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More Teaching, Less Testing Act w/ Congressman Jamaal Bowman
16 Plays1 year ago
Chris sits down with Congressman Jamaal Bowman! serving New York's 16th district since 2021. Bowman was a crisis management teacher in an elementary school in the Bronx, who eventually founded his own public school, the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, a middle school in Eastchester. For years he maintained a blog on changing school policy and standardized testing, with a focus on being deeply involved in the opt-out movement to encourage families to not take the tests, as well as centering pedagogy on social emotional health and restorative justice.
Congressman Bowman’s team reached out to Human Restoration Project to talk about the More Teaching, Less Testing Act (linked below). The policy lessens the number of tests given each year in schools, limiting the number of tests all students take and finding other ways to gather data, such as through a smaller but representative sample size. Please note that Human Restoration Project is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and that this interview is not an endorsement of Bowman or his electoral campaign.
More Teaching, Less Testing Act: https://bowman.house.gov/_cache/files/8/9/89180377-ee4a-4906-b170-f4ee28d3602e/0D579FD78ABAA89748EA157D3F31CAB1.more-teaching-less-testing-act-bill-summary.pdf
A video of this conversation in available on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/y9Aw4EsH_yc
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Acknowledgments
00:00:10
Speaker
Hey there, you're about to tune into our latest podcast.
00:00:13
Speaker
My name is Chris McNutt and I'm part of the progressive education nonprofit Human Restoration Project.
00:00:18
Speaker
Before we get started, I want to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Elliot Baer, Zainab Balbaki, and Wendy Firon.
00:00:25
Speaker
Thank you for your ongoing support.
00:00:27
Speaker
You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on social media and YouTube.
Jamal Bowman's Educational Background
00:00:34
Speaker
In today's discussion, we're speaking with Congressman Jamal Bowman, serving New York's 16th district since 2021.
00:00:40
Speaker
Bowman was a crisis management teacher in an elementary school in the Bronx, who eventually founded his own public school, the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, a middle school in Eastchester in the Bronx.
00:00:50
Speaker
For years, he maintained a blog on changing school policy and standardized testing, with a focus on being deeply involved in the opt-out movement to encourage families not to take standardized tests, as well as centering pedagogy on social-emotional health and restorative justice.
00:01:03
Speaker
Congressman
More Teaching, Less Testing Act
00:01:04
Speaker
Bowman's team reached out to Human Restoration Project to talk about the More Teaching, Less Testing Act, which will be linked in the show notes.
00:01:11
Speaker
Ostensibly, the policy lessens the number of standardized tests given each year in schools, limiting the number of tests and finding other ways to gather that data, such as through a smaller but representative sample size.
00:01:21
Speaker
Please note that Human Restoration Project is a 501c3 nonprofit organization, that this interview is not an endorsement of Bowman or his electoral campaign.
00:01:30
Speaker
Thank you and enjoy
Reflections on 20 Years in Education
00:01:31
Speaker
the show.
00:01:31
Speaker
Congressman Bowman, again, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us today.
00:01:37
Speaker
And I just want to talk to you more about the more teaching, less testing act.
00:01:42
Speaker
But before we dive into it, I just want to learn more about you and your school experience, because I was browsing through your blogs and your Wikipedia, and I didn't know that you used to be a teacher, a school founder, you were a principal in the Bronx.
00:01:55
Speaker
Can you describe about your experiences as an educator, your perspectives on education,
Addressing Low Expectations and Historical Neglect
00:01:59
Speaker
just broadly?
00:01:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:00
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no.
00:02:02
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Yeah, I worked in education for 20 years before running for Congress.
00:02:07
Speaker
Started my career as an elementary school teacher in the South Bronx.
00:02:11
Speaker
Did that for about five or six years before becoming a high school dean of students and guidance counselor at the High School for Arts and Technology at the MLK campus near Lincoln Center.
00:02:24
Speaker
I was there for about three or four years, and it was at that time where I really felt drawn to the idea of school leadership and really just building a school that unlocked the unlimited potential of our kids.
