I am a 10th grade reading teacher in a rural Central Florida county. Our county is poor and largely uneducated. The majority of my students read below level, as defined by FCAT and No Child Left Behind, so it is my job to bring them up to passing or, at least, bring them up to making Adequate Yearly Progress.
This week I met *Kevin (not his name). He is 16, "special ed" and can't read.
Kevin looks like any one of my other students with low-slung, baggy jeans and over-sized layered t-shirts draped down to his knees. He talks with the slow southern drawl I have come to think of as "country black" (and truthfully, I can't think of a single white or hispanic student who talks quite the same way) and calls me ma'am. In fact, he is unfailingly polite and even says thanks you when he leaves my room for the day. He has a good sense of humor and is very conscientious of cleaning up after our tutoring sessions. He wants to grow up to play in the NBA or become a rap star. Did I mention that Kevin is 16-years old and can not read?
The first day I met Kevin his ESE (special ed) teacher, who has him for 4 hours a day, was introducing us. I was to become his new after-school tutor in the hope that a change would help him progress. His present teacher, Ms. T, had taken Kevin, who was a complete non-reader even lacking the basic letters sounds, to a point where he can read basic single-syllable words as long as there were no blends (bl is an example of a blend).
Kevin also has trouble maintaining the drive to come, not just to after-school, but to school at all. His mother, who is not his biological mother, is known to make comments along the lines of, "He's not even my son! What am I supposed to do?" Kevin was abandoned at a babysitter's house, the second child his biological mother has done this to. Kevin's biological sister, who lives with another woman, was in my class last year.
Kevin's state scores do not impact our school's overall scores, but his mother has threatened to take school money to send him to Sylvan Learning Centers, so Ms. T and I tutor him. Quite honestly, with our county facing multi-million dollar budget cuts next year, Kevin taking money to go to Sylvan could seriously impact the ESE budget.
Simply put, our school, centered in a very poor community, does not have the monetary resources to deal with the problems our students bring to our classrooms. We want to. We stay up late surfing the web for free resources while always keeping an eye on our "copy budget", we build powerpoint presentations that skirt copyright laws to bring fresh material to our students, we ignore our union's strictures about student count, teaching time and required number of aids in our classrooms because we know our students can not afford for us not to, we hunt for grants to write and dream of enough prep time to not drag ourselves, exhausted, to the weekend.
Our schools, we are told endlessly, are failing. They have certainly failed Kevin. But where? I will take Kevin as far as I am able, using my limited resources. But what about the one who slipped through the cracks and is still trapped there? This may be the most important issue facing our nation and blaming teachers, blaming parents and blaming students has not solved it. Throwing more money at it hasn't solved it. Testing students from kindergarten until graduation hasn't solved it. Kevin needs us to stop looking for the easy fix, he is running out of time.