistry. Both failing my class, both with few prospects except menial work or going on the dole. The boys bragged about knocking up as many gals as possible, the gals just said, “Babies are so cute; I just want one!”
Here’s the kicker, though: The students in my classes wrote my performance reviews! So did the parents… although no one ever explained to me how they could do so since not one of them saw me teach first-hand. The principal, a lefty white woman, knew where her bread was buttered and didn’t support me at all.
So, I left – glad to get out of there with me skin. I wasn’t really a teacher; prison guard or corrections officer would have been more accurate.