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David Furst: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm David Furst in for Alison Stewart. According to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, about 20% of people in the world have dyslexia. A new documentary explores how New York City's public school system has been failing students with dyslexia and focuses on a group of parents determined to do something about it. The film is titled Left Behind and it follows the Literacy Academy Collective, parents who were tired of seeing their children struggle to get the help they need within the public school system.

In 2023, they opened the city's first public school dedicated to literacy. The group pushed Mayor Eric Adams on the issue. Adams, who said he was diagnosed with dyslexia in college, has launched more dyslexia screenings for kids across the public school system, but advocates say there is still more to be done. Left Behind is screening as part of the DOC NYC Festival, including two in person screenings tomorrow night and Thursday morning.

We are joined right now by the director, Anna Toomey. Welcome.

Anna Toomey: Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me today.

David Furst: Listeners, we want to hear from you in this conversation as well. Do you have dyslexia? How did it affect your education? What kind of support did you get in school, if any? Or maybe you're the parent of a child with dyslexia in the public school system. What has your experience been like? Give us a call. 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Anna, what made you interested in this story of kids with dyslexia navigating the New York City public school system?

Anna Toomey: I first became aware of the issue when our own son was diagnosed with dyslexia. He was in the public school system and they weren't able to recognize that he had dyslexia. They weren't able to test him. Then once we were able to get him tested, they weren't able to give him the education support that he needed to learn how to read. What tends to happen with kids is they get to school, they aren't able to do it and they aren't able to read.

It becomes this incredibly frustrating, sad experience for them. It's the first thing that they're supposed to do when they go to school is learn how to read and they're not able to do it. With our own son, he became very angry about the situation and I recognized as a storyteller and a journalist, if I'm having trouble getting him help in the public school system, clearly there's other parents that are having the same issue as I am.

David Furst: You talk about the anger that was starting there and probably increasingly negative interactions with teachers.

Anna Toomey: Yes, exactly. For a child, they talk about that something in my brain is stopping me from learning how to read. With dyslexia, you can see a letter, but you don't recognize the sound it makes. For a child, I think it's incredibly confusing and they don't understand why their peers are having such an easier time at this than they are. A lot of kids tend to act out. They tend to become disinterested in school and they are labeled as sometimes problem kids, lazy, and they think of themselves as not being smart. Right away, they turn away from education.

David Furst: When you first started working on this film, what kinds of programs or support systems were there for dyslexic students within New York City public schools?

Anna Toomey: Really they have some programs, but one of the problems is they tend to let kids fail. They won't say that there is an issue until the child is in third, fourth grade. By that time a child has already failed in school. They're not able to read, they're far behind, they're not doing well on tests.

At that point, it's really difficult to catch up. By not recognizing this in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, you're really setting up a child to fail. That's the real problem with this. There wasn't any resources that-- there was some pull-outs that he had, but not resources that really could help him to learn to read.

David Furst: You mentioned those evaluations. You really focus in, in this documentary on how many people struggle to get those evaluations, to get their child evaluated and diagnosed. One mom in your documentary says she spent, I think it was $15,000 to get her children evaluated. Why can it be so difficult, so expensive to get a dyslexia diagnosis?

Anna Toomey: You have to have something called a neuropsych to get an actual official diagnosis of dyslexia. Those tests can cost up to $8,000. It really is cost-prohibitive for most people. You can get evaluated earlier on and if you don't have money to pay for a neuropsych, the school can pay for it or the schools can offer help to get a neuropsych, but that is usually years. There's a huge waiting list for that as well as the school has to then say, "We think this child is dyslexic and we will pay for this evaluation."

That's what happened with one of our characters, Fatima. She knew her child was struggling and she said to the school system, "He can't read. He's a really smart kid. I've been trying to teach him how to read at home. He's been in your school for four years. He can't read." They would just continue to deny him an evaluation. That's what tends to happen is especially in lower-income, marginalized communities, they are not being diagnosed and parents are being denied services.

David Furst: We're speaking with director Anna Toomey about her new documentary, Left Behind. We are taking your calls. If you'd like to join this conversation, give us a call. 212-433-9692. Let's hear from Brian calling from Bayville. Welcome to All Of It.

Brian: Hi. Thank you.

David Furst: Did you want to share?

