Graduated with honors—and can’t read a word

What do you call a nation where a high school student can graduate with honors—yet cannot read or write?

You call it America in 2025.

This week, we learned about Aleysha Ortiz, a 19-year-old who graduated from Hartford Public High School in Connecticut with academic distinction—despite being illiterate. She is now suing the school district, alleging negligence, emotional distress, and a complete abdication of duty by the educators and administrators who were supposed to serve her. Her story, reported by CNN, is both infuriating and emblematic of a national crisis that’s been engineered from top down.

Aleysha’s early assessments showed severe learning challenges. Her reading level remained at kindergarten or first-grade level well into middle and high school. She was only diagnosed with dyslexia and other learning disabilities after graduation. Think about that: they handed her a diploma while she couldn’t read it. And the kicker? She graduated with honors—a participation trophy for surviving 13 years in an educational meat grinder that masquerades as a public service.

This isn’t an isolated incident. It’s the new normal. And while Connecticut is one of the wealthiest states in the nation—the seat of Ivy League royalty like Yale University—its inner-city public schools are failing catastrophically. If it’s happening in the land of bluebloods and billion-dollar endowments, what hope do kids in Mississippi or the South Side of Chicago have?

The state of Oregon just made matters worse by permanently removing requirements for high school students to demonstrate proficiency in reading, writing, or math in order to graduate (source). Yes, you read that right. The bar isn’t being lowered—it’s being buried. And it’s not about equity. It’s about ensuring a compliant, unskilled, unthinking generation that will never challenge authority, never run a business, never read the Constitution, and never threaten the ruling class.

> Those poor little kids have no chance. of earning a living or having a decent life. <

Right you are. It eats at me to this day.

Even in my worse classes 80% of the kids were okay. They might have had attendance problems. But when they showed up they were willing to work, and learn something.

And a disruptive kid was quickly removed. The usual penalty was a three-day suspension. So at least I could teach for three days without conflict.

Those days are gone. Today’s administrators want to see low suspension numbers. That makes them look good. So a disruptive student is sent right back to class.

That makes the teacher a policeman, not an educator. He must try to control the disruptive student while all the good kids just sit there.

What do kids do in school all day?

When I moved to Springfield, VA in 1966, I was enrolled in West Springfield Elementary School. I was somewhat distressed to see a TV in the classroom. At the time, it was employed for French language lessons.

When I moved back to Chula Vista, CA, I was enrolled at Hilltop Junior High School. 7th grade. More TV sets in the classroom in addition to 16mm projectors. I was the A/V person in the classroom. I set up the TVs and projectors to play the media of choice. I felt somewhat agnostic to the media content.

Roll far ahead to my children's classrooms. The presence of the TV and a DVD player became a substitute for the teacher's duties. Start a DVD and entertain the classroom. Less engagement between teacher and students in the 1990s.

Post 2000, not only is there TV media in the room, you have computers and cell phones. Plenty of distraction from the core objectives of teaching material and ensuring the students have mastered it. Why read a book when you can put on a movie with the same content? Do that long enough and the little darlings have no idea of how to read and master the content.

My wife was a paraprofessional for 20 years. In that time, she saw an obscene amount of money spent on smartboards, and iPads, and the more was spent, the less the kids learned and the more disrespectful they became.

Her last year was 2020. Before the schools were closed because of COVID she had made the decision to retire that year. It got so bad that one day she was walking in a hallway, one of the kids was sitting on the floor with his legs spread out and wouldn’t move so she could get through. “STEP OVER ME” he told her, like she was a piece of crap. And you can’t discipline them-that’s forbidden.

I’m glad she retired. Both of our daughters are adults, one just started working for a national company, and the other one is working for a multi-national, making six figures a year. They didn’t get where they are by getting “participation trophies”. They have worked to get where they are. I credit my wife starting them off before they entered school, over 30 years ago.

I feel for parents of young ones today- at least the parents who really CARE about their kids’ education.

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