00:02:39
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Because there was, I learned so much over my first eight years.
00:02:43
Speaker
My entire career, I worked in Title I schools, which are schools either in low-income communities or serve children from low-income communities.
00:02:53
Speaker
And I really hate to term low income.
00:02:55
Speaker
I think a better term is historically neglected and historically marginalized communities because they are low income because of previous policy decisions that have been made, you know, over several decades.
00:03:07
Speaker
So, you know, starting elementary school and, you know, saw the, you know, the lack of resources and the lack of a vision
Founding and Philosophy of Cornerstone Academy
00:03:14
Speaker
for our kids.
00:03:14
Speaker
And when I started working at the high school level, I thought that that would kind of shift and change.
00:03:20
Speaker
But what I saw was this just...
00:03:23
Speaker
this culture of, you know, not just low expectations for our kids, but a lack of vision for what our kids were capable of.
00:03:32
Speaker
You know, a lot of the, you know, neoliberal sort of language is around low expectations and really demonizing teachers and teachers.
00:03:42
Speaker
But for me, it was more about a lack of vision.
00:03:44
Speaker
And so, you know, I pursued school leadership, you know, got into an amazing program, New Leaders for New Schools, wrote a proposal to open up my own school and had the opportunity to do that.
00:03:56
Speaker
And we opened in September 2009, the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action Middle School.
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Speaker
where I served as principal for 10 and a half years.
00:04:04
Speaker
And just, you know, for a point of clarification, this was a district public middle school, not a charter school.
00:04:10
Speaker
It's a very important distinction I want to make there.
00:04:13
Speaker
And so, yeah, man, I love, you know, education is my life.
00:04:18
Speaker
Serving children is my life's work, and I'm very proud to continue that work here in Congress.
00:04:26
Speaker
And it's just, you know, there's so many exciting things that can happen in education if we're honest and have the right conversation and really center equity and our humanity as part of that conversation.
Integrating Project-based Learning and Curriculum Development
00:04:38
Speaker
For sure, for sure.
00:04:39
Speaker
And it's awesome, honestly, is to have an educator who is a representative, because I think oftentimes there are a lot of promises offered to educators from leaders across the country that don't necessarily ever come to fruition.
00:04:54
Speaker
I did want to briefly talk about what that school was like.
00:04:58
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I used to teach also in a Title I school for 10 years.
00:05:01
Speaker
That was a progressive school as a public school.
00:05:04
Speaker
school that focused on project-based learning, that focused on like alternatives and testing, et cetera.
00:05:08
Speaker
What was your vision for the school that you founded?
00:05:11
Speaker
Yeah, it was exactly that.
00:05:13
Speaker
It was on project-based learning.
00:05:15
Speaker
It was on interdisciplinary curriculum.
00:05:18
Speaker
It was on restorative justice, and it was on a holistic curriculum that really tried to tap into the multiple intelligences.
00:05:26
Speaker
You know, I was always so frustrated by our overemphasis and obsession on just math and ELA test scores.
00:05:36
Speaker
And because that was our obsession, the entire school design was around making sure our kids were ready to pass math and ELA tests at the end of the year.
00:05:47
Speaker
And that's I was just frustrated by this because there are so many other aspects of learning and so many other opportunities for kids to show their learning as opposed to showing it only on a test at the end of the year.
00:06:00
Speaker
That was a choice, you know, short response and extended response.
00:06:04
Speaker
And so, you know, we did we try to be very creative and innovative and.
00:06:09
Speaker
you know, shifting our curriculum more towards something that was interdisciplinary and project-based.
00:06:16
Speaker
And in order to do that, you know, teachers had to, you know, receive the supports they needed in order to shift from one way of delivering instruction to another.
00:06:25
Speaker
So we spent a lot of time on teacher professional development,
00:06:28
Speaker
around the issue of project-based learning, but also on unit development and unit design.
00:06:35
Speaker
Understanding by design was a philosophy that we learned a lot about and used backwards planning to align our instruction to end-of-the-unit projects that kids would then display for their teacher and for their classmates.
