Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) claimed that as a young child school administrators determined she required remedial education due to her use of Spanish and ethnic appearance.
Ocasio-Cortez added that only after taking a “high stakes” standardized test and scoring in the 99th percentile, did her school see the error of its ways. (Hot Air)
That sounds like … a good argument for breaking the public-school monopoly on education rather than fortifying it, no? Wouldn’t a charter school, with its heightened responsiveness to parents, have worked more closely with Ocasio-Cortez’ parents from the beginning?
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Anyone watching Ocasio-Cortez blunder her way through public policy and reality over the last several months might have difficulty believing she scores in the 99th percentile on any kind of aptitude test. The story is difficult to buy for other reasons, too. It’s not as if Ocasio-Cortez was among a vanguard of New York students who primarily spoke Spanish at home; by the mid-1990s, that had been an issue for generations. It seems highly doubtful that an issue of speaking Spanish alone would have landed Ocasio-Cortez in remedial education at a New York City public school, except perhaps only to catch up on English-language skills.
This smells like myth-making on Ocasio-Cortez’ part, although it’s possible that she’s just regurgitating what her parents told her about her early education. Why anyone would tell their child that their school thought they were developmentally disadvantaged is another matter, but it’s not impossible either. Hanlon’s Razor applies here: Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. In Ocasio-Cortez’ case, it’s almost always safer to rely on the latter as it exists in such abundance.
AAN Staff
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