Why Cant U Teach Me 2 Read?

New York City voters gave Michael Bloomberg a narrow win in yesterday’s mayoral election. Bloomberg spent an estimated $100 million to beat Comptroller William Thompson. Much of that money paid for mailers, ads, and robocalls boasting about Bloomberg’s record on crime and education.

Bloomberg made education a priority in his first mayoral run, back in 2001. He vowed to do for public schools what Rudy Giuliani had done for public safety.

Today we’re going to learn about three kids who slipped through the cracks of New York’s educational system. Beth Fertig is a DuPont award-winning senior reporter for WNYC Radio in New York City. In 2006, she met Yamilka, a young woman who graduated from a South Bronx high school knowing only eight letters of the alphabet. At 22 years old, Yamilka would get lost because she couldn’t read the subway signs.

Fertig found other graduates who were completely illiterate, and in the process, uncovered deep divisions in education policy and expensive attempts to compensate for a failing system. She tells those stories in her new book Why Can't U Teach Me 2 Read?: Three Students and a Mayor Put Our Schools to the Test. Beth Fertig joins us from WNYC Radio in New York.