00:06:49
Speaker
And so, but this is, again, it's a struggle because teachers aren't trained in this way.
00:06:54
Speaker
So we really had to go outside the box and really invest a lot of resources and getting teachers trained in that way.
00:07:01
Speaker
Our science class no longer was just a science class.
00:07:04
Speaker
It was a STEAM class.
00:07:07
Speaker
English and social studies were no longer separate classes.
00:07:09
Speaker
They were humanities classes.
00:07:11
Speaker
And we implemented a lot of Socratic seminar in those spaces.
00:07:16
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Math, you know, it was a struggle to do some project-based learning with math.
00:07:21
Speaker
It always is, right?
00:07:23
Speaker
But there were resources out there, again, just with the pressure of the tests and teacher training and time and all those things.
00:07:31
Speaker
It was hard to get it there, but we did it as much as we could.
00:07:35
Speaker
But we had other courses like math.
00:07:38
Speaker
we had a horticulture class where we brought in, you know, curriculum around climate justice and agriculture and sustainable agriculture.
00:07:51
Speaker
And, you know, kids had an opportunity to like grow fruits and vegetables and like,
00:07:55
Speaker
share them with the community.
00:07:57
Speaker
That's a project based course.
00:07:59
Speaker
We had a computer science course where kids were learning Python code and every unit was aligned to a project that they had
Project-based Learning and Bloom's Taxonomy
00:08:07
Speaker
to present.
00:08:07
Speaker
So, you know, we implemented project based learning as much as possible because we also know
00:08:13
Speaker
You know, when you look at Bloom's taxonomy, top, you know, creativity is the pinnacle of it.
00:08:20
Speaker
And so project-based learning is directly aligned to Bloom's directly aligned creativity, and it's directly aligned to what kids are going to be doing, you know, in post-secondary opportunities, whether it's higher ed or
00:08:32
Speaker
or real world work experiences.
00:08:35
Speaker
And so it made sense to us to take that approach.
00:08:38
Speaker
That's so sick.
00:08:39
Speaker
It's like right in our wheelhouse too and the experiences that you're talking about.
00:08:43
Speaker
Plus not to mention, I'm sure you found that kids rise to that occasion.
00:08:48
Speaker
I think part of that neoliberal narrative that you're talking about is that it tends to be that those who are in power, that have a lot of money, will send their kids to these rich, progressive $50,000 a year schools where they do the things that you're talking about.
00:09:03
Speaker
But yet they propose that for the kids who are historically marginalized, that poverty has not been eliminated for, they are subjected to the sit and get rote memorization because
00:09:17
Speaker
That's what they need, quote unquote, like scare quotes there.
00:09:19
Speaker
So like that environment is just so interesting, especially as we talk about scaling that to something that could be statewide or national, which I think, yeah.
00:09:30
Speaker
Yeah, no, I would just say, I think the project-based approach is more in alignment with how kids naturally live, engage, and learn.
00:09:41
Speaker
I mean, from from them going to the park, meeting strangers that they never met before, building relationships with them, getting to know with them, getting to know them, making up games on the fly and playing those games.
Education and Poverty: Beyond Simple Solutions
00:09:56
Speaker
That's all that's natural.
00:09:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:59
Speaker
You know, that's naturally how kids engage and exist within the world.
00:10:03
Speaker
That's actually naturally how people engage and exist within the world.
00:10:08
Speaker
And so, you know, the project design, the, you know, the curiosity that's inherent in it, the critical thinking that's inherent in it, the creativity that's inherent in it.
00:10:19
Speaker
the social and emotional intelligence that's inherent in it is really, really key because, you know, we've, we've overemphasized and over-focused of just academic excellence without doing the social and emotional intelligence work.
00:10:33
Speaker
I think project-based learning does that.
00:10:35
Speaker
And, you know, you know,
00:10:37
Speaker
I don't even like to call it progressive education.
00:10:39
Speaker
It's just quality education, like education, education.
