Kenny, when I first met him, was in the 10th grade at a public high school in Baltimore. He was a 16-year-old low-income African-American who lived in a poor inner city neighborhood. The high school he attended required high grades and test scores for admission. He liked video games and to hang with friends. He had a girlfriend, and didn’t like school very much.
So far, no big surprises. Kenny sounds like a teenager who, if you’ve watched Homicide or The Wire, was better off than many peers in a city like Baltimore. But there’s more you need to know about him.
Kenny was reading at a kindergarten grade level.
Let that sink in. Though in the 10th grade and in a selective high school, Kenny barely knew the names and sounds of the 26 letters of the alphabet and how to read words like cat, bat and rat.
How could that be? He had good attendance. And unlike many peers, he had never been a behavior problem. So why was he never taught to read? And how in the world, since he couldn’t read at all, could he do high school work and pass his courses?
This book will answer these questions. But for now, let’s try to imagine how Kenny felt. It’s not easy, but let’s try to put ourselves in the shoes of a 10th grader who is not severely disabled, yet, in his own mind and in the eyes of his classmates, is a big “dummy.”
We can better imagine how his parents felt. Heartbroken and in utter despair, knowing that their son had gone from kindergarten to 10th grade without being taught to read. Knowing that their son was totally unprepared for college or a good job. Knowing that their son hid his pain and frustration but suffered deeply from self-awareness of his academic failings.
And while this probably doesn’t occur to you, how do you think his teachers felt? I’d say sad, empathic, determined to help him as much as they could and, more than anything else, helpless. Many had sought additional aid for Kenny at various points but were rebuffed by the “system.”
This book exposes the “system.” It is the tragic tale of Kenny and tens of millions of other schoolchildren who are never taught basic skills in reading, writing and math. In these pages, you will learn how and why this amounts to the crime of educational abuse by public school systems across the U.S. Most of the victims, like Kenny, are poor and minority and concentrated in large urban school systems. But you will be shocked at how many struggling learners in suburbs and rural areas, from rich and middle class homes, in red and blue states, are also victimized.
It’s educational abuse because school systems could do much better than they’re doing, even with limited resources. This means, more than anything else, timely assistance when children first struggle to learn to read. The framework for this is called “Response to Intervention” or RTI. RTI sounds abstract, but it’s real, we know how to do it, and it can make all the difference in the world to Kenny and other struggling learners. It can also make all the difference in the world to parents who suffer alongside their children.
I hope this Preface grabs your attention, but even more I hope it makes your blood start to boil. If so, you will begin to understand my own state of mind as I wrote the book. I am a policy wonk and have churned out over the years innumerable articles and reports, laden with detailed analyses, policy proposals and footnotes. I have said, only half-kiddingly, that my literary ambition was to write the great American memo.
Still, I want this book to be more than policy diagnoses and prescriptions and a call to action. I want it also to be a memoir of sorts, chronicling my journey through decades of work to improve public schools. Over that time, I have represented pro bono over 200 struggling learners, chiefly in Baltimore but also elsewhere in Maryland. I have developed and advocated for policy reforms in Maryland and nationally.
And I have done some good on both fronts. The greatest reward has been making a difference in an individual child’s life, and easing the anguish of parents who had felt forsaken. But overall, most days and weeks and years I’ve felt a lot of frustration and anger.
It’s bad enough that I have seen hundreds of students and families victimized. But the frustration and anger are compounded because I know that they suffer needlessly. Needless it is, because despite the seeming intractability of problems related to poverty, race and public schools, we do have the ways and means to reform K-12 education in our country. As a nation, we also have the will. If Americans are united in these troubled times behind any national mission, it is to improve public schools.
Well, if we know the way and have the will, what’s holding us up? There is no simple answer in this book or anywhere else. But there are attainable reforms, and there is no acceptable excuse for our national inaction.
And so my frustration and anger seep through these pages. Obviously you don’t have to look farther than the book’s title to get that message. I have been advised by respected colleagues to tone it down. The term “educational abuse,” they say, will turn off readers, particularly educators. But I have resisted that advice. The abuse ruins the lives of children and torments their parents. Just ask Kenny and his family. I want readers to know the truth and feel what I feel daily in my work: their pain.
You’ll learn the origins of the abuse, why so many students like Kenny are mislabeled as disabled, and what can be done about it. At the same time, despite all the sad stories and daunting obstacles, I hope you’ll come to share my optimism about the possibilities for significant change. There is hope if, as a nation, we understand what’s at stake, and unite and fight for what is right.
Before fully getting underway, there are several cross-cutting issues of great importance that I want to point out. The first is fear that my blunt accusation of educational abuse—though I stand by it, as I’ve already said—may be misunderstood. Specifically, that it may be taken as an indictment of teachers. That is farthest from my mind and the opposite of my belief.
Frontline teachers are heroes of mine and they should be yours. This book is dedicated to them. The overwhelming majority are dedicated and able; yet, they are underpaid and undervalued by our society as whole. You may know that already. But what you probably don’t realize is the extent to which they are hung out to dry by their own leaders in the upper ranks of national, state and local educational agencies. Throughout the book, I try to make clear the distinction between the rank and file of teachers, who are the very good guys, and the educational establishment as later defined. It’s the latter that bears—along with all of the rest of us—a share of the responsibility for our nation’s failure to provide an adequate education to millions of children, predominantly from poor and minority families.
Another concern has to do with how “special education” is portrayed. Special education is as complex, misunderstood and woeful as any aspect of K-12 schooling, and a thrust of the book is on those students in special education who don’t belong there. I call them the “mainly mislabeled.” However, special education is usually better for students who are truly disabled. They have severe disabilities, most of which, though not all, include significant cognitive impairment. Students with these severe disabilities belong in truly “special” education. And they are not victims of the educational abuse at the center of the book.
They—despite all my criticisms of special education—have been relatively well served by it. The exclusion and sheer neglect that gave rise to the initial federal law governing students with disabilities in 1975 are long gone. To be sure, there is some over-identification of students with severe disabilities. Some of it is even purposeful because schools are held to lower standards for the achievement of these students. Still, for those who are truly disabled, expectations and services should be substantially raised. This is far more likely to happen if, as advocated in the book, there is a reinvention of special education so it serves only students who are truly disabled. We should go back to the future since that’s what the original federal law intended.
Let me now say a few preliminary words about what I bring to my role as education reform crusader. For about 20 years, I have participated in over 500 meetings with school based staff who determine the Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) of students in special education. From this experience in the trenches and policy research, I have written four published reports that spell out the inadequacies and illegalities in the system nationwide. At the same time, I have worked to reform policy on the inside as a member of the Baltimore City school board and as an outside advocate. I have been the chief architect of a nationally recognized reform that raises the bar for expectations and academic progress of students in special education (though it has not yet been well implemented). Hopefully, this work on the ground outweighs the fact that I have no professional educational credentials.
Finally, this book is dedicated not just to teachers but to the hundreds of parents of struggling learners, inside and outside of special education, who I have represented over the years. Whatever their family composition and income level, their love for their children and their David-like determination to fight the school system Goliath are awe-inspiring. These parents don’t give up, and we dare not either.
To that end, I hope the book informs, engages and, yes, enrages you. So much so that we are more determined than ever to take political action and bring about reform. To borrow from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., let’s work together so that the arc of public education once again bends toward justice for all our schoolchildren.