Something clicked for New York State Inspector General Lucy Lang when she noticed similarities between her first-grade daughter and college-aged people in prison.
This was after stepping in as the state’s top watchdog in November 2021, and after Lang’s daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia. Lang observed that her daughter’s frustrated outbursts over lagging behind fellow classmates in reading were reminiscent of the lashing out that incarcerated individuals had described to Lang.
Prior to serving as the state’s inspector general, Lang, 42, was a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. In that role, she established a college program within New York City-area state correctional facilities. While teaching men and women behind bars, Lang often heard stories about past learning struggles leading to troubling behaviors.
These stories reverberated once her daughter was diagnosed.
"I started to see this kind of correlation between the acting out that she was doing because she was being left behind in the classroom, to some of the behaviors that my students would talk about that predated or contributed to their getting wrapped up in the [criminal justice] system," Lang told me recently over video call.
This observation was the catalyst for a two-year investigation into the ways in which all 44 state prisons and nine juvenile residential facilities teach reading and writing, particularly to people with language-based learning differences, such as dyslexia and dysgraphia.
The inspector general’s conclusion?
“A uniform system involving evidence-based literacy education is lacking,” Lang wrote in a Jan. 16 letter to Commissioner of Education Betty A. Rosa.
The inspector general’s hope is that as the state revamps its approach to literacy education in schools, people in prisons and juvenile detention facilities not be neglected.
"Whatever is happening with mainstream learners outside of prison should be provided to learners inside of prisons,” Lang told me.
If we don’t improve literacy education for incarcerated individuals, we will perpetuate disparities that lead to long-standing cycles of repeat offenses rather than helping to mitigate these disparities, Lang argues.
Her reasoning is hard to refute.
"It’s very clear to me, just logically, that this is a public-safety investment,” Lang told me. “We know how many people get wrapped up in the system and end up coming back into the system. If we have kind of a captive audience who we are able to provide programming to and help return to our communities, and get jobs, or finish school, or undertake any of the other activities that we know make it less likely that they commit another crime and get wrapped up in the system again, then we're all better off for it.”
New York is currently in the process of implementing foundational changes to the way schools teach reading and writing. The new approach is sorely needed as New York ranks 45th in the nation in literacy, according to data from the National Center for Educational Statistics.
The strategy includes state leaders’ embrace of a “back to basics” approach to reading that emphasizes phonics – think sounding out words. Long cast aside, the phonics-based approach has been newly championed by national literacy educators as a way to better develop early readers after a so-called “balanced literacy” approach, encouraging students to guess at unfamiliar words using pictures and context clues, has left many readers behind.
To implement the strategy in New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s latest budget proposal calls for spending $10 million to train teachers on a phonics-based approach. In addition, New York passed a law in December requiring the New York State Education Department to establish a dyslexia and dysgraphia task force.
Lang’s goal is to ensure that whatever comes out of this school-centered effort also changes the ways incarcerated individuals are taught to read and write.
The problem for Lang is she lacks authority. While her office has jurisdiction over the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision and the Office of Children and Family Services, Lang doesn’t oversee the New York State Education Department because its commissioner is appointed by the Board of Regents rather than the governor.
Hence, the need to write Commissioner Rosa a letter and essentially cross her fingers.
So far, NYSED has yet to reply.
In response to me, a NYSED spokesperson said addressing literacy within the criminal justice system has struggled to gain traction.
“In our budget and legislative priorities for the 2024-25 fiscal year, the Board of Regents and the department [NYSED] proposed the creation of a statewide hybrid high school for students in juvenile justice settings in collaboration with the Office of Children and Family Services. The department has proposed similar measures for the last three budget cycles, recognizing the urgent needs of the students outlined in the IG’s letter,” a NYSED spokesperson wrote in an email. “While this measure was not included in the Executive Budget this year either, we will continue to advocate for this important initiative.”
Hopefully state leaders will ultimately take Lang’s work seriously. In her letter, Lang notes that while about 20% of the general population experiences a language-based learning difference, the prison population faces a disproportionately higher rate. What’s more, 85% of young people involved with the criminal justice system struggle with literacy.
Changing literacy outcomes can change life outcomes.
That’s a sentiment Gigi Blanchard, 42, certainly buys into. She founded The Kite Zine, a storytelling and reentry program for incarcerated youth and adults in the New York City area, years after she entered the juvenile justice system herself at age 15.
Blanchard said her experience earning a GED while incarcerated in Illinois gave her confidence and inspired her to see a life outside prison walls. Now she sees her own students at Rikers Island and other facilities develop that same confidence, as well as camaraderie, as they enhance their ability to write and read.
“When they are coming home and they have learned to articulate themselves, it helps them. It helps with jobs, with relationships,” Blanchard told me. “Really, it helps with recidivism. It helps stop people from coming back in.”
Blanchard wants to see New York implement structured literacy programming to create consistency across facilities. At the same time, she wants that curriculum to be flexible enough to meet students where they are – for instance, some students may have the skills to think about crafting an essay, while others are better served by assignments asking them to share their opinion.
As the mother of someone with a language-based learning difference, Lang understands firsthand the frustration of programming that doesn’t fit the student.
“It's enraging as a parent to feel like your child is not being taught in a way that is conducive with their skills and their needs,” she told me.
Lang said she’s fortunate to be able to provide her daughter access to the right services, and her daughter, now in second grade, has made huge strides in her reading as a result.
But not all New Yorkers are as privileged, Lang said.
“This is a long game,” Lang told me. “We're talking about how over the course of a generation we are going to go from being 45th in the nation to the top of the nation in terms of our literacy. And that has to include the population who have been criminal-justice or juvenile-justice involved.”
Failing to heed Lang’s warning will fail us all.