ILLITERACY IN THE FACE OF "HIGHLY EFFECTIVE" TEACHERS©

Illiteracy in the Face of “Highly Effective” Teachers

Literacy in New York City is often discussed as if it were a technical issue. A matter of curriculum. Of funding. Of access. While those factors matter, they do not fully explain what we continue to see.

In a city filled with resources, initiatives, and reform efforts, the outcome remains the same: students who spend years in classrooms—present, promoted, counted—still leave without the ability to read with depth, clarity, and independence.

The numbers make that plain.

Across New York State, roughly one in five adults lacks basic literacy skills. In New York City, the picture is even more sobering—millions of adults require literacy support, whether in reading, writing, or English proficiency. Even among those considered “literate,” many read below the level required to navigate contracts, medical information, or legal systems with confidence.

The issue is not simply whether people can read. It is whether they can read well enough to live freely.

We have learned how to talk around this. We call it a gap. A challenge. An area for growth. But let the record show: when students move through an entire system without mastering a foundational skill, that is not a gap.

That is a breach. What remains missing from this conversation is language that reflects the seriousness of what is occurring.

In medicine, when a professional fails to diagnose or treat a condition, it is called malpractice. Education uses different language—but the dynamic is not different.

Students enter classrooms with a need: to learn to read with depth and independence. When that need is not met—over years, across classrooms—the result is not a gap.

It is harm.

Reading difficulty is often misinterpreted as behavior. A skill deficit becomes defiance. The response shifts, and the original issue remains unaddressed. In medicine, this would be called misdiagnosis.

What is avoided early returns later—when texts are more complex, support is reduced, and the consequences are harder to absorb. Intervention comes, but only after years of accumulated neglect. Malpractice does not always look like neglect. It can look like reassurance.

In classrooms, it often looks like niceness—lowered expectations framed as care, reduced rigor framed as support. In both cases, the short-term experience may feel humane.

The long-term outcome is not.

A physician is not considered effective if patients leave untreated. An educator cannot be considered effective if students leave unable to read. The difference is not in the harm.

It is in what we are willing to name. Part of what sustains that breach receives far less attention than policy.

Expectation.

Teacher bias does not always announce itself. It does not declare incapability. It does not present as hostility. More often, it shows up as adjustment: shorter texts, simpler questions, fewer demands for explanation, greater emphasis on completion over comprehension. Over time, those adjustments accumulate until rigor is no longer the standard—it becomes the exception.

Students feel this long before it is articulated. They learn how deeply they are expected to think, how much struggle is required, whether their ideas are worth pressing and refining.

They respond accordingly. Expectation, repeated consistently, becomes outcome.

This is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable. Some lowered expectations are not framed as bias. They are framed as care. What is called support can become something else: a quiet protection from rigor. Students receive more accessible texts, fewer opportunities to wrestle with complexity, quicker rescue when confusion arises. The intention may be to help. But literacy is not built in ease. It is built in the space where a student must sit with difficulty, make meaning, try again. When that process is interrupted—consistently, disproportionately—the result is not support. It is limitation.

This pattern is often misunderstood because it rarely presents as harm.

It presents as help. As patience. As understanding. As a willingness to meet students where they are.

In many cases, that is exactly what educators believe they are doing. But when that help consistently produces lowered expectations, softened instruction, and limited exposure to complexity, it becomes something else—something that must be named clearly.

Without naming it, the problem is misdiagnosed.

At this point, another question follows: is this white saviourism?

The answer is: at times, yes. Not as a label for individuals, but as a way to name a pattern—one rooted in a long-standing dynamic where help and care become intertwined with lowered expectations. In classrooms, this can take the form of softened instruction, reduced rigor, a quiet shift from developing capacity to managing completion.

It does not require intent. It does not require malice. It also does not produce outcomes. This is how saviourism operates in classrooms. Not through cruelty—but through niceness. What is “nice” about lowering expectations or promoting failure?

The niceness is not in the outcome. It is in the avoidance. Avoiding discomfort. Avoiding conflict. Avoiding the moment where a student struggles—where progress is slow, the work is hard, and the outcome uncertain.

Niceness, in this context, is not kindness. It is relief. Relief for the adult who does not have to hold the line. Relief from having to say, not yet. Relief from having to remain in the discomfort of the learning process instead of moving past it.

