Posted on 03/23/2019 1:56:03 PM PDT by Kaslin
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez starred in a Jackson Heights town hall meeting on Saturday. While it was formally organized by Jackson Heights People for Public Schools, AOC was the highlight and the reason most attendees showed up. As expected, many radical progressive proposals were presented, e.g., stop suspensions, eliminate standardized testing, remove white teachers, but for the most part, they were not proposed by Ocasio-Cortez.
At the meeting, speaking about her own education, Ocasio-Cortez recounted that when she was about to start school at the age of five, her family decided the schools in her Bronx neighborhood were bad and they did not want to send her to them. Her family pooled their money so they could buy a house in Westchester, where she could attend better schools. In the 1960s and 70s, many New York City families did the same thing as the Ocasio-Cortezes and it was dubbed “White Flight.”
Hearing this story amidst all these progressive education advocates begs a question: Why is it that when Ocasio-Cortez’s family felt the schools in their neighborhood were bad and they fled to the suburbs, that's okay, but when Asian immigrants who do not have the means to do what Ocasio-Cortez’s family did instead have their children work hard to gain admission to a Specialized High School, progressives want to deny them this opportunity?
Ocasio-Cortez discussed her experiences attending school in Westchester. She said at her school she was the only student who “looked like her." She explained that because of this, she was subject to discrimination by the teachers and administration of the school. The school wanted to label her learning disabled, but fortunately, she was saved because she was given a standardized test on which she scored in the 99th percentile. Again, another question arises: Why, while Ocasio-Cortez’s personal experiences are that objective standardized testing saved her from educational discrimination, the progressives who idolize her want to eliminate the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) and replace it with admissions criteria which are much more subjective and vulnerable to bias?
Later at the town hall, several speakers criticized the SHSAT. These criticisms elicited raucous protests from a group of vocal Asians parents. These Asians parents held up signs which read “Anti-SHSAT = Anti-Asian," “Equity! A Code Word for Anti-Asian” and “Stop Progressive Asian Racism." In response to these protests, Ocasio-Cortez got up and spoke about her father’s experiences attending Brooklyn Tech.
Although Ocasio-Cortez’s father was Hispanic and grew up in what Ocasio-Cortez called a bad neighborhood in the Bronx, he worked hard, took the SHSAT and was admitted to Brooklyn Tech. She spoke about how her father had to wake up at 5 a.m. and take the subway from the Bronx to Brooklyn. She also stated that in the 1970s, when her father was in high school, the subways were dangerous (without making the connection to which political policies made the subways dangerous and which policies made them safe again).
By Ocasio-Cortez’s account, her father received a great education. Mr. Ocasio should be commended for his hard work and dedication to education. Once more question comes to mind: Why is it that progressives want to deny hard working children the same opportunity to attend a great Specialized High School that Ocasio-Cortez’s father had?
While the town hall was a chock full of the type of destructive education proposals I expected to hear, it was surprising to hear otherwise from the progressive media star. Ocasio-Cortez, through describing her own life experiences, made excellent arguments for keeping the SHSAT as the sole admissions criteria for the Specialized High Schools. Thank you, AOC.
I don’t believe for a minute she ever tested in a 99th percentile.
Maybe the 99th percentile if you exclude whites and Asians.
Probably 99th percentile on the Moron Index.
No way. She makes the list of dumbest politicians ever.
Interestingly, the vast majority of students have a unique appearance. Even some identical twins do not have another person who looks like them.
The school wanted to label her learning disabled, but fortunately, she was saved because she was given a standardized test on which she scored in the 99th percentile.
I hate to say it, but the level of economic ignorance she routinely displays, degree in economics notwithstanding, supports the school's wisdom in this assessment. Furthermore, doing well on standardized tests does not mean a student is not learning disabled. My own learning disabled son did fantastic on standardized tests, always in the 99th percentile.
Maybe 99th permillile.
I actually believe her, though you should take it with a grain of salt because I was only 98th percentile.
