Last Saturday, I attended a forum on public schools organized by Jackson Heights Parents for Public Schools. Thanks to the appearance of superstar Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, the event drew some of the city’s leading education stars, such as State Senator Robert Jackson, who has been leading the fight for increased state funding for the city’s public schools for many years. There were other elected officials and representatives of advocacy groups, including Carol Burris of the Network for Public Education and Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters. There were also eloquent advocates for bilingual education, a popular issue in this largely Hispanic neighborhood.

AOC is the member of Congress for Jackson Heights. She was there to listen and learn.

I arrived about an hour early with my son-in-Law and grandson. We went to the nearby heavily trafficked Roosevelt Avenue but quickly realized that there was nowhere to get a slice of pizza, our usual fast food, but many places to buy tacos. My 12-year-old grandson showed off his excellent Spanish, while Grandma could barely remember her high school Spanish. What was most striking about Roosevelt Avenue was that it was thoroughly representative of the new multicultural America that frightens Trump. Side by side are Spanish, Asian, and Arabic shops, peaceably coexisting. I suddenly thought of Reagan in Berlin, standing in front of the Berlin Wall, saying, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” I wanted to say, “Mr. Trump, come to Roosevelt Avenue in the borough where you were born and see the new America.”

Before the event started, I had about ten quiet minutes with AOC. She is warm, comfortable in her skin, somewhat taken aback by her sudden fame, and unpretentious. When I walked in, she jumped up and hugged me as though we were old friends. Or her grandmother.

When the event got underway, the mood in the room was one of unity and purpose. The 400 or so who crowded into the meeting hall were there to support public schools.

There were cheers for more funding, smaller class sizes, less emphasis on testing, and more bilingual education.

Liza Featherstone and Jessica Blatt offer a good summary of the meeting here. 

There was much talk about the importance of parents taking action by opting out of state tests. NYC has one of the lowest opt-out rates in the state, in some part because parents are warned that they won’t be admitted to the middle school or high school of their choice without test scores. It was a bit jarring to hear AOC say that she was treatedin the Yorktown schools as in need of remedial education because she was Hispanic, not mainstream, but, she said, “a-high-stakes standardized Test” revealed she was in the 99th percentile. No one stopped to point out that she could not be referring to any high-stakes test used for accountability purposes because they don’t rank by percentile. They classify students as 1, 2, 3, or 4. Her teacher must have given her a no-stakes individual test that produces a percentile ranking for diagnostic purposes. Well, she can’t know everything about everything. None of us do.

The only controversy occurred during the Q and A session.

Someone asked AOC what she thought about Mayor deBlasio’s interest in changing the entrance exams for admission to the city’s most select high schools. Almost on cue, a group of protesters stood up and held signs saying that any effort to change the entrance exams would be “anti-Asian bias.” It was a tense few moments, and AOC wisely responded that the issue was one that dividedpeople who should be in the same camp, fighting for better schools, and that the issue was the inevitable consequence of a “scarcity mentality.” Why aren’t there good high schoolsfor everyone?

Several members of the panel told their stories. One was Jessica Ramos, the newly elected State Senator, who said she passed the single high-stakes exam that is the sole requirement for the top high schools but chose a local high school and received an excellent education. Ramos was very impressive. A parent, Kemala Karmen, said that her own child likely could have passed the exams but choseto go to a nonselective high school, is being well educated there, and has been accepted by good colleges.

All in all, it was a very satisfying day. The enthusiasm for local public schools was very strong. The eagerness to join together to make them better was palpable. All of the electeds turned out and spoke up, pledging to support public schools.

The people of Jackson Heights felt happy that they have so many top-notch elected officials working for them.

This is democracy at work.