Was Diploma Earned? : Battle Erupts on Schooling of Dyslectic

HENNIKER, N.H. â€”  In June of 1985, a diploma arrived by certified mail at Karen Morse’s home here, signifying she had been graduated from Henniker High School.

This seemed the logical conclusion to a sparkling high school career. Morse in her senior year was class president, student council president, editor of the school newspaper and--by vote of the teachers--a member of the National Honor Society.

But to Morse and her parents, the diploma seemed entirely inappropriate. For despite her accomplishments, Karen Morse could not read at even a first-grade level.

Knew Only Nine Letters

Specialists who tested Morse before her senior year found she had only the scarcest knowledge of the written English language. She could identify only nine letters of the alphabet. She could not be examined on her ability to construct sentences, since she failed to recognize any of the required words. She wrote in a coded system of word fragments largely undecipherable to others.

She had, the specialists agreed, a severe language-based learning disability, one that often gets described as dyslexia. Morse could not perceive or process visual symbols. Letters on a page were to her meaningless markings.

How, her family wanted to know, could she be graduated from high school if she could not read?

The family called a lawyer. Soon after, they filed suit in federal court, arguing that the school district was obligated to provide or fund special education for Karen Morse.

Extended Debate Began

So began an extended debate, now unfolding in a federal courtroom and in the local community here, about the purpose and responsibilities of the public education system. Lawyers and educators across the country are watching the case with interest and some apprehension, for the questions it raises and the precedent it promises touch countless other students and school systems.

Although the terms of the discussion here remain largely on the moral and philosophical plane, the conflict begins as a question of law. The federal Education for All Handicapped Children Act, and corresponding state law in New Hampshire, require the state to provide a “free and appropriate� education to all handicapped children between the ages of 3 and 22, or until such time as they are graduated.

Just what, both sides in this dispute ask, is an “appropriate� education? And what should be the criteria for a diploma?

“The law doesn’t say we have to teach students to read,� said Cynthia Mowles, the Henniker school district superintendent. “We don’t cure blind children or deaf children, and we don’t cure those with learning disabilities. It’s a lifetime, incurable thing. We try to prepare students for living independent lives, to function in society. That is our goal.�

Karen Morse’s father, Wallace, sees it differently.

“The issue isn’t a cure,� he said. “I know you can’t cure this. But just as you teach the blind to read with Braille, so can you teach the dyslectic. You just have to teach in a different way. . . . I feel the system has to teach you to read and write. If you give a diploma without that, it’s a crime. It’s educational malpractice. It means a diploma is not worth anything.�

If there is any common ground in this dispute, it is a general regard by everyone for Karen Morse’s ability to negotiate her way so successfully through school.

The specialists at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Boston who studied Morse expressed amazement at her feat. They noted her “constant desire to achieve� and saluted her “ability and perseverance.� They filled pages of their evaluations marveling at what they called her “coping skills.�

‘My Sleaze Tricks’

But Morse herself, when talking of her success in school, more often credits “my sleaze tricks.�

She was aware from an early age that she had a problem. “I just didn’t know it had a name, or that it was a disability. I just thought I was different, that I was stupid.�

Other students began learning to read and write in the second grade. For her, the letters remained just meaningless marks on a page. She told neither her parents nor her teachers, not wanting to appear stupid.

Instead, she scrambled. Friends helped at times. She cheated on tests, cribbing from classmates. She took other students’ papers and wrote her name on them.

“I did whatever I had to do,� she said. “I was trying to survive.�

In the seventh grade, when she crossed the street from the elementary to the secondary school, cheating gave way to more sophisticated techniques.

When she had to write something, she obscured her deficiencies by scrawling illegibly. Her words began with two letters, then unraveled into meaningless wiggles.

Learned to Manage People

In class, she learned how to manage people.

“I had trouble understanding what people said to me, so when I was asked a question in class, I would act like a comedian, be really obnoxious. They wouldn’t call on me after that.�

Lacking a visual memory, she began relying upon what she did have--her auditory memory. This became her life raft in the world of written words that existed beyond her reach. She sharpened and expanded this skill much as a blind person might.

Unable to take notes or read the assigned books, she listened to and absorbed classroom lectures. She learned to glean from classroom discussions what the students had read the night before. Once she caught the drift of the conversation, she became expert at jumping in with her own comments.

