Why cant U teach me 2 read?: Three Students and a Mayor Put Our Schools to the Test [Hardcover]

Beth Fertig (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0374299056 | ISBN-13: 978-0374299057 | Edition: First Edition

Why cant U teach me 2 read? is a vivid, stirring, passionately told story of three students who fought for the right to learn to read, and won—only to discover that their efforts to learn to read had hardly begun. 

A person who cannot read cannot confidently ride a city bus, shop, take medicine, or hold a job—much less receive e-mail, follow headlines, send text messages, or write a letter to a relative. And yet the best minds of American education cannot agree on the right way for reading to be taught.  In fact, they can hardly settle on a common vocabulary to use in talking about reading. As a result, for a quarter of a century American schools have been riven by what educators call the reading wars, and our young people have been caught in the crossfire.   

Why cant U teach me 2 read? focuses on three such students.  Yamilka, Alejandro, and Antonio all have learning disabilities and all legally challenged the New York City schools for failing to teach them to read by the time they got to high school. When the school system’s own hearing officers ruled in the students’ favor, the city was compelled to pay for the three students, now young adults, to receive intensive private tutoring.

Fertig tells the inspiring, heartbreaking stories of these three young people as they struggle to learn to read before it is too late. At the same time, she tells a story of great change in schools nationwide—where the crush of standardized tests and the presence of technocrats like New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein, have energized teachers and parents to question the meaning of education as never before. And she dramatizes the process of learning to read, showing how the act of reading is nothing short of miraculous.

Along the way, Fertig makes clear that the simple question facing students and teachers alike—How should young people learn to read?—opens onto the broader questions of what schools are really for and why so many of America’s schools are faltering.     

Why cant U teach me 2 read? is a poignant, vital book for the reader in all of us.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

New York City radio journalist Fertig delves deeply into the success and failure of the federal No Child Left Behind Policy implemented by President George W. Bush in 2002, especially as Mayor Michael Bloomberg took up the challenge to improve reading, writing and math skills in New York City public schools. Using the case studies of three impoverished students of Dominican descent—Yamilka, 23; her brother Alejandro, 19; and Antonio, 18, who all came through these high schools and remained largely illiterate despite an enormous enlistment of school services (Yamilka, for example, was later awarded $120,000 worth of tutoring hours for educational neglect)—Fertig unearths some knotty issues affecting the scholastic success of inner-city students, such as English as a second language, family environment and, especially, misdiagnosis of learning disabilities such as dyslexia. Fertig looks closely at how corporate-minded Bloomberg shook up the system: forcing schools to demonstrate annual progress by testing and by gathering specific data (implementation of ARIS, the Achievement Reporting and Innovations System); sanctions for schools not performing; grading of schools in terms of their students' progress. The outrage was predictable, but the improvements surprising and real. Fertig tracks the efficacy of the balanced literary approach to reading and the harmful effects of text messaging and e-mail, for an overall excellent, thoroughly grounding survey of the state of literacy and education. (Sept.)
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Review

“With the thoroughness of an excellent journalist and the sensitivity of a novelist, Beth Fertig writes about three young New Yorkers lost in the forest of illiteracy. Why cant U teach me 2 read? makes clear that learning to read requires also being taught how to read—there is no classroom exchange more central between a student and a teacher.” —Richard Rodriguez, author of Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez

“Beth Fertig cares profoundly for the students whose stories she tells here; she has compassion too for the administrators, teachers, specialists, and family members caught up in their struggle. Her generosity of spirit never interferes with her clear-sighted and rigorous account of the issues they all confront. Reading this book will change the way you think about the urgent, confused, elusive issue of literacy.” —Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

“The notion that our nation’s public schools can teach every child is one that just about everyone can embrace, but it becomes more and more complicated when one examines the realities faced by specific students. Beth Fertig has given voice to real children who have slipped through the cracks in the New York City schools, and reminds us that even wellintentioned efforts by strong leaders to protect the next generation of students face tremendous obstacles. Fertig reminds us that we have a long way to go if we are to live up to the promise of giving every child a chance to read and to live the American Dream.” —Joe Williams, Executive Director, Democrats for Education Reform, and author of Cheating Our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education

“Beth Fertig’s lively book is worth a shelfful of foundation studies on urban education policy. This is reporting at its finest, combining clear explanations of political and bureaucratic battles with compassionate, revealing portraits of how life is lived by the countless thousands who graduate from our broken schools clutching certificates and diplomas they cannot read. Fertig conducts a skilled tour through the great labyrinth of big-city schools, showing how they succeed, why they fail, and why lasting change remains so elusive.” —Errol Louis, columnist, New York Daily News, and host of The Morning Show, WWRL-AM

“Why cant U teach me 2 read? is a finely detailed picture of public schools’ daily struggles to get students with the most difficult challenges to read. Its portrayal of heroics and heartbreak holds valuable lessons for the ongoing movement to reform public education.” —Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO, Harlem Children’s Zone

