Harjinder Singh could barely read or speak English, but he had an excuse. He wasn’t from here, entered the nation illegally, where Democrats provided a work permit and CDL licenses in two states, to drive trucks, which ended in the unnecessary deaths of three people in Florida.
Democrat fingerprints are all over this “crime” as well.
Aleysha Ortiz, graduated from Hartford Public Schools in the spring of 2024 with honors. She earned a scholarship to attend the University of Connecticut, where she’s studying public policy. But while she was in high school, she had to use speech-to-text apps to help her read and write essays, and despite years of advocating for support for her literacy struggles, her school never addressed them.
Aleysha can’t read either, but Hartford, CT, taxpayers forked over $23,000.00 per year (at least a quarter of a million dollars to babysit her for thirteen years) so the public school system could graduate an illiterate kid with honors. That ought to be a crime.
Nationwide, 54 percent of the American adult population reads at or below a sixth grade level. Put a different way: only 46 percent of American adults gained even a middle-school level mastery of literacy — let alone high school or collegiate levels.
In a first-world country where we spend nearly $16,000 per student per year to educate our children, that’s a horrifying statistic.
In New Hampshire, it is rare to find a district where half the students are at grade level for either numeracy or literacy. If they are actually students, what are they learning? Is there any binding contract or statement that outlines what parents/taxpayers get from the SAU and the schools for the vast sums of money they cough up to finance them?
If not, we need that for the district, not the teachers who work for it. If neither a school board nor the Superintendent it hires and pays with your money can manage to run schools that can teach kids to read, write, and do math at grade level, hardly a high bar, there ought to be consequences. Loss of administrative pay, terminations, recall elections for school board members, or mediation with private companies that bid for contracts to run the schools (probably at a fraction of the cost and with better results).
Something has to happen!
Taxpayers and illiterate students can’t be the only ones on the hook for failing schools that demand more money so they can deliver even poorer results.
Perhaps we need a line-item budget for all the things a school wants to do and the associated costs. Put it on a ballot. Math, Reading, History, Science, each extracurricular program, and anything else that draws funds that isn’t the physical plant or transportation. Anything that doesn’t get two-thirds of taxpayers’ votes is unfunded.
I imagine there are more than a few variations on this theme, all of which will attract enthusiasm or umbrage. Still, given the output and cost, you should save the latter for the confidence scammers pretending to run a school system that can’t teach kids to read or add, and those who refuse to step up to this failed institution and say no more.
Public education is about shoveling money at people and buildings, not teaching kids skills they need to contribute to society. Until you outline that mandate and create consequences ,the cost of failure will rise and you’ll continue to get declining results.
