For most of his life, Anthony struggled in school. In first grade, he was held back a year. By middle school, he’d been placed in an alternative school for children with problem behaviors. Then, at age 16, he was incarcerated after being charged with larceny and attempted assault. 

It wasn’t until roughly two years into his stint at Manson Youth Institute in Cheshire that Anthony, whose real name is being withheld for privacy reasons, was identified as having a language and speech impairment.

And he isn’t the only one.

A report from the Center for Children’s Advocacy, slated to be released this October, found that local school districts repeatedly failed to recognize the learning difficulties and traumatic experiences of young people at an early age. That left them vulnerable to disengagement from school, ongoing discipline problems and eventual involvement with the criminal justice system, the report found. 

CCA reviewed the special education records of 10 young men incarcerated at Manson — including Anthony — and found that most of them had experienced learning difficulties in elementary school. Yet it sometimes took years for them to be evaluated for special education services.

And while six of the 10 young people were eventually referred for special education services, most of them were already incarcerated by the time that happened. 

“What jumps out so much from these stories … is how much could have been done for these kids at a much earlier age. Because we are losing them by sixth grade, if not earlier,” Sarah Eagan, CCA’s executive director, told the state General Assembly’s Juvenile Justice Policy and Oversight Committee during a presentation about the report last week.

Andrius Banevicius, public information officer for the Department of Correction, said in a statement to The Connecticut Mirror that most young people who come into a DOC facility have already been identified as special needs, and that there are “well established protocols and procedures to refer students to the special education process.”

“The dedicated educational professionals of the department’s Unified School District (USD) #1 are committed to providing a supportive and effective learning environment for all of their students, especially those with special education needs,” said Banevicius.

According to the report, all 10 of the young people whose records the agency reviewed were reading below grade level. Four of them were held back a grade. One was held back three times. 

Andrea Spencer, an education consultant for CCA, said traumatic events “have a significant effect” on a child’s brain development. All of the young people were in some way affected by violence — ranging from experiencing child abuse to witnessing domestic violence or violence in the community. One was the victim of a gunshot.

Yet in eight of the 10 cases, there was no documentation in their education records about the difficulties they experienced. Eight of the 10 students also had notes in their records indicating that they had difficulties paying attention. 

“It seems that nobody really made the connection between the backgrounds of trauma of these young men and the hypervigilance that comes with that,” Spencer said at the meeting.

She added that the behaviors children exhibited after experiencing trauma sometimes resemble ADHD. Language difficulties were also a common thread among the young men, which Spencer said was linked to “problem behavior.”

Other researchers have come to similar conclusions. A 2020 study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry found that young people with developmental language disorder were more than twice as likely to reoffend.

Spencer said that difficulties with reading reinforced a belief that these students couldn’t function in school settings. As they entered higher grades, where learning relies more on reading texts, they experience heightened stress.

Being expelled or suspended multiple times and being sent to an alternative school for children with behavioral problems were common stories for the young people whose records the agency reviewed. 

Eight out of 10 were arrested before the start of high school. Four were incarcerated before ninth grade. 

Leo, another of the young men at Manson whose name was changed to protect his privacy, was expelled in seventh grade after getting into a fight with another student in the cafeteria. He didn’t go to school at all for a year. After that, he repeated seventh grade, then stopped going to school until he landed in juvenile detention, according to the report. 

“He had a very significant reading disability, and when he was actually given some instruction, he was identified as diligent, engaged, respectful, by all of his teachers,” Marisa Halm, an attorney with Brown and Patterson LLP who formerly worked with CCA — and directly with some of the young men in the report — said at the meeting.

Falling ‘through the cracks‘

Even when special education needs were identified, the young men weren’t assured of getting the help they needed. According to the report, the special education services they received at Manson were minimal.

Spencer noted that the youths at the facility already had “significant educational deficits” in reading and other areas that were important in order for them to thrive in the community. 

Last August, the federal Department of Justice reached a settlement with the Connecticut Department of Correction after a 2021 federal investigation found, among other things, that Manson Youth Institute was failing to adequately educate children with special education needs. Part of the settlement required the department to screen young men entering the facility for special education needs, create policies around reviewing and revising special education plans and document the services that the youths were receiving. 

Halm told CT Mirror that while DOC was evidently working to improve special education services in response to the settlement, she questioned whether they had enough time to give young people a full school day and the necessary number of staff to provide adequate services.

Spencer added that the youth typically received only about one hour per month in “transition services” — assistance for young people who are preparing to leave the education system and either attend college or enter the workforce. Halm noted that transition services were doubly important for these youth because they were not only leaving the school system, they were also preparing to exit prison and return to their communities. 

DOC’s Banevicius said transition services were offered to every special education student, “which aligns with state and federal mandates.”

Eagan, of CCA, said at the JJPOC meeting that it’s crucial to identify students with learning disabilities at a young age, particularly in schools that she called “feeder districts,” referring to the high proportion of students that end up involved with the criminal justice system. She said those schools — which are primarily in the state’s urban districts — needed resources to give students the support they needed.

The Center for Children’s Advocacy recommended that school districts conduct trauma screenings for students and that the Connecticut Department of Education increase oversight of alternative schools and private special education schools. 

“If we’re not looking under the hood at the programs in a systematic way, these are the kids who are going to fall through the cracks,” Eagan said.

Matt Cerrone, director of communications for the Department of Education, said in a statement that the department would consider the findings of the report, but added that there needed to be a broader response to address the challenges students face outside of school.

“As the report states, many of the challenges students face begin well before they enter school and are linked to early childhood adversity that can significantly affect long-term outcomes,” the statement read.

“Addressing these complex issues requires a coordinated, cross-sector response that begins early and extends beyond the school setting,” Cerrone continued. “That said, the Department will continue to examine how these findings may inform its role within the broader system of support for children and families.”