Michelle Malkin is known for her strong conservative opinions, strongly expressed.
In this article in the National Review, titled “Jeb’s Education Racket,” Malkin eviscerates Tony Bennett and Jeb Bush. She writes:
[Bennett’s] disgraceful grade-fixing scandal is the perfect symbol of all that’s wrong with the federal education schemes peddled by Bennett and his mentor, former GOP governor Jeb Bush: phony academic standards, crony contracts, and big-government and big-business collusion masquerading as “reform.”
She adds:
“Cronyism and corruption come in all political stripes and colors. As a conservative parent of children educated at public charter schools, I am especially appalled by these pocket-lining GOP elites who are giving grassroots education reformers a bad name and cashing in on their betrayal of limited-government principles.”
Whether you are liberal or conservative or libertarian or anything else, you should be offended by the grade-fixing, by the cronyism, and by the cozy financial arrangements that now dominate what is called “reform.”
At some point, a light goes on and you realize that this so-called “reform” has nothing to do with children, nothing to do with education as such, and everything to do with politics, power, and money.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The truth doesn’t know Liberal from Conservative. I agree with her and further agree that the federal government does not have a Constitutional role in education.
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Shared this article last Friday with my conservative network. So far, only one reply. Will start asking questions, if more replies aren’t forthcoming. For once, Malkin’s harsh and blunt style seems appropriate.
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When something on the Right is so rotten that even Michelle Malkin is compelled to criticize it publicly, the ship is sinking fast. Maybe education deform – corporate style is like the dean who was so incompetent the other deans complained.
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May they all turn on each other and disappear into oblivion.
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Good one! I agree. That would be fitting.
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Never forget that Neil Bush owns an educational company, Ignite Learning. While the company is doing some important and innovative work, recognize the crony-networks for what they are. When Barbara Bush donated money to rebuild post-Katrina New Orleans’ schools, one stipulation was that a large chunk had to be used to buy the Ignite Learning program. As they say: follow the money.
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All these people with the “power”…what do they REALLY know about education anyway? Real teachers working with parents of the students being served need to be the ones in charge of making decisions regarding education. The sad and scary thing is that the people who currently make the decisions about education don’t even care that they don’t really know the first thing about education.
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Interesting to see the first time Michelle Malkin and Michelle Rhee disagreeing on an education topic, the later having rode to Bennett’s rescue.
Are the reformers still using the oxymoron “public charter school,” even long after it’s been established that charters are not public? http://j.mp/LCdGdX
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She can slam him all she wants. It’s good that she did.
Where is her insistence on prosecuting him?
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She is still BSCrazy
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I fully concur. And she knows nothing about education, particularly mathematics education, where she sides with the reactionaries on everything.
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The Lady Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks
There are too many ironies in Lady Malkin’s performance for me to enumerate here — aside from the problem that no one can tell a neocon from a neolib without a program and a neo-anglish dictionary, there is above all the fact that “crony capitalism” is what we students of logic call a tautology.
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“no one can tell a neocon from a neolib without a program and a neo-anglish dictionary”
Thank you for stating that. I’ve been thinking it for years but thought perhaps I’d missed something important somewhere. ;^)
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You were probably dazzled by the rhetoric, which is full of divergent historical references and verbal distinctions — differences that don’t make a diddley bit of difference when it comes to their convergent reality in practice.
Personally, I have always suspected that the term “neoliberal” was deliberately concocted a bit of semantic fog. It appears to have done a pretty good job at that.
