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In Depth: One Student’s Years-long Struggle to get Proper Instruction for Dyslexia in NYC

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has made teaching public school children to read – and particularly children with dyslexia – his signature educational initiative. But for decades, city schools have been relying on disproven reading methods. Teachers have been advised not to tell families when they suspect students may be dyslexic. And families that do receive a diagnosis that their children are dyslexic are often forced to hire pricey attorneys and sue the school district in order to send their children to private schools. Experts estimate 5% to 20% of students may have some degree of the language-based learning disability. But the nation’s largest school system has historically been unable to identify students with dyslexia or offer the support they need. For the last seven months, WNYC’s education reporter Jessica Gould has followed Matthew and his grandmother Trenace Green as they learned he had dyslexia, a revelation that sent them into a complex world of neuropsychiatrists, lawyers and private schools.

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Janae Pierre: Hey, folks. I'm Janae Pierre. I know it's Saturday, and we don't usually drop a weekend episode on NYC NOW, but today is a little different. Sometimes there are stories that we need to spend more time with, that need to go a bit deeper, and we've got one of those stories for you now. In fact, we have a handful of them we'll share in the coming months.

This school year is well underway in New York City, and it's a pivotal moment for the public school system. Mayor Eric Adams's administration has big plans to improve the way children, especially those with dyslexia, learn to read. In the meantime, many students in the city with dyslexia still struggle to get the help they need. WNYC's education reporter Jessica Gould has been following one student in Harlem and has this story.

Jessica Gould: Tell me why you didn't want to read in front of me.

Matthew Green: Because I don't feel comfortable to read with other people.

Jessica Gould: Why? What happens when you read?

Matthew Green: Well, I get frustrated because sometimes the words are harder to sound out in my head and I shut down.

Jessica Gould: What does shutting down mean?

Matthew Green: I stop. I get attitude sometimes. I start to cry sometimes because it's like struggling because my brain, it's like I can't handle it because it's hard.

Jessica Gould: When I met Matthew Green earlier this year, he was eight years old. He'd just been diagnosed with dyslexia, and he had been struggling in school for years. Like so many kids, he thought that was his fault.

Matthew Green: I wasn't a good kid in second grade. I kept not doing my work and stuff. Just felt bored in class, and I just didn't want to read at all or do my math, but they would call my grandma or my mom, and I would talk with my grandma slowly. Try to hold my breath, and she would tell me, just try your best. Can I just say one thing?

Jessica Gould: Sure.

Matthew Green: If it wasn't for my grandma, I wouldn't be here right now.

Trenace Green: He had a really difficult time, and it showed in his behavior. I would get calls at least once a week. Him throwing chairs, it was really bad. A lot of that I can attribute to, he wasn't getting the support that he needed.

Jessica Gould: Trenace Green is Matthew's grandmother. She says at one point the teachers were at such a loss. The school gave him a teddy bear to try to calm him. By third grade last year, she was losing her patience.

Trenace Green: I was like, "Well, how are you guys going to teach him? Then they was like, "Well, we don't know."

Mayor Eric Adams: I think that we were living almost a Shakespearean tragedy. When you have gifted young people who learn differently or actually ostracized from society.

Jessica Gould: Dyslexia has been a big focal point for New York City's Mayor Eric Adams.

Mayor Eric Adams: Mommy didn't know what was wrong with me, many teachers thought I was lazy.

Jessica Gould: Adams himself is dyslexic, and he's talked about it many times in public appearances.

Mayor Eric Adams: It was just a painful moment, and you stand up and you have to read, and you stumble over the words, and you cringe and you start to think differently about yourself.

Jessica Gould: Surprisingly though, the city does not track how many students have dyslexia. Experts, I've spoken with estimate that anywhere from 5% to 20% of kids have some version of this disability. It's called a language-based learning disability. There's a lot of concern about what's been called the school-to-prison pipeline when it comes to dyslexic children who don't get the kind of education they need.

Mayor Eric Adams: Forty percent of the inmates at our jail in Rikers Island are dyslexic. I was on the pathway to join that rank.

Jessica Gould: For many years, the city's public school system has not been able to support most students with dyslexia. What typically happens is that families have to fight to get their children evaluated and then educated. Many of them fall through the cracks, which is why Adams and his Schools Chancellor David Banks say fixing this problem is a top priority. They've rolled out new screeners for dyslexia, they've launched pilot programs, and they've called for an overhaul of literacy instruction across the school system.

Mayor Eric Adams: I wish I could just lean in the ear of those young children right now, living in an area of uncertainty, to whisper in their ear, baby, you got this, you got this because your mayor got you.

Jessica Gould: These plans are just getting started. The research shows that where Matthew is right now, at eight years old, the window to truly teach him how to read is closing. That means this is not only a pivotal year for the city and how it teaches dyslexic children, but it's also a pivotal year for Matthew.

Your grandma told me that you wanted to be part of a story about dyslexia and what the city should do. Tell me why you wanted to be part of a story about this.

Matthew Green: I want to inspire the kids to try their best.

Jessica Gould: Let's start at the very beginning. Introduce yourself for me.

Trenace Green: My name is Trenace Green. I live in Harlem, born and raised in Harlem. I'm the grandmother of Matthew, who's an eight-year-old, who was just recently diagnosed with dyslexia.