00:10:42
Speaker
Right.
00:10:42
Speaker
And so, you know, that's how we got to think about that's how we got to talk about it.
00:10:46
Speaker
And we got to design our learning spaces more so in alignment with how people naturally engage with the world, particularly how kids do.
00:10:54
Speaker
Right.
00:10:54
Speaker
It's also just more in alignment with the things that many folks are advocating for, like college and career readiness, which often in practice, what people do in order to do that is have kids take a lot of tests, have them sit and get, have them do more, I guess, like traditional or I would argue just boring ways of
Natural Learning Processes and Community Development
00:11:13
Speaker
learning.
00:11:13
Speaker
But the fact of the matter is, is that we do a lot of community focus groups and talk to business leaders.
00:11:18
Speaker
We talk to faith leaders, et cetera.
00:11:20
Speaker
We talk to them about
00:11:22
Speaker
what do kids need to know?
00:11:23
Speaker
Like, what are the things that you're looking for?
00:11:25
Speaker
And the things that they're looking for are things that you find in project-based learning because it requires much more academic, again, this word has been used in kind of nefarious ways, but rigor.
00:11:37
Speaker
It's difficult to do really great projects and kids are going to learn more.
00:11:43
Speaker
They're going to be more worldly.
00:11:44
Speaker
They're going to understand more about their community and they're going to act on it, which is much more than we could request on a...
00:11:51
Speaker
a short paper assignment or a few multiple choice questions 100 it's whole brain whole body whole community development like that's what we're talking about um not just you know uh myopic uh small aspect of cognitive development it's a it's it lights up when you when you learn in this way
00:12:12
Speaker
It lights up the brain and inspires the heart and the body and it supports everything that's healthy in living and community.
00:12:20
Speaker
So it's, you know, it's a revolutionary approach that should be happening everywhere.
00:12:25
Speaker
And it's inspiring.
00:12:26
Speaker
Like to your point about kids, you know, rising to the occasion, kids are excited to working this way, working this way.
00:12:34
Speaker
So it's not even about rising to the occasion.
00:12:36
Speaker
They just, this is, this is intuitive for them.
00:12:39
Speaker
And that's,
00:12:40
Speaker
That needs to be part of our design in schools across the country.
Critique of Standardized Testing and Neoliberal Policies
00:12:44
Speaker
Speaking of, I think that's really good context then for back in, I believe it was March earlier this year, you introduced the More Teaching, Less Testing Act as a way to move the needle on that and move towards schools that act like this.
00:12:59
Speaker
And I think also just help the teaching profession sustain itself in a space that can be often very dehumanizing.
00:13:06
Speaker
Could you explain to just listeners about what is the purpose and rationale of the bill?
00:13:12
Speaker
What are you looking to accomplish with it?
00:13:13
Speaker
Yeah, so we're testing too darn much.
00:13:16
Speaker
I mean, that's the bottom line.
00:13:18
Speaker
You know, we test kids every year in grades three through eight and then at least once in high school in the areas of ELA and math and education.
00:13:28
Speaker
We say that our goal is to close the achievement gap and to get all kids to 100% literacy rate.
00:13:35
Speaker
And so there are many problems with this entire theory of change, one being where's the research to support more testing
00:13:46
Speaker
leads to higher literacy rates and closing achievement gaps.
00:13:50
Speaker
That research didn't exist before the bill.
00:13:53
Speaker
It still doesn't exist now.
00:13:54
Speaker
Secondly, you know, states are using third-party vendors to create the tests who then sell them to states and then states implement them.
00:14:04
Speaker
So you don't really have classroom teacher input and scholar input in the actual creation of the tests.
00:14:10
Speaker
And there have been many cases, like court cases, that have questioned the validity and reliability of the tests.
00:14:15
Speaker
in terms of giving us the data that we say we are seeking.
00:14:20
Speaker
So the More Teaching Less Testing Act moves away from annual standardized testing and shifts the focus back towards what I call the magic of teaching and learning in the classroom.
