Steve Baranyk (right) and his wife, Susie (center). Photo courtesy of Atterbury-Balakar Air Museum

As a consultant, Steve Baranyk used his corporate background to advise Indiana’s state officials on how to reform its bloated bureaucracy and overhaul how public schools handle their spending. But the Purdue University-educated engineer and his wife have used their skills to help students in Indianapolis — an epicenter of the nation’s dropout crisis — overcome educational deficiencies and graduate from school. In this Voices of the Dropout Nation, Baranyk — a Dropout Nation reader and follower of the editor’s columns — offers insight on why reading is so critical to academic achievement — and why schools and families must take stronger roles in solving these issues. As shown at Dropout Nation in numbers, if you can’t read, you can’t do math. And you won’t graduate:

Christamore House is a neighborhood services agency located on the near-Westside of Indianapolis dedicated to serving the families of one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city.  Its programs include a series of youth outreach efforts to high school students to help them stay in school to graduate with a diploma.

In Indiana each student is required to pass an exit exam, the Graduation Qualifying Exam (GQE) to obtain a full diploma.  Each student has five opportunities to pass this test, which covers both Math and English, beginning in the first semester of their Sophomore year and ending in the first semester of their Senior year.  The subject matter tested is the same each time the students take the test although the specific questions may change.  In essence in order to obtain a full high school diploma in Indiana a student must demonstrate proficiency in both Math and English at the ninth grade level.

For four years, my wife and I tutored high school students one evening a week at Christamore House to help them with their academic progress.  As an engineering undergraduate I tutored in math while my wife, a speech and hearing therapy graduate,  tutored in English.  We also initiated a series of Saturday morning “seminars” on the GQE [which is being replaced by a series of end-of-course exit tests] to help these students prepare for the exam.  Many of the students we worked with had already taken and failed the exam.

My method in Math was to obtain copies of previous GQE math exams and to take the students through these question by question.  A student would come to the board and we would all work through the problem, the student at the board as well as those sitting down.  I also provided tutorials on problem solving methods to help them develop more effective skills.

During the first such GQE seminar, it became painfully obvious to me that most of the students were ill prepared to take the exam. Not because of limited math skills, but because they could not read sufficiently to comprehend the problem statement.  Once I explained the problem, most of them could work their way through the math mechanics.  But without the ability to read and comprehend the problem statement they were doomed.

And the saddest revelation for me was that these young people, from sophomores to seniors, knew they lacked the reading comprehension skills to pass the GQE. So they essentially gave up.  They had no hope of passing.

The director of Christamore House’s youth programs and I met with the administration of the high school that these students attended to ask if help might be available in the form of some remedial reading programs.  While we received a warm welcome and were politely listened to, they in essence told us they had no such programs available for these students.  And they had no real answers to the issue of how these students were allowed to proceed through the grades while lacking basic reading skills.

In my judgment, this experience represents almost criminal behavior on the part of the school system involved and the homes of the students.  It is obvious that the schools were well aware that these students lacked basic reading skills, and yet they allowed them to be passed on without remediation.  And it represents a broader societal failure as the homes from which these students came obviously place no importance on the basics of education.  They accepted failure as the norm.

While I do want to protect the identity of the school itself I do want to note that this school is not a part of the Indianapolis Public School district – it is one of the 8 other township school districts located in Indianapolis.  This particular school district is reputed to be one of the better school districts in Indianapolis. Indeed it has many successful graduates.  But it has demonstrated that it is not capable of dealing with some of those students most in need of help.  While I do not have this same first hand knowledge with other Marion County school districts, I can image that this condition is not unique to the particular school district involved.

Unless and until we, as a society, demand better performance from our schools, and demand that the homes from which these students come accept more responsibility for the academic success of their children,we will not solve this problem.  And if we permit this problem to continue we are sowing the seeds of the destruction of our entire society.  Failure is not an acceptable option.

Editor’s Note: In the piece, it was mentioned that there were six other townships in Indianapolis. That error, inserted during editing, was corrected.