Jessica Gould: Trenace Green is 51, and she's very fashionable. She's wearing a flowy skirt and a wide hat that's perched over her braids. She works an overnight shift in IT from 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM. Then during the day, she relentlessly advocates for her grandson. She says that Matthew has always been bright.

Trenace Green: Matthew thinks a lot, and the things I used to think, wow, and his thought process and the things that he would say would be really advanced. I'm just like, "Where did that come from?" That just blew my mind.

Jessica Gould: Even as a toddler, he had trouble with the alphabet and remembering letters. Can you just go through a couple of moments, real memories, if you can, where you started thinking, oh, maybe there's something different here?

Trenace Green: He wouldn't retain a lot of information as far as ABCs, things like that, getting confused with the letters. If I'll say F, so he'll be like, okay, F, but he didn't know what an F was, so he would have to go through the chart A, B, C, D. I didn't understand or didn't know that it was dyslexia. I just knew he had problems. That was up until very recently.

Jessica Gould: Trenace says she noticed as Matthew got older and had to read, he'd get upset and he'd often give up.

Trenace Green: The word could be cat, for example. He's very excited because he thinks he knows the word, but he says it wrong. He'll just be like, "Okay, I can't do this." He won't try but I'm like, "Matthew, if you try, it's okay to make a mistake. That's okay. This is part of learning. We can work through it," but at that point, he's defeated. He'll just shut down. He won't respond. He won't speak. You can see the tears beginning to form, and he'll just sit there.

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Jessica Gould: Dyslexia is not just about reversing letters or words. Some people with dyslexia do that, but it has more to do with differences in the brain that make it harder for people with dyslexia to match letters and sounds. What we know now is that the right kind of reading instruction can help rewire the brain. That includes teaching letter and sounds in combinations, also known as phonics, through what's called multisensory instruction, so moving your hands or your body, and lots and lots of repetition. I've talked with dozens of teachers, and many of them say they've seen firsthand how city schools are not prepared to serve most students with dyslexia.

Why don't you spell your name for me as well?

Teresa Ranieri: T-E-R-E-S-A.

Jessica Gould: Teresa Ranieri is one of them. She's now a literacy specialist at a school in the Bronx, but she spent years as a classroom teacher.

Teresa Ranieri: I came to the Bronx in 1996. For the majority of it, it was kindergarten, first and second. Those are those young years where children learn how to read.

Jessica Gould: She told me even her bachelor's degree in early childhood education had not equipped her with the skills she needed to teach kids how to read. Like so many city educators, she was encouraged to teach what are now disproven strategies, like urging kids to guess at words from pictures or from the first letter instead of sounding them out. This kind of guessing can make it even harder for children to learn to read, and especially kids with dyslexia. For decades, that's the instruction that has been widespread in the city's public schools and across the country.

Teresa Ranieri: If you look over my career, I personally am responsible for probably 40 to 50 children not learning how to read. That's a hard thing to admit. I personally feel horrible, and that's I think why I still keep in touch with my old students. If any of them needed anything, I would be the first to support them because I have a lot to make up for.

Jessica Gould: The Adams administration is moving schools away from those disproven strategies, but teachers also tell me they get a lot of pushback from their principals against even telling families they suspect a kid in their class might have dyslexia. That makes it harder for parents to figure out what's wrong.

Martina Meyer: Some of the signs that I see are students who have extreme reluctance with reading to anxiety.

Jessica Gould: Martina Meyer is a fourth-grade teacher at a public school in Brooklyn.

What have you been told to say and by whom over the years, or not to say as it relates to a kid who you suspect might have dyslexia or some language-based issue?

Martina Meyer: I have been told, and this is true, that I am not a doctor, and therefore cannot make a diagnosis. I am a professional, and I have 15 years of experience. I do see the signs as stated, and I have been told by every single administrator, meaning, specifically principal, that I have ever worked for, that I should not use the word dyslexia with parents. I've been told stick to your wheelhouse. Stay in your lane.

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Jessica Gould: Of course, Matthew didn't understand why his teachers weren't able to reach him. He just knew he couldn't read, and he was falling further and further behind. Because the school system is just not equipped to deal with dyslexia, the way that many parents get the help their children need is to sue the city to pay for private school, but that takes money. It takes connections. We generally see socioeconomic and racial disparities in who gets to take that route.

?Trenace Green: It's really heartbreaking, because I see it's like as if they really just don't care about these children, and it's just heartbreaking.

Janae Pierre: You're listening to a special report from WNYC's Jessica Gould on NYC NOW. Our story continues in a moment.

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Janae Pierre: This is NYC NOW from WNYC. This special episode takes a deep dive into the lives of kids with dyslexia and the many hoops families in New York City have to jump through to get them an appropriate education. Here's education reporter Jessica Gould.

Teacher: What's your name?

Jessica Gould: I'm Jessica.

Teacher: Say, hi, Ms. Jessica.

Students: Hi, Ms. Jessica.

Jessica Gould: Hi, everybody.

I visited one of two pilot programs for dyslexia that the city launched last year in public schools.

Teacher: All right. Let's see who's ready. Who's sitting crisscross applesauce?

Jessica Gould: At this one at PS 125 in Harlem, teachers in the earliest grades, so kindergarten through second grade, have been trained in a method called Orton-Gillingham, and that's considered the gold standard for teaching kids with dyslexia.