She is a human chameleon, a very good one. That takes brains.
Schools of whatever kind obviously didn’t work on her.
As for Boston University - run from it.
Some in society are only best suited for their tipsy top ability in life. AOC’s ceiling is Barmaid.
Who did she copy?
I’m sick and tired of this ignorant little twitbag! Ugh!
has anyone pulled her yearbooks? I find it hard to believe that any school in NY had no latinx, considering it was the height of de-segregation in the North.
Idiot. If she scored in the 99th percentile they were not discriminating against her. They taught her well.
I’ll tell a personal anecdote. I was always a decent kid and I always learned a lot and asked a lot of questions, but I was never really very good at taking orders. In the 8th grade my family moved mid-year so I switched schools. It was traumatic for me, new home, new school, no friends, new teachers. I never did my English homework. Or at least I never turned it in. The teacher gave me a D. At the end of the year though we had a classwide spelling bee, which I won. Figure that out, right?
So then in the 9th grade, high school, because of my D grade I was put in remedial English. Remedial is an understatement. These kids didn’t know the alphabet. The classwork was ridiculously simplistic, I could finish it in minutes and was embarrassed to always the first to complete it so sometimes I would wait for someone else to turn theirs in before I did. I always got it 100% correct. It didn’t take long for the teacher to realize I didn’t belong in remedial, I belonged in Honors. She fought for me because the administration and the honors teachers both didn’t want me to move.
I don’t blame racism, classism, sexism, whatever. I made my own bed by not doing the work, I rebelled, so I got a bad grade. And from that grade the administrators inside a bureaucratic system stereotyped my abilities and put me in the dummy class. What I did learn was that some people go by the book, some people will fight for what is right, some people are status-quo bureaucrats, some are paper-pushers, some are stubborn, some grumble and hold grudges when imposed upon, and rare is the person who actually cares about the fate of another inside these systems. At this point, I truly believe public schools do more harm than good.
I am 100% for school choice. Everyone will come out better including the good teachers out there. The only losers will be the bureaucrats, politicians and the union bosses.
In Yorktown 15 years ago? That sounds like . . . shinola.
“I don’t believe for a minute she ever tested in a 99th percentile.”
Hate to break the news to you, but this chick is absolutely BRILLIANT.
After all, she, almost single-handedly, brought House Speaker NANCY PELOSI TO HER KNEES.
This is serious stuff. The plan was to teach Rep. Omar a lesson about calling rich Jewish donors expecting something in return...well, “Rich Jewish donors expecting something in return”
That was PURE HERESY - and for that Ms. Omar was about to pay, BIG TIME. But guess what happened - AOC said punishing her was NOT ACCEPTABLE, and with that Pelosi folded.
AOC is NOT DUMB - she also brought just about every Democrat candidate to her “Green New Deal”, and yet, to this day, she has yet to tell us how she plans to convince cows to stop farting.
AOC is now RUNNING THE SHOW - she is anything but stupid. Maybe pure evil, but NOT stupid.
You are correct. Intelligence and wisdom are two separate things. Hitler was intelligent, Forest Gump was wise. She is very smart, and evil. She’s on a mission, and it is the folly of her mission that needs to be challenged, not the stupid things she sometimes says, perhaps deliberately so we don’t focus on the real electoral vulnerability of her agenda.
She lends herself to lying quite often so it wouldn’t be surprising if her life stories were fabricated. However the youth don’t care.......she has popularity and that’s all they see and ‘follow’.
“She is a human chameleon”.....
She’s been taught to feed her followers a ‘perception’ ....all Demorats operate in that vein. Doesn’t take a lot of brains to learn or do that. Her problem is she forgets what she’s been scripted to say so another avenue for her to go is to talk about herself in the best light she can deliver. THAT she is good at developing as she goes.
An example is saying her poor dear daddy had to get up at 5:00 to leave for work........as if that’s something new to the working class of people...it’s not.
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