Foundations Tutoring Pleasanton



[pic] Oct. 15, 2009

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|Three years ago, Antonio Rocha, now 20 in Times Square, was reading at a first-grade level. He is featured in the new book Why Can't U Teach Me 2 | |

|Read? The school system failed to determine what Antonio later discovered, that he had dyslexia. By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY | |

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|By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY | |

|By the time he was 17, Antonio Rocha had bounced among 11 New York City schools and was reading at a first-grade level. | |

|It wasn't until he told school officials "I want a lawyer!" that things began to change. | |

|STUDY: 1 in 7 U.S. adults can't read this story | |

|With the help of an advocacy group, Rocha pressured the city to pay for 480 hours of private tutoring, which eventually helped him read at a | |

|functional level. Now 20 and working for United Parcel Service, he's one of three people profiled (and the only one comfortable with being | |

|identified) in WNYC Radio reporter Beth Fertig's new book, Why Cant U Teach Me 2 Read?. | |

|"Compensatory education" complaints are increasingly being used by parents who say school districts have a legal responsibility to educate children | |

|in spite of disabilities. The 2002 No Child Left Behind law dictated that schools must use "research-based" programs to teach these children to read,| |

|says Philadelphia-area attorney Dennis McAndrews. Reading comes naturally for many children, he says, but not for Rocha and others: "Putting print in| |

|front of them and hoping they'll crack the code is useless." | |

|Labeled, by turns, learning-disabled, speech-impaired, emotionally disturbed and even mentally retarded, Rocha admits to Fertig, "I just gave up on | |

|myself." | |

|In an interview, he says he always felt odd sitting in class with students who could read: "I felt like I didn't belong there." | |

|Administrators say they never "knowingly" placed him into inappropriate classes or schools. They say Rocha "had chosen to give up on his own | |

|education" by rarely showing up to classes, according to a transcript of the hearing included in Fertig's book. But Fertig's account indicates Rocha | |

|floundered for years in a system that was simply overwhelmed. | |

|Hanging out in lower Manhattan one September morning in 2001, Rocha, then 12, witnessed the World Trade Center attacks from three blocks away and | |

|vowed to join the military. But five years later, he could still barely do simple work. | |

|"I'm about to be 18 years old in seven months and, what, twenty-something days?" he told a hearing officer. "And I don't want to turn 18 years old | |

|and not learn how to read. … I'm supposed to graduate high school. I'm supposed to go to the military. Where am I now? Where am I now?" | |

|Later, as he left his last tutoring session clutching a paperback children's biography of John F. Kennedy, Rocha rode the subway home with Fertig. He| |

|read the back cover aloud and tried to sum up his feelings: "It hurts," he said. "But it hurts like in a good happiness. I feel like a regular kid | |

|now." | |

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