In the moment, it feels humane. It feels patient. It feels supportive. Over time, it produces the opposite. What is avoided in the present is paid for in the future. Lowering expectations does not remove struggle. It delays it.

And when it returns, it does so when the stakes are higher, the support is lower, and the consequences are harder to absorb. So the question is not whether niceness feels good.

It is whether it serves the student. When niceness replaces rigor, replaces truth, replaces the demand required for growth— it is no longer kindness. It is permission to fall behind.

Coddling the same students who are suspended at higher rates seems contradictory.

It is not. Lowered expectations and punitive responses are not contradictions—they are part of the same pattern.

In instruction, students may be protected from rigor. Given less. Asked less. Held to a different academic standard. In behavior, those same students are held to a stricter line—interpreted more quickly as disruptive, defiant, unwilling. A student may be under-challenged academically while over-penalized behaviorally. What looks like care in one space coexists with control in another.

A student struggling with reading may avoid tasks, disengage, act out. When that struggle is not recognized as academic, it is recoded as behavioral. Once that shift occurs, the response changes.

The student is no longer seen as someone who needs stronger instruction.

The student is seen as someone who needs discipline.

That is how the pattern sustains itself.

Less is required. Less is developed. Frustration builds. Behavior shifts. Consequences increase.

Over time, the record reflects behavior—not the conditions that produced it.

The issue is not whether students are being helped or punished.

It is that they are often under-taught and over-disciplined at the same time. Students move from grade to grade—advancing in age, advancing in placement—without consistent advancement in skill. Early reading gaps are carried forward, often unaddressed, becoming harder to close.

In earlier grades, this can appear manageable. A student may memorize, rely on context clues, complete tasks with support—still be promoted.

But literacy is cumulative. What is not mastered in one year becomes a barrier in the next.

Texts grow more complex. Expectations rise. Support decreases.

The gap, once small, becomes structural.

Students continue arriving in later grades without the literacy skills required to meet the demands in front of them. Students move forward. And the gap moves with them.

When they struggle, the focus shifts to intervention, remediation, or behavior—rather than the accumulation of missed instruction over time.

There is another layer often raised in this conversation: what does it mean that many teachers are rated “Highly Effective”?

The answer is this: in New York City, teachers are formally evaluated across multiple measures, with “Highly Effective” representing the highest designation. It is intended to reflect strong instruction, student engagement, measurable impact.

Yet the persistence of literacy gaps creates a clear tension: What does “highly effective” mean if large numbers of students are still not reading at a level that allows them to function independently?

At this point, another consideration must be introduced: what about Black educators?

The answer is this: they are not outside of this. They work within the same system, under the same pressures, within the same expectations of what is considered realistic for certain groups of students. These patterns can be reproduced across educators, regardless of race.

But let the record be clear about something else.

There is a difference between participating in a system and originating the logic of that system. White saviourism names a historical, structural pattern. Its reach is broad. Its impact is systemic. It can be internalized, adapted, carried out across identities.

The question is not who is doing it. The question is what expectations are being set, what instruction is being delivered, what outcomes are being produced. The outcomes are consistent.

Students graduate without proficiency, enter adulthood without full literacy, are expected to navigate systems that require far more than they were taught. When they struggle, the explanation is rarely systemic. It is often personal. That is the final injury.

If we are serious about literacy in New York City, then we must be equally serious about truth.

Promotion without mastery is not progress. Exposure is not instruction. Support that removes rigor is not support.

Literacy is not only taught through curriculum. It is taught through belief.

Through what is required. Through what is reinforced. Through what is allowed.

Let the record show: New York City does not have a literacy problem because its students are incapable. It has a literacy problem because, for too long, expectations have been adjusted instead of outcomes demanded—then called care.

Let the record show:

Students do not fail to learn to read when systems lower the demand, misread the struggle, and move them forward anyway.

So the question for educators is not abstract. It is immediate.

How many students have been passed to the next grade knowing they were not prepared?

How many names come to mind—without hesitation—of students you knew were not ready? 

At what point does awareness become responsibility?

Because this is not a question of what we know. It is a question of what we are willing to allow. Until that answer changes, the outcome will not.