Brian: Yes. I grew up and was diagnosed with dysgraphia, which is similar to dyslexia but more to do with writing when I was in fourth grade, and I was lucky enough to have a dedicated teacher who really realized something was wrong and a dedicated parent who was ready to fight the school system to make sure I got the diagnosis. Once I got the diagnosis, it completely changed my education. I started to like writing a lot more. The couple of little accommodations that needed to be made really helped me.

I wasn't as afraid of spelling. I had pull-out lessons here and there, but I was mostly able to stay in my general education classes. That diagnosis was hugely important for my life now.

David Furst: Brian, thank you for sharing. Anna, something that Brian just said then, talking about having a dedicated parent on your side is something that really resonates with what we see in your documentary.

Anna Toomey: Yes. The film itself follows these five moms. All either had children with dyslexia and were denied services within the school system, or one of our moms was a structured literacy specialist. She taught kids and tutored kids who were dyslexic. She really was a teacher in the school system, felt like she did not get the instruction that she needed to teach these kids, and so she had to go outside the system. These women really were fighting for all of the kids. There's 200,000 kids potentially in the New York City public school system who are dyslexic.

David Furst: At the very end of your, you talk about the kids that are in this new school. How many total in the school?

Anna Toomey: The first year it started with 67 students. Now it's up to 98.

David Furst: That's great, but it doesn't begin to scratch the surface.

Anna Toomey: Exactly. It's a huge win. These moms fought for three years to get the school and it's really an incredibly inspirational journey of really how you can make change. That's the hope with this film, is that it will really inspire people to make change in their communities.

David Furst: Brian, thanks again for sharing. Let's also hear from Shelly in Manhattan. Welcome to All Of It.

Shelly: Hi, can you hear me?

David Furst: Oh, yes, definitely.

Shelly: Oh, great. I'm a retired teacher and at one point, I had gone for the New York City Department of Education and I had gone privately to study Orton Gillingham, which is a very well respected and effective methodology for addressing dyslexia, can really even rewire the brain. I was shocked that this was not being used more often in schools or programs like it that are known to be effective. As I retired a few years ago, there was not, even when I left, a disability classification on an IEP that would say you could not have dyslexia as a disability classification, even though the numbers of students who have dyslexia are so great.

I never understood that total lack of acceptance or even acknowledgement that it is a disability classification and unwillingness to use proven techniques for addressing it.

Anna Toomey: Yes, exactly. Thank you so much for telling us your story. I've talked to so many teachers who feel the same way. They know exactly what works. There's proven methods to teach kids with dyslexia. Orton Gillingham is one of them. We know it works and it will help kids, especially the younger they are exposed to structured literacy, to an Orton Gillingham curriculum, they will progress immensely and be able to read and have that confidence and self esteem.

Every child deserves to have that free and appropriate education. That is what is the law. Right now that is not happening for kids with dyslexia because as you said, it isn't on the IEP. You don't have a Dyslexia diagnosis on an IEP. You have struggling readers, you have reading disabilities, but not dyslexia in particular. It means that within the system, you don't have school psychologists who are able to diagnose it or to even recognize it. It's the same with teachers.

I think teachers very much want to help these kids, but they haven't been given the instruction in how to do that.

David Furst: We're getting a lot of calls and texts right now. I want to share a text right now. Someone writing in to say, "My daughter is dyslexic. I agree with everything your guest is saying. The school denied the dyslexia. We lived in an affluent community, but I don't have the money for the dyslexia services. The school just said she had ADHD. She had that, too, but the dyslexia was getting in the way of her learning how to read."

Anna Toomey: A lot of times, that's what happened to us, too. Our son did not have ADHD, but they had said that maybe this was attention issues, and maybe he did have ADHD, but they never would talk about the idea that he is dyslexic. Again, I talk to parents all of the time that have that same story. "It's everything else, but he can't read." "Oh, it's a behavioral problem and we should suspend him or her. Maybe they should go to a special education class," where they won't learn how to read.

That's what leads to-- 50% of incarcerated individuals are dyslexic. Really, that is the most shocking statistic that I found out while researching this film. You see that really occur, how that school to prison pipeline very clearly occurs for dyslexia.

David Furst: I want you to comment a little bit on how crushing and isolating this can be for a child, because we just got a text here. Someone says they were always punished for not being able to get their work done, made to stay after school for being "lazy. I spent a good deal of third grade in the corner. My dyslexia has kept me from reading all of my life. Fortunately, I can write, which is part of what I did to make a living. Now my computer reads back to me." Can you talk about that isolating experience?