00:14:31
Speaker
What really drives student learning is excellent classroom instruction connected to consistent formative assessment.
00:14:39
Speaker
Formative assessment comes in the form of everything from exit tickets at the end of the class to question and answers, the question and answer process during class, during lessons.
00:14:52
Speaker
giving kids immediate feedback and then guiding them to the next lesson and making sure parents are engaged in understanding what's happening in the classroom spaces and are up to date consistently as to how their kids are doing instead of waiting to the end of the year for the one exam.
00:15:12
Speaker
More teaching.
00:15:12
Speaker
Let's focus more on teaching and learning and curriculum design and curriculum development and instruction and really supporting kids with their social, emotional and cognitive needs.
00:15:25
Speaker
That's the key.
00:15:27
Speaker
And the data that the state claims it needs in terms of just being forward facing and letting the state know or the country know how our kids in grade four or seven or
00:15:39
Speaker
You don't need to test every year to get that data.
00:15:43
Speaker
You can choose which the bill proposes to test, you know, maybe fourth grade and seventh grade instead of every year or take some form of sample in fourth grade or seventh grade or some form of sample in grades three through eight.
00:15:58
Speaker
That gets you the data you need so that the state can know, okay, we have some challenges here, some gaps here.
00:16:06
Speaker
Let's go in with some resources to help support what needs to be done in those spaces.
00:16:10
Speaker
This entire system that we have in place now was connected to No Child Left Behind, which was all about targeting teachers, demonizing teachers, demonizing teachers' unions,
00:16:22
Speaker
labeling them as failing teachers, labeling schools as failing schools so that the schools can then close and be reopened as charter schools.
00:16:32
Speaker
This was all about a neoliberal charter school movement and agenda towards, you know,
00:16:41
Speaker
really getting rid of public education in our country as we know it.
00:16:45
Speaker
And they've made a big debt.
00:16:47
Speaker
But thankfully, public schools are still standing and parents, by and large, continue to support their public schools.
00:16:53
Speaker
Right.
00:16:54
Speaker
It requires fighting back because even if even if they don't necessarily get turned into a charter right away, they also just lose their autonomy.
00:17:01
Speaker
Like what we're seeing in Houston, for example, where you have basically a charter school leader operating a school like this militaristic authoritarian style charter at a school that's not even actually doing poorly on standardized tests, ironically enough, which makes it especially interesting.
00:17:17
Speaker
Yeah, the Houston situation is really crazy because, you know, there was one school that so-called performed poorly one time.
00:17:31
Speaker
And now the state is coming in and taking over the whole school district.
00:17:34
Speaker
And that was apparently part of state law.
00:17:36
Speaker
Like if one school does poorly once, the state can take over.
00:17:41
Speaker
So now we have a full state takeoff of the Houston School District in a state where they're looking to ban books in a city where they're turning libraries into detention centers.
00:17:53
Speaker
This
The Role of Education in Addressing Poverty
00:17:54
Speaker
is almost like a textbook example of the school-to-prison pipeline.
00:17:59
Speaker
And so it is neocolonial so-called free market education ideology is seeping into our schools and is hurting the most vulnerable people, which are our children, and particularly children from challenging circumstances.
00:18:14
Speaker
Yeah, I have a couple questions about the logistics of the bill.
00:18:17
Speaker
Before we dive into that, I think it might be worth noting on how do you work to change the narrative that the role of schools is to bring people out of poverty?
00:18:31
Speaker
So for some context for that, the way that a lot of times standardized tests and more traditional forms of education have been weaponized is that
00:18:40
Speaker
this myth that if you get kids to pass all the tests, they go to college, then you will eliminate poverty.
00:18:46
Speaker
Whereas most folks have recognized like that's not how it works.
00:18:50
Speaker
You have to actually use policy to get rid of poverty.
00:18:53
Speaker
And arguably, if you use policy to get rid of poverty, everyone's test scores will go up because they tend to just measure your zip code as opposed to actually measuring some kind of school quality, whatever that might mean.
