Press Release
March 19, 2019
Charlie Vavruska
AOC Education Town Hall Draws Asian Protests
Attack on Academic Merit Seen as Attack on Opportunity
On March 16, 2019, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez starred in a Jackson Heights education town hall meeting. While it was formally organized by Jackson Heights People for Public Schools, AOC was the highlight and the reason most attendees showed up. Many radical progressive education proposals were presented, e.g., stop suspensions, eliminate standardized testing, remove white teachers.
During the town hall several speakers criticized the SHSAT (Specialized High School Admissions Test). The SHSAT is an objective and merit based test used as the sole admissions criteria for the Specialized High School including Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech are among the best high schools in the country. In recent years, Mayor de Blasio has been critical that the majority of students admitted to the Specialized High Schools are Asian and few are Black and Hispanic.
The SHSAT 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”. Many of the AOC acolytes seem dumbfounded by the ferocity of the Asian parents who feel the SHSAT is a opportunity to achieve the America dream and feel their merit based culture is under attack by progressives. At one point a panelist said the SHSAT was anti immigrant, causing one protester to begin shouting in broken English, severely undermining the panelist’s argument.
Yesterday, the SHSAT results were released and Mayor de Blasio and his progressive followers instead of celebrating the achievement of hard working students have used it as a opportunity to engage in further racial division.
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