Rep. Jamaal Bowman Sees Climate As The Next Big Education Push After COVID-19 Reopenings | HuffPost

Rep. Jamaal Bowman Sees Climate As The Next Big Education Push After COVID-19 Reopenings | HuffPost

Rep. Jamaal Bowman Sees Climate As The Next Big Education Push After COVID-19 Reopenings

The New York Democrat is endorsing a $1.16 trillion plan to retrofit school buildings to be cleaner and greener and to hire more teachers.

The federal government is set to spend nearly $200 billion to safely reopen schools, boost state spending on low-income school programs and increase financial aid at universities as part of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act.

To Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), that spending looks more like triage than investment. On Saturday, the first-term congressman is set to unveil a $1.16 trillion proposal to fund climate-friendly retrofits at every K-12 public school in the nation, hire and train more teachers, and beef up funding for low-income and disability-focused programs.

Before COVID-19 killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and made in-person classes unsafe, nearly 8,000 public schools sat within 500 feet of highways, truck routes and other traffic-clogged roads where roughly 4.4 million students breathed air filled with toxic levels of exhaust pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that nearly 1 in 5 schools has at least one classroom with unsafe levels of radon, a radioactive gas that causes lung cancer. Countless more schools struggle with mold, toxic building materials and excessive heat, particularly as climate change worsens heat waves.  

The proposal aims to spend $250 billion over 10 years to retrofit schools, remediating lead and asbestos, equipping facilities with solar panels and batteries, and increasing energy efficiency and air circulation. Once those upgrades are complete, it would slash emissions of planet-heating carbon dioxide by at least 29 million tons per year, the CONTINUE READING: Rep. Jamaal Bowman Sees Climate As The Next Big Education Push After COVID-19 Reopenings | HuffPost

Bowman and education experts blast Biden admin for mandating standardized tests amid pandemic | Salon com

Bowman and education experts blast Biden admin for mandating standardized tests amid pandemic | Salon.com

Bowman and education experts blast Biden admin for mandating standardized tests amid pandemic

"It's a mistake that reflects a broader problem in American education," Rep. Jamaal Bowman wrote in a statement

Rep. Jamaal Bowman on Tuesday joined progressive education experts in criticizing the Biden administration's decision to mandate standardized testing in schools despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. 

Bowman (D-N.Y.)—a former teacher and principal—argued that "prioritizing testing in the middle of the pandemic is a big mistake."

"It's a mistake that reflects a broader problem in American education," the first-term congressman said in a statement. "We have an obsession with arbitrary testing metrics above all else, even in the middle of a pandemic that's dislodged every facet of American life. We've forgotten that testing is one useful tool, and should not be the goal of education in and of itself."

"The pandemic created the world's largest education crisis," asserted Bowman. "All students were impacted, but we know which students took the hardest hit... We must empower educators to provide the best learning environment possible for students. This is not the time to waste time. Let's dive into action to fix the problems we already know exist."

Bowman's statement follows a letter sent Monday by acting Assistant Education Secretary Ian Rosenblum to state school superintendents informing them that the department will not invite state requests for "blanket waivers of assessments" required by the Every Student Succeeds Act, even though such waivers were granted last year CONTINUE READING: Bowman and education experts blast Biden admin for mandating standardized tests amid pandemic | Salon.com

Rep. Jamaal Bowman & Randi Weingarten: America's Covid spring shouldn't include standardized tests for any students - NBC NEWS

America's Covid spring shouldn't include standardized tests for any students

America's Covid spring shouldn't include standardized tests for any students

After the year our children have had, we must consider their well-being above all else when making decisions about schooling.

By Rep. Jamaal Bowman, Democratic U.S. representative from New York’s 16th district and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers

On Feb. 22, the Biden administration released its guidance for our country’s schools on how to manage standardized testing this spring. In an attempt to accommodate the extreme measures that schools and teachers have had to take to meet students’ needs during the pandemic, the Department of Education offered schools some flexibility but failed to offer a blanket waiver for all testing this year.

While we appreciate the effort to give schools and educators some leeway, and to make standardized test results less consequential overall, we fear that maintaining testing requirements for this spring will cause more harm than good.

As two former educators whose predominantly Black and brown students not only had to take these tests in “normal times” but often excelled at them, we understand why they exist: to collect nationwide educational performance data to effectively allocate resources to the students that need them most. But the data is not in and of itself a solution.

As we surpass this morbid milestone of half a million lives lost to this pandemic, the challenges faced by students across the country must be addressed. That starts with getting the pandemic under control, shots in people’s arms and more students back into classrooms. But standardized testing will not help the national effort to asses student needs and monitor their social, emotional and academic progress. CONTINUE READING: America's Covid spring shouldn't include standardized tests for any students