DAILY DILEMMA: THE TEACHER WHO CRIED FOR OUR KIDS

A teacher at Wheatley High School here in Houston named Darius Williams broke down crying on his social media page this week.

Not because a student cursed him out.

Not because somebody was fighting.

He cried because some of his 17 and 18 year old seniors could not complete a basic reading and writing assignment.

Williams said they read two sentences together. He walked them through the material. They discussed the answers. Then all they had to do was complete a sentence.

Four words.

And some of them couldn’t do it.

That’s what broke him.

Williams said something else that really caught my attention. He said these students can reason. They can talk. They can defend an opinion. They can explain exactly what they mean when they’re speaking to their friends.

But ask them to take that same thought and put it on paper?

That’s where everything starts falling apart.

Before anybody turns this into another conversation about “these kids today” or makes it strictly about Black and Hispanic kids, understand something.

America has a literacy problem.

The latest Nation’s Report Card found that reading scores for high school seniors dropped again in 2024. The average score was lower than it was in 2019 and even lower than it was back in 1992.

And right here in Texas, only about one out of four eighth-graders reached the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress, widely known as The Nation’s Report Card), proficient level or higher in reading in 2024.

Houston was even lower.

Only about one out of five Houston eighth-graders reached that level. Forty-four percent were below NAEP Basic.

Now, there is still a serious racial gap.

Across Texas, about 63 percent of Asian eighth-graders reached NAEP Proficient or higher in reading. For White students it was 37 percent. For Black students it was 18 percent. Hispanic students were at 16 percent.

So yes, Black and Hispanic children are being hit especially hard.

But nobody should look at those numbers and think everybody else is doing fine.

If only 37 percent of White eighth-graders in Texas are reaching that standard, we have a much bigger conversation on our hands.

And here’s the scary part.

This doesn’t start senior year.

A long-running national study found that children who were not proficient readers by third grade were four times more likely not to finish high school on time than children who were proficient readers. Poverty made the odds even worse.

So by the time a teacher gets a 17 year old who struggles to turn his thoughts into four written words, we’re looking at a problem that may have been building for ten years.

That’s why I don’t want this conversation to become just another beatdown of teachers.

And I don’t want it to become a beatdown of these kids either.

I want to know how a child can move from third grade to fifth grade, from middle school into high school, and finally reach senior year without somebody being able to stop the train and say, “Hold up. We have to fix this before you move any further.”

Parents have a role.

Teachers have a role.

School districts have a role.

The system has a role.

And yes, our children have responsibility too.

Read with them when they’re little. Ask them what they’re reading when they’re older. Look at what they’re actually writing. Don’t assume an A or B on a report card automatically means everything is alright.

Because eventually somebody is going to ask them to fill out an application, write an email, explain themselves to a boss, read a contract or communicate something important without autocorrect and somebody else doing it for them.

That’s real life.

Darius Williams cried because what he saw bothered him.

Maybe what he saw ought to bother the rest of us too.

Because the question isn’t just, “What’s wrong with these kids?”

The better question might be:

How are children making it all the way to senior year without being able to read and write well enough to function after graduation?