Right-wing high school sued for leaving grad nearly illiterate

There's a handful of schools and school districts that seem to be the source of a disproportionate number of miserable moments in conservafoolery. Campbell County, Kentucky, is one. That town in Arkansas where they beat kids for not wearing uniforms is another. Another is Sissonville High School in West Virginia.

Sissonville has earned itself several lawsuits just in the past few years. One resulted when the school allowed Nazis to harass a student who wore an antiwar t-shirt and suspended the student for distributing flyers that the school disagreed with. Many of the students who attacked her were avowed Ku Klux Klan members, and a school board member called the antiwar teen a traitor right to her face. (The school's handbook incorrectly stated that constitutional rights "possessed by adult citizens do not extend to students.")

After the suit, the student was illegally denied the right to return to Sissonville High. The school later backed down.

Later the Kanawha County school bored and the principal of Sissonville High were sued because a student was illegally suspended for 10 days because he refused to join the school's "narc program" after he stuck a Smarties candy up his nose as a prank. Under this program, the school pressured students into going undercover in the restrooms to bust stoners. The suspension caused the student to miss a meeting with college recruiters who planned on giving him a scholarship.

Now the school board is being sued for educational malpractice. A 21-year-old man who graduated from Sissonville in 2004 says he can only read on a 3rd grade level because the school wouldn't do its job. Reportedly he had been diagnosed with ADHD.

Allow me to be perfectly frank: From the limited information I have, it's quite probable he has dyslexia, not ADHD. You can find countless accounts of people being misdiagnosed with ADHD when really they had dyslexia. Schools do this on purpose because a diagnosis of ADHD is usually countered with psychotropic drugs. Dyslexia is not. Prevalence of dyslexia could be as high as 17% of the population, so this is not an uncommon disorder.

This would actually boost the notion that the school neglected him. If you have a learning or other disability, federal law requires schools to make accommodations in the least restrictive manner. Clearly the school failed to do this.

It's hard to win a lawsuit against a school. Schools themselves are a protected class that's above the law in many ways. But hopefully the forces of good will prevail over Sissonville High's serial incompetence.

(Source: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1658/a01.html;
http://www.wsaz.com/news/headlines/16176872.html)