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This week, NYC Mayoral Candidate Eric Adams spoke out about the disparities in the city’s public education system. Speaking to PIX11’s Ayana Henry and Henry Rosoff, he detailed exactly what he’d do to take the idea of reform right to the heart of the city Department of Education- and he’s got some powerful ideas about dyslexia screening.
Adams called for universal dyslexia screening to be made available across the city, something he mentioned he’d waste no time in implementing if he were to be elected. He cited an unnamed report that features some sobering evidence – that 30% of the city’s inmate population has dyslexia - and advocated mandatory screening for every child in the city. With a programme that that could identify dyslexia earlier, break the stigma and help learners get the support they need to succeed, there’s a lot of mileage in Adams’ idea: the school-to-prison pipeline is a hot topic within the global dyslexia community, and there's a wealth of evidence to suggest that poor literacy skills make the likelihood of an individual spending time in prison much higher.
He also wanted to take his educational reforms across the board and re-examine what funding criteria schools were assessed on, explaining that schools in areas with larger numbers of homeless households, high rates of criminality and low health and wellbeing needed funding enough to address those issues. “The barriers to education are not only what happens in the classroom,” he explained to PIX11. “The barriers to education are everything that happens to that child en-route.”
Eric Adams’ campaign for mayor isn’t all about education – as a former NYPD captain he’s seen a lot of the city and has a lot of ideas when it comes to the future, and in 2013 was the first Black person to be elected to the office of Brooklyn borough president.
There’s more on Eric Adams’ educational vision for NYC at PIX11 – and there’s more on the importance of screening at the International Dyslexia Association.
