How Jeb Bush’s school reforms really played out in Florida

VALERIE STRAUSS/WASHINGTON POST

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush waves to the crowd as he arrives to address CPAC on Friday. (Pete Marovich/European Pressphoto Agency)

Jeb Bush talks a great deal about his record on education when he was governor of Florida from 1999-2007 and later as a private citizen through his Foundation for Excellence in Education. As governor, he introduced school reforms that have become common across the country — including high-stakes standardized testing for “accountability” purposes and school “choice” — and since then has been a leading voice in spreading his education gospel nationwide. His critics call him not a “reformer” but a “privatizer” of public education in part because of his attitude about traditional public schools — calling them “politicized, unionized monopolies” or “government-run monopolies run by unions” — while advocating for charter schools as well as voucher and voucher-like programs, which use public money to pay private school tuition for students. Continue reading…

One comment

The problem with Jeb Bush and other political leaders in regard to education is always about the money. There is rarely any emphasis given to the children who have no lobbyist working for them.