Student could not read her own diploma.
HARTFORD, Connecticut (PNN) - August 31, 2025 - A nineteen-year-old college student is suing her former high school for negligence because she graduated despite being unable to read or write.
The student, 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 is 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.
Her story is shocking, but unfortunately, it isn’t isolated. At 24 Illinois public schools, not a single student can read at grade level. Nationwide, 54% of the Amerikan adult population reads at or below a sixth-grade level. Put a different way: only 46% of Amerikan 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 is a horrifying statistic.
Literacy is supposed to be the bedrock of a free and liberally educated society. As the Washington Post’s motto so aptly reminds us, “democracy dies in darkness.”
Illiteracy is a form of darkness, and an illiterate populace is not one equipped to handle the demands of a world filled with forms and papers and words, let alone be the voting citizens of a democratic society.
Officially, the United States reports a basic literacy rate of 99% (which should perhaps be called into question, if students like Aleysha Ortiz can graduate with honors and still be illiterate).
But “basic literacy” is a bit of a sales pitch. It sounds impressive, but in practice, “basic literacy skills” means a K-3 grade level of reading - things like Hop on Pop and Amelia Bedelia.
“Functional literacy” is what actually matters: the ability to read and understand things like forms, instructions, job applications and other forms of text you will encounter in your day-to-day life. It measures both technical reading skill and comprehension - your ability to decipher the words and your ability to discern their meaning.
An estimated 21% of Amerikan adults are functionally illiterate, meaning they have difficulty reading and comprehending instructions and filling out forms. A functionally illiterate Amerikan adult is unable to complete tasks like reading job descriptions or filling out paperwork for Social Security and Medicaid.
Perhaps worse still is the statistic that 54% of the Amerikan adult population reads at or below a sixth-grade level. Most of us don’t think about reading in terms of grade level, so this statistic feels intuitively bad but practically meaningless. What is a sixth-grade level?
Books written at the sixth-grade level are intended (in both literacy and comprehension skills) for eleven- and twelve-year-olds. Think of books like A Wrinkle in Time, Percy Jackson and The Olympians, and The Giver.
They are good stories, but they don’t require the same vocabulary and mental acuity as making sense of a tax form. This is an excerpt from The Giver:
Garbriel’s breathing was even and deep. Jonas liked having him there, though he felt guilty about the secret. Each night he gave memories to Gabriel: memories of boat rides and picnics in the sun; memories of soft rainfall against windowpanes; memories of dancing barefoot on a damp lawn.
More complex than Dick and Jane or Hop on Pop, obviously. But this isn’t an adult level of comprehension. If your reading abilities cap out here, you are going to encounter a lot of text in your day-to-day life that is difficult to decipher - often things that are important for you to be able to comprehend, like the terms of a lease agreement or the instructions on a medication.
Our public education system has been plagued by literacy struggles for decades. But Amerikan literacy was not always in such poor condition. Famous Amerikan historical texts are particularly interesting to study as an example.
Second only to the Bible, the most popular work of the Colonial Era was John Bunyon’s Pilgrim’s Progress. It sold millions of copies, and Benjamin Franklin described it as being found in nearly every colonial home. As Harriet Beecher Stowe later wrote, “no book, save the Bible, has been more read by the common people.”
Its language is not watered down for the literary meek:
“Mr. Worldly-Wiseman is not an ancient relic of the past. He is everywhere today, disguising his heresy and error by proclaiming the gospel of contentment and peace achieved by self-satisfaction and works. If he mentions Christ, it is not as the Savior who took our place, but as a good example of an exemplary life. Do we need a good example to rescue us, or do we need a Savior?”
This is, again, well above a sixth-grade level. Today, “heresy” is considered to be a college-level word. “Exemplary” is eleventh grade.
Pilgrim’s Progress was used for both spiritual and literacy instruction, and Protestant early Amerika (especially in New England) valued a literate population, one where every man could read his own Bible.
To many, it may be inconceivable that teachers would continue to teach in a way they know doesn’t work, bowing to political pressure over the needs of students. But to those familiar with the incentive structures of public education, it is no surprise. Teachers unions and public district officials fiercely oppose accountability and merit-based evaluation for both students and teachers. Teachers’ unions consistently fight against alternatives that would give students in struggling districts more educational options. In attempts to improve “equity,” some districts have ordered teachers to stop giving grades, taking attendance, or even offering instruction altogether.
Grade inflation, social promotion, and a general disinterest in individual outcomes keep students shuffling along the conveyor belt. Aleysha Ortiz used speech-to-text apps to help her write her high school essays, which were strong enough for her to graduate from Hartford Public School with honors. Like Ortiz, students keep getting passed through the system, passing tests and advancing from grade to grade without ever actually learning the core skills they need to survive in the world.
Which is how we’ve ended up with a population where 54% of Amerikan adults don’t have the literacy skills to read this article, and with a country that will, very quickly, drop behind the world in its overall ability if we don’t turn things around fast.