Asked to read, or comment on a passage, she changed the topic by launching into an unrelated anecdote.

“I’d do something like say, ‘Oh, yeah, that reminds me, let me tell you about. . . .’ In high school, when I was no longer cheating, I was still sleazing.�

Athletically Active

But she did not, Morse said, seem all that different from her classmates. She associated with the athletically active crowd, the jocks, who were not particularly inclined toward studying anyway.

The curriculum involved more “rapping� than study of core subjects, Morse said. She cannot recall teachers’ assigning essay questions or book reports until the 11th grade. Through the ninth grade, students were evaluated with such terms as “outstanding,� “satisfactory� or “moderately satisfactory,� rather than given letter grades. Morse collected mainly satisfactories.

“Those few times when we were tested just on a reading assignment, I never stood out, because usually no one else had read the assignment either,� she said. “I blended right in.�

Then, in the ninth grade, Morse blew her cover. All of her friends were taking French. She wanted to be with them, so she signed up also.

‘Couldn’t Bluff That One’

“That was a great blunder,� she said. “If you don’t have a handle on English, it’s hard to learn a foreign language. I couldn’t even bluff that one. I got a pity grade, a D-minus.�

The French teacher became the first to recommend that Morse be tested for a learning disability. During the 1981-82 school year, she was finally identified as educationally handicapped. But the severity of her problem remained obscured. Her legally mandated “individualized education program� simply listed her primary disability as “speech/language� and her secondary disability as “mild learning disability.�

A special learning disability teacher began meeting with her three times a week, for 45-minute sessions, to study a speller. Some of her regular teachers took to accommodating her inability to read. They gave Morse examinations orally. They provided some taped versions of books. They made allowances for her written work.

At home, Morse’s parents, Wally and Barbara, realized that their daughter had problems with reading, but they did not understand the severity. Wally Morse, now 42, self-employed in a leasing and trucking business, completed only the 10th grade and has his own problems with reading and writing. Not until his daughter was diagnosed did he realize he had a similar problem.

Condition Came to Light

In Karen Morse’s junior year, her true condition finally came to light when a new learning disability teacher arrived at the school.

“She picked up on it right away,� Morse said. “There was nothing new in what I said or did. She just faced the situation. Up until that point, the school’s attitude was just to get me through the system and out. Now this lady was saying we had to do something.�

Morse first was sent to be tested at a nearby New Hampshire clinic. The clinic’s report was unequivocal. Karen Morse was the most dyslexic child they had ever seen.

Many professionals question the use of the term dyslexia, since few of them can agree on its proper use or what it involves. A good number of cases went undiagnosed until the malady became better understood in the last five years.

It is estimated that 10% of the population has some form of learning disability, but that figure involves those with minor problems, such as an inability to remember phone numbers. At least 2% are significantly disabled.

‘Misfiring’ in the Brain

The professionals also dispute causes. Most point to specific neurological problems, involving inherited irregularities in the formation of the brain. Some talk of a “chemical misfiring� in the brain.

“When I learned Karen had dyslexia, I tell you, the bottom fell out of my stomach,� said her father. “I felt we had failed, had not taken care of her. We had no idea of Karen’s condition. We went to school and demanded she get more testing and special programs. I just then started learning about the school’s legal obligations.�

In the late summer of 1983, shortly before Morse was due to begin her senior year, the Henniker school district sent her to Children’s Hospital in Boston for a thorough evaluation. She spent three days there in September, getting interviewed, examined and tested by a multidisciplinary team that included a pediatrician, a psychoeducational specialist and a psychiatric social worker.

They found that Morse could not read the most elementary subject matter. On one standardized test, her score placed her with the lowest 1% of all children entering the first grade. On a test of letter recognition, she scored below a first-grade level.

Jump Became Jupm

Asked to write, Morse produced samples using her own particular spelling system, one that involved the deletion of various letters and words and the combination of certain letters not commonly juxtaposed in the English language. She consistently transposed letters in a word--jump became jupm, left became letf--and she regularly omitted the letter n.

“The move Class was a eelent wast off 4.00. I let me col off in the are condisoner plas, becas it saw wery hot outsid,� she wrote in one sample.

The specialists understood that passage to mean, “The movie class was an excellent waste. . . . It let me cool off in the air-conditioned place, because it was very hot outside.�

The hospital team decided that Morse was bright, could solve algebra problems, could think well and could express herself verbally in excellent fashion--but suffered from an underlying processing disability that led to severe visual-perceptual limitations.