“An NPR reporter tackles the often overlooked American illiteracy problem through the stories of three students and one very troubled school system . . . [WHY CANT U TEACH ME 2 READ is a] carefully considered treatment of a troubling subject that will be particularly useful to educators and policymakers.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Using the case studies of three impoverished students of Dominican descent . . . Fertig unearths some knotty issues affecting the scholastic success of inner-city students, such as English as a second language, family environment and, especially, misdiagnosis of learning disabilities such as dyslexia . . . An overall excellent, thoroughly grounding survey of the state of literacy and education.” —Publishers Weekly

“Public radio reporter Fertig offers a view of the crisis in education through the lens of three young adults struggling with illiteracy. Yamilka, Alejandro, and Antonio, all products of New York public schools, legally challenged the system when it failed to teach them to read, securing special tutoring arrangements designed to compensate for years of neglect. Fertig intersperses their accounts with the politics of education reform in New York during the mayoral administration of Michael Bloomberg . . . Fertig also details various learning disabilities and historical and current research on techniques for teaching reading skills.”—Booklist, starred review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (September 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374299056
• ISBN-13: 978-0374299057
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #861,081 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Beth Fertig is a senior reporter for WNYC Radio in New York, the nation's largest public radio station, and a regular contributor to National Public Radio. She has won many awards for her reporting, including the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award for her coverage of the New York City public schools. Her reporting on the September 11 attacks won her the affection of countless public radio listeners nationwide. A native New Yorker, she is a graduate of the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and has a master's degree from the University of Chicago.

For more information, and to hear radio reports and subscribe to her blog please visit www.bethfertig.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must, October 10, 2009

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Mark Lamster - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Why cant U teach me 2 read?: Three Students and a Mayor Put Our Schools to the Test (Hardcover)

I hope you have had the good fortune to be taught to read, unlike the subjects of this book, because this is a story that absolutely deserves your attention. New Yorkers probably know Fertig as the education reporter of WNYC, and here she delivers in book form an extension of the incisive, objective journalism we have come to expect (and that is vanishing, tragically) on the radio. Here she tracks three special-needs students, Yamilka, Alejandro, and Antonio, who have fallen through the cracks of NY's educational system. Their stories are told with a heartbreaking elegance. How does our system account for them? What obligations does it have, and what can be realistically expected? If you care about the future of New York and, really, of public education everywhere, this book is a must read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Page Turner!, October 28, 2009

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Katherine Wessling - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Why cant U teach me 2 read?: Three Students and a Mayor Put Our Schools to the Test (Hardcover)

When I sat down to read "why cant u teach me 2 read?" I knew that I'd find a well-written, informative account of the state of literacy education in the United States. I knew that I'd find the stories of three students who made it through the New York City school system without learning to read. I knew that I'd follow them as they tried to gain literacy as adults. But I did not know that I'd be turning the pages with eager anticipation, dying to know how the stories of the three protagonists unfolded. Although my inability to put this compelling book down led to a few sleepless nights, I am grateful to author Beth Fertig for this important work, and grateful too for all the wonderful teachers that made it possible for me to read and enjoy "why can't u teach me 2 read."

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's complicated, June 10, 2010

By 

M. Feldman (Maine, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Why cant U teach me 2 read?: Three Students and a Mayor Put Our Schools to the Test (Hardcover)

"Why cant u teach me 2 read?" is an unusually well-written and interesting look at the general state of literacy education in the United States today and at how it takes place in a particular set of schools: the New York City public schools. It chronicles in detail the efforts of Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein to raise reading scores, but also sets this effort against a history of literacy education in the last hundred years, especially the tension between whole language and phonics-based approaches. Since Beth Fertig is a reporter, not an educator, her account is refreshingly devoid of education jargon. It is also balanced, offering a range of perspectives while careful not to endorse one teaching method over another.

Fertig also follows three young adults, Yamilka, Antonio, and Alejandro, in their quests to learn to read. Each has come through the public schools as a functional illiterate, and each now has the legal right to obtain remediation. Researchers estimate that one in five children has a language-based disorder (like dyslexia), as does each of these individuals. Add to this the influences of learning English as a second language; poverty; overcrowded classrooms, and teachers who do not know how to address such disorders, all problems that Fertig presents, and you will come away from the book with a sense of the complexity and difficulty of teaching not only children, but adults, to read. The stories of Yamilka, Antonio, and Alejandro are inspiring, but also sobering.

This book also contains a solid bibliography, useful is you are interested in this subject. "Why cant u teach me 2 read?" is an engaging book for both teachers and for the general public. If you are one of the lucky ones who learned to read quite effortlessly, this book will give you empathy for those whose acquisition of reading skills takes persistence and constant work.

M. Feldman