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Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recalled how much her public school teachers thought she needed a "catch-up education" because she had grown up in Spanish at home.
The first-year lawmaker, speaking Saturday in a lively public meeting organized by the Jackson Heights People for Public Schools party, said, "Child, I first spoke Spanish. … and I went to a school where no one looked like me. I went to a school where teachers thought I needed a remedial education because I spoke two languages instead of one.
It was only after passing a "high stakes" test in which she scored the 99th percentile of all levels, she said, that educators understood she did not need additional help.
"It took a test instead of understanding the child in front of them," said Ocasio-Cortez, who shared the stage with State Senator Jessica Ramos, wife of the Catalina Cruz assembly, and Professor Diane Ravitch, of the University of New York University, a major opponent of charter schools.
"This problem is structural and systemic, which means that we need a solution, just as in the case of the Green New Deal, we need a solution to the scale of the problem" said the legislator.
"I should never have the impression that being bilingual was a deficit," she said.
She also talked about her family fleeing their native Bronx to find better schools in the suburbs.
"My parents, they felt obliged to choose between their community and a quality school, a quality public school," she said. "They felt confronted with this choice we still see today 30 years later."
The left-wing legislator has plugged her Green New Deal, which includes initiatives such as free post-secondary education, into the Queens forum.
Ocasio-Cortez, born in the Bronx, said her parents had made the difficult decision to move to Westchester in order to qualify for quality public education. She stated that her whole family had "bought" a house in Yorktown Heights.
Describing public education as "one of the greatest jewels of the public good in the United States," Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said that after obtaining her undergraduate degree in the US Boston University in 2011, she was determined to return to the Bronx to "turn around". public education.
"I've seen that instead of being prompted to go an hour north in a public school, we are now encouraged to enroll in a charter school," he said. she said. "We should never feel the same way about our public schools. The moment we begin to feel this is when we should fight to improve it. "
The 29-year-old politician, who drew national attention when she became the youngest member of Congress and defeated incumbent Democrat, Joe Crowley, at a glowing primary school year. last year, was ovationnée.
AOC, which has partly benefited from a free higher education platform, owes between $ 15,000 and $ 50,000 in student debt, according to its revelations in Congress.
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