“This combination of disabilities,� they wrote, “leaves Karen unable to identify symbols, which is the foundation of our language. Without these basic skills, reading and writing become impossible tasks.�

Tutor Brought Improvements

But the specialists in their reports had another observation. They did not believe Morse’s problems were so great that she could not learn to read. They noted improvements in the limited time they spent with her, a period that included some tutoring. They could not ignore the implications this observation held for the Henniker school district.

In a letter dated Sept. 28, 1983, Dr. Alison Brent Anderson, the pediatrician coordinating the Children’s Hospital evaluation, offered a recommendation.

“Mr. and Mrs. Morse,� she wrote, “should seek (legal) counsel in regards to the possibility of the New Hampshire Public School System taking responsibility for Karen’s further educational needs.�

Whatever you do, Anderson told the Morse family in person, do not accept a diploma. That would end the school district’s obligations.

The Morse family, as it happened, did not at first find need for a lawyer.

Because Morse was entering her senior year so active in student government and the student newspaper, with classmates she had known since the first grade, all parties agreed that she should complete the 12th grade at Henniker High, although she would not receive a diploma. She would then enroll at the Landmark School, a private, nonprofit school for students with language disabilities, located on the coast northeast of Boston in Prides Crossing, Mass. The school district, faced with the Children’s Hospital report, agreed to pay the annual $17,000 tuition.

Honor Society Criteria

That a person unable to read might qualify for the National Honor Society and edit the school newspaper apparently was not a matter to be questioned by those making these arrangements.

The honor society criteria, Morse pointed out recently, involved such qualities as character, service and leadership along with scholarship. You needed only an 85 grade average (out of a 100) to qualify, she explained, and the standards at the school were such that this was not difficult to achieve. At the newspaper, she simply relied on the help of others. “I put it in my primitive form, then the adviser, also my English teacher, would polish it up.�

Morse’s considerable success at Henniker did not startle her Landmark teachers either, although they found her severely disabled when she began there in mid-1984.

“I am not so taken aback to see this,� said Steven Krom, the public school liaison at Landmark. “We’re working so often in these situations. The mode of operation is to pass students through classes. Whether they are literate or not, and whether they get a diploma, are not always connected. It is not unheard of for a school system--naively, ignorantly or maliciously--to pass a student through. It happens. It seems to have happened in this case.�

Morse at first found the Landmark experience disastrous. Her tricks no longer worked. Just read, the teachers said, whenever she launched into her jokes and anecdotes. There was no hiding.

She learned the alphabet. She built up a vocabulary. She studied syllable patterns. She was taught to break down words as if she were studying a foreign language. She was encouraged to use her auditory memory to learn to read, rather than to escape that task.

Morse’s reading abilities gradually rose from the first- to the fourth-grade level.

On May 28, 1985, the Henniker school district superintendent arrived at Landmark to hear a report from the private school about Morse.

This was a new superintendent, not the one who made the initial commitment to the Morses. Cynthia Mowles had assumed her post just months before. In her new position, she found herself facing daily the not-inconsiderable task of financing all the educational services she was required to deliver.

The Henniker school district’s current operating budget totals $1.8 million, supporting a student population of 467. Of that amount, a full $274,680, or 14%, is devoted in some way to special education programs for the so-called “coded� students.

Special Allocations

Such special allocations and treatment were not always so prevalent in the nation’s school districts. They have gradually come about through perceived need, court orders and legislative mandate.

When the Education for All Handicapped Children Act was being considered in Congress in 1975, only half of the nation’s 8 million handicapped children were receiving an adequate education. About 2.5 million were getting a substandard education, and 1.75 million were getting no education at all.

Several state and federal court decisions at the time began saying that handicapped children were entitled to receive free public school educations. These decisions had started to strap already financially pressed schools. Studies showed that the average cost of educating a handicapped child was almost twice that of educating a normal one.

So the law Congress eventually passed provided federal grants to states to help educate the handicapped--while also requiring that all states provide such an education.

Towns Bear School Costs

In New Hampshire, where there is no state sales tax or income tax, local communities must pay most of their own school costs. At the small town meetings characteristic of New England communities, school budgets get scrutinized much as a homeowner might eye his own grocery bill. Henniker, with a population of 3,100, is no exception.