Anna Toomey: Yes. We saw it with our own son, but in the film, I met many, many other children who were experiencing or had experienced that same feeling. One of the saddest is in our film, we spoke to Elijah, who ended up in prison. He was never diagnosed. He said to me every day the teachers would call home and they would talk to his parents about he isn't doing the work, he's lazy, he's this. He was constantly getting in trouble. He recognized he felt like he had no purpose in life.

His really only way out was getting into trouble. That's where he felt like he belonged, which is so incredibly sad, but that feeling of you're being made fun of by kids in your class, teachers think that you aren't smart or you have behavioral problems and other parents, the same thing. Really, a child feels it from all different angles that they are inadequate.

David Furst: Let's try to get to a couple more calls right now. We have a lot coming through at the moment. Jennifer in Queens, welcome to All Of It.

Jennifer: Hi. Thanks so much for having me. I just wanted to share my family story. I'm actually a foster and adoptive parent, and my now daughter came to me at the end of third grade. She had an IEP in school, but it was for emotional issues because she would act out a lot, express a lot of the anger that your guest spoke to. It really wasn't till COVID when I was at home doing some work with her, that Honestly, within five or 10 minutes, I was like, "There's something going on here. This is not just resistance. She doesn't see what I see when she's writing and reading."

For her, it actually was more related to her writing. I do think that's less understood with dyslexia, that it's not just about when you read a word, the letters flip around, but it can also very much impact one's writing. I paid for one of those expensive evaluations, and it took about a year with her very highly regarded elementary school to get them to switch her IEP to have her classified as having a learning disability, not an emotional disability.

I will say, I guess, two things. One is, I think this was also exacerbated by the fact that the schools were using this other method for reading and writing that make up the spelling and use the context word. I can't remember what they called it, but it basically meant that kids who are struggling in this way weren't identified or were less likely to be identified because it was like, "Well, we're not focusing on spelling and we're not focusing on these things. We just want kids to write whatever."

That kept kids who really couldn't do those things from being identified early.

David Furst: Thank you so much for sharing that. I want to also get to a retired New York City teacher calling right now. Kim in Delray Beach, Florida. Welcome to All Of It.

Kim: Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm so blown away by the program, and I can't wait to see the film because, for me, I can validate everything everyone is saying. The parent that was just on. It's so sad because I taught middle school and I can't tell you how many kids I would get each year, I taught sixth grade, that went through elementary school and were never diagnosed, and they missed out on six years of education. It was very obvious.

As a middle school teacher, on the teacher side of it, I had three classes of 33 kids. In 45 minutes, I had to teach 33 kids.

David Furst: That's what you were up against.

Kim: Yes. It's very hard to give individual help, especially when you only teach a subject, not a whole curriculum. There's a lot of challenges in the department. My opinion is that the system is based on John Dewey from over 100 years ago, and we have a new paradigm, new people.

David Furst: We have so little time left. I thank you so much for joining us and letting us know about that. I want to get you to react to that a little bit, Anna. Are New York City public schools uniquely bad when it comes to helping kids with dyslexia?

Anna Toomey: It's across the country. It really is. We profile New York City and looked at New York City itself, but it's across the country. I've spoken to parents, teachers that have the same story. That's what we hope with this film, is that we can show a little bit of, "Here's what these moms did in New York City, the largest school system in the nation." The real hope is that when we show this film, how can we change systems really across the country? Because it needs to be through public education. That will reach the most amount of people, the most amount of kids. It really is across the country, unfortunately.

David Furst: Just about 10 seconds here. Have you been keeping up with the collective and the school and how they're doing today?

Anna Toomey: Yes. They're doing fantastic. The first year, 75% of the kids made two to three-grade-level advances, and they're all doing great.

David Furst: Oh, my gosh. Left Behind is screening as part of the DOC NYC Festival, including two in-person screenings. There's one tomorrow night and one Thursday morning. The screening tomorrow night will be followed by a Q&A with you that's happening tomorrow, 7:15 at Village East by Angelica. The Thursday screening is happening at 11:15 in the morning at IFC Center. Director Anna Toomey, thank you so much for speaking with us.

Anna Toomey: Thank you so much for having me. This was a pleasure.