Thursday, November 8, 2012

Jeb Bush's ed reforms suffer some defeats

From Scathing Purple Musings, by Bob Sykes

The election sucked all of the oxygen out of the air for the last three months. And from me, too. But as Romney supporter who awakened yesterday with disappointment, I’ve hope that the totality of the voting across that nation signals that public education was saved. Most notably, the education reform movement’s chief political architect, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, suffered three significant political defeats. Lets take a look.


1. Floridians didn’t buy the religious freedom nonsense and defeated Bush’s Amendment 8. Voters saw that it was just another back-channel attempt to legalize vouchers. Nearly 1 million Floridians voted against the measure, clearly showing that republican and indepenedent voters didn’t want it.

2. Allow me the opportunity to gloat: So how’s that Chiefs for Change thing going, Jeb? Just a few short months after Gerard Robinson resigned in disgrace in Florida, one of Bush’s hand-picked stars suffered defeat in a red state which Mitt Romney won on Tuesday. Indiana school superintendent Tony Bennett was defeated by a teacher, Glenda Ritz. Over 100,000 more Indianans rejected Bennet’s hyper charter school-voucherism in favor of the wisdom of an educator.

3. Bush’s foundation have provided significant political support for Idaho school chief Tom Luna. This from
The Answer Sheet:

Idaho voters appear to have overturned the “Luna laws,” three school reform laws named for state schools Superintendent

Tom Luna who made them the centerpiece of his agenda. Voters rejected his plan to require high school students to take two online courses and for the state to spend $180 million to lease laptops to make this happen. They also rejected merit pay for teachers that is linked to student standardized test scores and
they opposed limits on the collective bargaining rights for teachers.

Mitt Romney won Idaho by a 64 to 36 margin, a clear indication that republican voters rejected Bush-style education reforms.

Do Bush and his acolytes know they are backpedaling? They may. Late last month, they quickly jumped on Rick Scott’s bandwagon after he had released his official positions on education policy. Speculation that Bennett would leave Indiana for Florida will probably end after this week’s rebukes of the Bush way. Scott, who clearly has put his finger in the wind on education, may no longer be as enamored with what he’s being told by the Bush camp.

http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/jeb-bush-suffers-three-defeats-at-the-hands-of-republican-voters/

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