00:19:04
Speaker
How do you actually change hearts and minds to recognize why these changes even need to occur broadly?
00:19:11
Speaker
In my experience, people, the majority of people, intuitively know the truth.
00:19:19
Speaker
and have been hesitant to push back on the propaganda that's been out there around testing and charter schools and college and this being a pathway to ending poverty.
00:19:34
Speaker
Intuitively, people know that there's something else afoot here, right?
00:19:40
Speaker
And so that's a good place to start because when we then, when people then begin to speak out,
00:19:47
Speaker
about that intuitive truth what you see is is a galvanizing of community um standing up and saying hell yeah like i i i felt this i knew this and what's exciting is you have the research that has been aligned to the intuitive truth that communities have felt
00:20:08
Speaker
And now we have a movement pushing back against the overuse and misuse of standardized testing and the lies we tell ourselves about education and kids and community.
00:20:18
Speaker
You know, America has this horrible problem.
00:20:21
Speaker
We use propaganda to move from one generation to the next without really holding ourselves accountable in terms of what has happened historically.
00:20:34
Speaker
So you can't learn about redlining, right?
00:20:39
Speaker
And then accept the propaganda that, well, if our kids do great on these tests,
00:20:47
Speaker
will get out of poverty.
00:20:48
Speaker
That's not how it works.
00:20:50
Speaker
You can't learn about mass incarceration and the target in certain communities and believe the propaganda.
00:20:57
Speaker
You can't learn about gun trafficking and the trafficking of
00:21:04
Speaker
crack cocaine and opioids into communities and then believe the propaganda.
00:21:09
Speaker
Like the reality, the propaganda doesn't meet the facts on the ground.
00:21:15
Speaker
And even that idea that, you know, good test scores, you know,
00:21:19
Speaker
you know, go to college, go out of college, you get out of poverty.
00:21:23
Speaker
Even that idea is rooted in this, again, neocolonial ranking and sorting, you know, winners and losers ideology.
Community Engagement and Teacher Training
00:21:32
Speaker
And so, yeah, some might, you know, get to that point, right?
00:21:37
Speaker
Right.
00:21:38
Speaker
Some might get out of poverty because of a quality education.
00:21:41
Speaker
Right.
00:21:42
Speaker
But they also might be in tremendous debt because there's been no conversation about or no policy around how darn expensive higher education is.
00:21:52
Speaker
Right.
00:21:52
Speaker
And so.
00:21:53
Speaker
you know, you have the expenses of higher education, you have, uh, underemployment and unemployment, you have, uh, capitalism and, and, and market, market-based, uh, economics as it relates to housing and childcare and transportation and all these things.
00:22:11
Speaker
So, you know, you're feeding them one lie without even giving them the, the, the real education they need to deal with the, you know, the, the blood sport of capitalism in America.
00:22:22
Speaker
And so,
00:22:22
Speaker
So, you know, again, people intuitively know the truth.
00:22:26
Speaker
It's just important to, you know, stand up and speak that truth and connect that truth to what research and data and reality tells us.
00:22:36
Speaker
And the fact of the matter is, is that once you establish this, you can show them the results.
00:22:41
Speaker
I'm sure you found when you were a school leader that when you do like some kind of expo night, exposition of learning, some kind of event where people come in and see what kids do, it will blow their minds.
00:22:52
Speaker
When you take away testing component and you just focus on cool student projects where you get them out in the community and they get to like report out on what they did.
00:23:00
Speaker
There was never a time, even at times where I thought the project was a little, as the kids would say, it was a little sus.
00:23:06
Speaker
It was like, man, I don't know if that's really that great.
00:23:11
Speaker
The parents were shocked because it was the first time that their kid has been able to express themselves in a meaningful way and actually was able to make an impact in the real world.
00:23:21
Speaker
Because the fact of the matter is that those tests never go anywhere, nor do we ever actually use that data for anything.
00:23:26
Speaker
I would struggle to find a teacher who actually is adjusting.
00:23:30
Speaker
Like, oh, I'm going to teach this activity slightly different, and that's going to make a one-point difference on test because we don't have the data quickly anyway.
