TROY, MI – What do Albert Einstein and Whoopi Goldberg, former Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller, Walt Disney, Jennifer Aniston and Tom Cruise all have in common?
They all have, or had dyslexia, a learning disorder that has nothing to do with intelligence, but can make reading extremely difficult. Fortunately, they all got help or managed, with great difficulty and sheer force of will, to find a way to overcome it.
Not everyone is as fortunate. Deon Butler, a star football tight end at Central Michigan University, was signed by the Detroit Lions, but then cut from the team, because, he says, he wasn’t able to read the playbook. His problem was undiagnosed dyslexia. He descended into a dark world of drugs before turning his life around.
Today, dyslexia, which affects one in every five people, is much better understood. Forty states, including Ohio, have some type of mandatory screening for school children to catch dyslexia, and intervention programs to help them overcome it.
But not Michigan.
Michele Maleszyk, a 41-year-old nurse who lives in Troy, an affluent Detroit suburb of 87,000 people, thinks that’s outrageous. Last year, she noticed that her daughter Grace, then in kindergarten, was having difficulty reading, though she seemed bright and was doing well in every other way.
The school district didn’t give her satisfactory answers, so she had a private evaluation done, and learned Grace had dyslexia.
Her mother threw herself into the study of how children learn to read, and concluded that something called “the science of reading,” also known as phonics, was the way to go.
She and other parents have urged the school administration and the school board to consider changes in the way reading is taught and programs to address dyslexia. She helped rally other Troy parents to hold a protest march. “The curriculum that they are using is just not helping our kids learn to read,” she said.
And while the Troy superintendent, Richard Machesky, told a parent “we do not choose curriculum based on individuals … or other non-research based factors,” the way Troy has been teaching reading since 2014 doesn’t seem to be working. The number of third-graders who were proficient in reading fell from 85 percent in 2012-13 to 66 percent last year.
“But they weren’t interested in making any changes,” said Maleszyk, who now works part-time in order to have more time with her daughter, and is looking for another school system, possibly a private school, for her instead.
She’s far from the only unhappy Michigan parent. Two years ago, Judy Boyle posted on a website concerned with legal issues and dyslexia that “Our children with dyslexia are falling through the cracks in the public school system,” and asked what she should do. She was told to contact her state legislators.
Many parents did, and there is evidence that’s paying off. In March, Michigan’s state senate passed a two-bill package that would require both conventional public and charter schools to screen for dyslexia and provide “a multi-tiered system of support,” to any pupils who need it, and to make sure knowing about dyslexia and what can be done is included in all teacher preparation programs.
Deon Butler, the former professional football player, delivered emotional testimony in Lansing in support of those bills.
But while the Michigan senate passed the bills 37-1, (Senate Bills 567 and 568) they may face a tougher battle in the state house of representatives. Lobbyists for those who prefer the status quo are reported to be working hard to scuttle the bill, perhaps by having it tabled, something they managed to do last year and the year before.
The outcome may depend on what position Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who campaigned on making education a top priority, takes.
Michele Maleszyk has become frustrated, and worried about children other than her own. “Not every parent has the time or ability to do that, nor should they have to,” she said, meaning the time she spent researching the issue and rallying parents for demonstrations and confronting the school board.
One Troy parent told her he was reluctant to speak up because he was afraid administrators and teachers might retaliate against his child. “I’ve become convinced that the only way things are going to change is if these bills are put into place,” Maleszyk said, before taking off to serve as a chaperone for a school visit to the Detroit Zoo.
If there’s one thing everyone agrees on, it is that Michigan schoolchildren are not reading nearly well enough, at a time when reading skills are essential for anyone to have a successful future.
If there’s another, it is that many people have lost faith in public education, and that officials and administrators who are perceived as distant and unresponsive aren’t helping to change that.
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(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
