Moira's ESA Case Study

Moira McCarthy is now in fourth grade, but her educational journey has been anything but typical. From an early age, Moira struggled with speech and language, and by kindergarten and first grade, it was clear she was falling behind her peers.

“I had been begging them to test her because she was not up to par with the other kids,” her mother Stacey recalls of Moira’s early years. But despite Stacey’s repeated pleas, the school  only maintained Moira’s early speech accommodations, expanding them slightly but never fully addressing her academic struggles.

“She was coming to the car with her head down. It was terrible,” Stacey remembers. “Kids were making fun of her already in first grade, calling her stupid. She felt like she couldn’t keep up. She knew she was different from everybody else. She just didn’t understand why.”

The Breaking Point

Moira’s challenges were compounded by personal tragedy. Her father had passed away previously in a car accident, leaving her mother a single parent to three children.

Balancing work with the needs of the children (two with dyslexia and ADHD) was overwhelming.

The school environment only made things worse. Their reluctance to act left Moira increasingly isolated. Stacey describes the toll as extensive, affecting every
aspect of family life.

“The principal had to come out to the car and pick her up out of the car and bring her into school. She hated it so much,” she laments. “It was always just chaos…
very stressful, because I would get calls during the day all day long. Couldn’t work. I was running back and forth to the school.”

Stacey’s experience with her older son, who also has dyslexia and ADHD, made her determined not to repeat the same mistakes. “He barely graduated. So I knew what was coming if I didn’t do something.”

Finding a Solution: INESA and Fortune

Stacey took matters into her own hands. She had to wait six months to get into a specialist, but that appointment allowed Moira to get extensive testing, resulting in diagnoses of ADHD and dyslexia.

Around the same time, a pivotal recommendation came from Moira’s summer tutor, Mrs. Marcia Servaas, an expert in the Orton-Gillingham program. She told Stacey to look into Fortune Academy, a specialized school for children with language-based learning differences.

“It was very scary to change schools when we live a minute from the school that she was attending,” admits Stacey. “But the summer after first grade, when I saw the progress that Moira made with tutoring three hours a week only, I just reached out and said, ‘Can we come?’ And they had open arms.”

The move was only possible because of Indiana’s Education Scholarship Account (ESA) program, which she learned about in her initial conversations with Fortune Academy.

“If I hadn’t been able to get the grant, I couldn’t have done it,” she admits. “It’s a lot of money – a very expensive school.  But it’s worth the cuts that we’ve had to make to get her there.”

A Different Kid

The change in Moira has been dramatic. Stacey says she’s a different kid, who now gets excited about school. She’s gone from being unable to read three letter words to reading, writing sentences and passages, and is able to do her homework by herself.

She even won the Young Author Award at her school after turning her weekly journal assignments into 19 consecutive stories. She was thrilled to be invited to visit a younger class and share her journey with them.

The new school environment is not just about academics, but about the whole student. Moira is no longer an outcast. She is recognized for her strengths and supported in her challenges.

“Every aspect of the program is encouraging, building up,” Stacey explains. “She is thriving. It’s been a blessing and I’m so relieved. It’s like I can finally breathe again. And she’s happy. She has friends, she does art. Her artwork has even been featured at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.”

The McCarthys’ story is a call-to-action for parents, educators, and legislators to support educational options. Stacey notes that every child deserves the chance to thrive, no matter how they learn.

“There was nothing ‘wrong’ with Moira,” she asserts. “She just needed a different way of learning.”