00:23:37
Speaker
So...
00:23:39
Speaker
I did want to go back to the pragmatics of implementing these changes because you had said before that a huge barrier to implementing this is that teachers do need professional development.
00:23:51
Speaker
It's not like we can just kind of strip away all of these kind of faux accountability measures, but then also expect that schools just inherently get better right away.
00:24:00
Speaker
There's a PD component there, a support component.
00:24:04
Speaker
Does the More Teaching Less Testing Act account for that in any way?
00:24:08
Speaker
Not so much.
00:24:10
Speaker
This is step one towards other more transformational, more comprehensive legislation that we're going to be working on and introducing as an office.
00:24:22
Speaker
You know, we are two or three years behind
00:24:27
Speaker
in terms of the need to reauthorize ESSA, the Every Student Succeeds Act, which is the next iteration of Race to the Top, which was the next iteration of No Child Left Behind, right?
00:24:38
Speaker
And so during that reauthorization, you know, God willing, we're able to do it, you know, next cycle.
00:24:44
Speaker
That is the moment where, okay, now it's time to reimagine education in America.
00:24:49
Speaker
Because right now what we are doing is not just harmful to kids, it's harmful to families, communities, and larger society.
Grassroots Movements for Education Reform
00:24:58
Speaker
I mean, in New York City right now, and many places,
00:25:02
Speaker
they're not even trying to roll back from the over-testing, even though the research is clear that we need to.
00:25:09
Speaker
They're actually doing more testing.
00:25:11
Speaker
You know, they're doing these things called interim assessments where we assess kids every six to eight weeks, so-called in alignment with the test at the end of the year, so that we can get the data, see where the gaps are, teach to the gaps, right?
00:25:27
Speaker
And to get kids ready for the end-of-the-year test.
00:25:30
Speaker
So now, as opposed to just the one test at the end of the year, they have three or four or some cases five interim assessments during the year that lead up to this.
00:25:38
Speaker
So this is just this is just education malpractice.
00:25:43
Speaker
And so, you know, when it's time to reauthorize ESSA, that's an opportunity to reimagine education in our country from a legislative perspective.
00:25:52
Speaker
But in terms of.
00:25:54
Speaker
The national mass education movement that's needed, podcasts like yours and other ways to get out there and push back on what's happening in our schools is essential.
00:26:07
Speaker
And I was involved in something called the opt-out movement in New York State, which then became a national movement where parents just say, you know what?
00:26:16
Speaker
I'm refusing to allow my kid to take the test.
00:26:19
Speaker
this year.
00:26:20
Speaker
And that started happening in the hundreds of thousands of parents across New York State.
00:26:27
Speaker
And they were forced to change their approach, to change curriculum, to change standards, to engage parents more.
00:26:35
Speaker
And it literally broke the education system that Governor Cuomo was trying to push at that time.
00:26:42
Speaker
We need that kind of resistance as well everywhere.
00:26:46
Speaker
Because this
00:26:48
Speaker
This is not we can't wait for us here in Washington as policymakers to do the right thing or even statewide policymakers to do the right thing.
00:26:56
Speaker
Everyone is biased.
00:26:57
Speaker
Everyone has an agenda and their bias agenda right now is about is continuing to push the charter narrative.
00:27:05
Speaker
Right.
Political Challenges and Bipartisan Support
00:27:06
Speaker
and continuing to push and continue to attack and demonize teachers.
00:27:10
Speaker
But now it's about attacking LGBTQ students, trans students, black history and culture, banning books.
00:27:19
Speaker
Like this is what's happening.
00:27:21
Speaker
And we need, so we need a major pushback against all of that so that we can get to where we need to go sooner rather than later.
00:27:29
Speaker
We need to do this right now, man.
00:27:32
Speaker
And so it's not just, you know, it's moving Congress in the right direction, but we need outside forces to help grow this education movement across the country.
00:27:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:42
Speaker
I mean, at the end of the day, it's going to be grassroots.