“You talk about everything, right down to how many purple crayons to buy,� Mowles said one afternoon recently. “Salaries and individual costs are published. People will talk over the budget while shopping at the local stores. They know what’s going on. They can’t delete separate items, but they can cut the total amount of the budget.�

Large sums devoted to special cases draw particular attention in the community. Many in Henniker knew that over in Concord, the state capital, one severely handicapped child on a life-support system was costing the district $75,000 a year. The child was not even living in the district--just the parents.

“It is very difficult,� Mowles said, “to persuade the man in the woods making $12,000 a year that he should be paying for this.�

It was against this backdrop that Mowles listened to the Landmark staff recommend that Karen Morse attend that school for a second year. The annual tuition again would be $17,000.

Mowles did not require much time to reflect on this recommendation. After they had all finished talking, the superintendent informed the group that Henniker would not fund another year at Landmark for Morse.

Days later, Morse’s diploma arrived by certified mail at her family’s home.

Wally Morse now thought it advisable to call the family lawyer, Michael Gforerer, over in Concord.

Gforerer studied the wording of the federal and state laws. Both said much the same thing. When a school district makes a “change of placement�--that is, revises a handicapped student’s educational program--certain due-process safeguards must be observed. By sending a diploma, the Henniker district had effectively ended Karen Morse’s educational program. So, it seemed to Gforerer, this move certainly constituted a “change of placement.�

Not so, a hearing officer ruled in September of last year. What the diploma had done, the hearing officer said, was end the school district’s responsibility to provide special education for Morse.

Morse Allowed to Enroll

A new term was just then beginning at Landmark. The private school, although not paid, decided to let Morse enroll for a second year, hoping to collect the tuition eventually.

Last April 2, U.S. District Judge Martin F. Loughlin agreed with the Morses. Sending a diploma was indeed a change of placement. Federal and state law had been violated. He ordered the school district to conduct an impartial due-process hearing.

That hearing was held earlier this month, and a ruling is expected in late December. But the legal dispute is not likely to be resolved soon. The losing side most certainly will take the case once more to federal court.

Whatever the lawsuit’s eventual resolution may be, the case of Karen Morse has by now become much more than a legal dispute.

Letters from the community arrive at the family home, usually unsigned. We are shocked that you are asking us to pay for this, they say. Stop your whining. Stop blaming the school system. Karen is lazy and stupid. Wally and Barbara didn’t establish the proper moral-ethical code, didn’t make her strong enough to resist peer pressure and not cheat.

Karen Understands

Karen Morse, for one, understands this response. Now 20 years old, she works part time as sports coach and counselor at Landmark, while carrying three classes at Salem State College in Beverly, Mass., where she gets help from special tutors as she labors still with greatly limited language skills.

She knows the town had seen her as an active student leader, giving intelligent speeches at town meetings. Now they read in the paper that she is handicapped and needs special treatment. They can’t understand because they can’t see it, Morse tells herself. If I had lost my legs, they would understand. Why should they pay for that?

They should pay for that, her lawyer argues in turn, because the state has an affirmative obligation to find, diagnose and treat children like Karen. The professionally trained teachers should not have ignored Karen’s severe problems, despite her own efforts to hide them.

At the heart of this dispute remained another question, but it was one left largely unexamined as the arguments continued about due process and the Landmark tuition. Few here thought to ask, publicly at least, whether any student should receive a diploma if he cannot read or write.

‘No Longer Liable’

“You give a diploma for completion of a program,� Mowles said one afternoon recently. “The assumption is you complete the program by reading and writing. But some can do this by other means. This student attended the required number of years, completed the necessary course work and obtained the required credits to graduate. She has successfully completed a high school program. At that point the school district is no longer liable for her education.�

What she felt as a professional educator, the superintendent allowed, is not the same as what she must do as an administrator worrying about money. To look at the matter in any other fashion raised alarming implications.

There are a lot of other school districts facing this situation, Mowles said. Phone calls have come in from law firms all over the nation. There could be a big precedent set here.

She is not comfortable with students who read at any sub-par level. But, in reality, there are some students who simply cannot read. Are schools to be held accountable for them? And what is meant by reading? To sound words phonetically? To read the newspaper? To read books? And what else?

“Just where,� Mowles wanted to know, “do you draw the line?