00:27:47
Speaker
No offense to you and your position, but I just think about the ability for Congress to pass anything.
00:27:53
Speaker
Support what we're trying to do here.
00:27:55
Speaker
I mean, members of Congress, we're very comfortable, right?
00:27:58
Speaker
We're chilling.
00:27:59
Speaker
We're not doing much.
00:28:00
Speaker
Not me, but others.
00:28:02
Speaker
We have to be forced, right?
00:28:04
Speaker
And so we need the people on the outside to force us to do what's right on the inside.
00:28:09
Speaker
Do you anticipate just briefly from like the national politics angle that Republicans actually might be more likely to pass a bill like this, considering that it is technically less federal control?
00:28:21
Speaker
Because I mean, you're getting rid of like their whole thing.
00:28:24
Speaker
And I'm not saying we should do this, but their whole thing is like, we should abolish the national department of education.
00:28:29
Speaker
Well, a big part of that is, I mean, arguably the testing industry and how that works.
00:28:34
Speaker
Is there any movement to be had there?
00:28:37
Speaker
I think there is, but not at the present moment with this current iteration of the Republican Party.
00:28:44
Speaker
The MAGA influences are strongly entrenched.
00:28:51
Speaker
Everything is very partisan right now as it relates to education.
00:28:55
Speaker
They're more focused on the culture wars than they really are on teaching and learning.
00:28:59
Speaker
And so because of where we are at this moment, no, I do not see that happening.
00:29:06
Speaker
And this is why next year's election is so critical, not just of the president and not just regarding the Senate seats that we need to win back and we need to win back and grow, but also
Vision for Transformative Education and Closing Remarks
00:29:19
Speaker
in the House.
00:29:19
Speaker
Democrats have to take back control of the House.
00:29:24
Speaker
Now, again, the Democratic Party isn't perfect either.
00:29:27
Speaker
You know, the Democratic Party has been complicit in a lot of the charter movement stuff that we see across the country.
00:29:35
Speaker
But we have to take back control of the Education and Labor Committee so that we can bring some, at the very least, baseline common sense back to the education conversation as it relates to K-12 schools.
00:29:47
Speaker
I also think if we take back the House and grow the Senate, we will reauthorize ESSA, which gives us a chance to
00:29:56
Speaker
to deal with some of these bills accordingly.
00:29:58
Speaker
And there are some Republicans, not the chair right now who would be ranking member if we took it back, Virginia Fox, but there are some Republicans who are open to having conversations about this piece, the testing piece, but also about career and technical education.
00:30:17
Speaker
I think those two pieces provide an opportunity for bipartisan support.
00:30:22
Speaker
And I'm going to do everything in my power to push for this.
00:30:26
Speaker
God willing, we take back control of the house next year.
00:30:29
Speaker
That's incredible.
00:30:30
Speaker
And I appreciate you sharing all of this, Congressman Bowman, and joining us here on our brief little podcast, talk about making a change.
00:30:37
Speaker
And I appreciate your message surrounding that grassroots action, having teachers fight for what's right so we don't become subjected to the endless culture war, but also we can actually improve how schools function.
00:30:50
Speaker
So I appreciate you being here.
00:30:51
Speaker
That's
00:30:51
Speaker
I appreciate you, man.
00:30:52
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
00:30:53
Speaker
We need a collective vision for education, and it's going to take a grassroots coalition to get us there.
00:30:58
Speaker
So thank you so much for doing your work and for having me.
00:31:04
Speaker
Hey, thanks again for listening on the podcast.
00:31:06
Speaker
As a reminder, you can find our podcast on pretty much any place that you listen in.
00:31:09
Speaker
That could be Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.
00:31:12
Speaker
Also, be sure to check out our donation drive at humanrestorationproject.org slash support, where you can find some cool donor gifts, as well as tribute to this ongoing work to restore humanity to education.
00:31:22
Speaker
As a reminder, we are a nonprofit organization, and your donation is tax deductible.
00:31:27
Speaker
Thank you.