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I don’t think I was dazzled by any rhetoric, but people kept using “neo-liberal” to refer to people I would have just called conservative democrats. There are lots of them out there, always have been. But not all were Dixiecrats, so when those folks went Nixonward and those who didn’t went Reaganward, what was left were moneyed Dems whose sympathies were much more with big business than with labor, with white establishment values than with those of people of color, etc. They may have publicly talked a ‘liberal’ game, but clearly worked for much less liberal outcomes. Maybe one day, someone woke up to the fact that having these folks claim to be “lifelong liberal Democrats” (as one long-time antagonist of mine in the Math Wars did for 20+ years despite OBVIOUSLY having voted Republican in every presidential election since at LEAST 1980 and quite possibly before that) was more than a bit ridiculous and coined ‘neo-liberal.’ Or one of them did him/herself. I realize there’s a historical thing at play, too, about “classical liberals,” but I don’t really buy it in terms of what’s happened in this country. Watching so many Jews become conservative and Republican over the course of my 60+ years on the planet suggests a more typical story of folks being co-opted by (or simply willingly selling themselves out to) the comfy little capitalist system. I doubt Jews are unique in this, but as I was raised in a Jewish community, I notice movement from left to right in that group most readily (and it makes me more than a bit ill).
My sense has been for a long time that the distinctions between neo-conservative and neo-liberal are not terribly significant, if they’re real at all. What matters in the end is where they come down on key social and economic issues: always on the wrong side of history and humanity.
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n
(Government, Politics & Diplomacy) (Economics) a modern politico-economic theory favouring free trade, privatization, minimal government intervention in business, reduced public expenditure on social services, etc
neoliberal adj & n
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Sounds oddly like. . .
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Where did the first President Bush stand in regards to education? All I really remember about him was entering war with Iraq in 1991. I was in high school and just beginning college when he was President. Has any President really supported education?
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Any number of presidential candidates have said during their campaigns that they wanted to be “The Education President”, but you know how that goes. We’d have to go way back to find one or two who actually did anything positive.
http://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/articles/education-president
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Um, Jefferson?
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Here’s my 1991 response to the elder Bush’s proposal for a national testing program, framed by my comments on the current “reform” movement (and praise for the work of Diane and others): http://newnarrative-newnotes.blogspot.com/2012_03_01_archive.html
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Ask Dr. Ravitch, he was her boss for a time.
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The first President Bush wanted to be remembered as the “education president,” but he had no concrete ideas about how to improve schools. He appointed Lamar Alexander as Secretary and David Kearns of Xerox as Deputy Secretary. They shaped a plan called “America 2000,” which was completely voluntary. They wanted to support the “national goals,” which are totally unobjectionable (e.g., all children should start school ready to learn). One thing I can say that is positive about the Bush-Alexander approach: They believed in federalism, they did not think the federal government had the right or authority to tell states and school districts what to do.
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Too bad those in charge since Bush and Alexander don’t go along with the belief that the federal government should not be telling states and school districts what to do. We desperately need to elect leaders who think along those lines. Thanks to everyone who has answered my question; even posting some interesting and informative articles!
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I guess that’s another obvious flaw in my rejected op-ed piece. I failed to reference the specific news item reporting the 1991 Bush proposal for a national testing program. According to a blog that I’m not exactly a fan of, the “President Bush’s ‘America 2000’ proposal included voluntary national testing tied to ‘world class’ standards, a provision that led to the bill’s death by Republican filibuster.” http://educationnext.org/the-politics-of-no-child-left-behind/ The blog post goes on to say that a “sea change came with the 1994 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.”
It looks like the turning point toward bad “school reform” might have taken place during the first Clinton administration. Interestingly, it was the Clinton administration that oversaw financial deregulation that helped set the stage for the 2008 credit collapse. So it also looks like Robert Reich was correct in 1991 and is still correct today, on both education and financial deregulation.
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We need to look closely at the education system in Finland. Simply put, it’s good and it works! We also need to keep in mind that, despite the false cries of pseudo – reformers like Jeb Bush, the public education system in the U.S isn’t nearly as bad as these money grabbing opportunists would have us believe. School grading and high stakes testing do not equal sound education reform. As in the case of drug enforcement, education reform has become a big business controlled by those who benefit financially.
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“Education reform has become a big business controlled by those who benefit financially.”…Exactly! Failing schools is a manufactured crisis, going back to at least Reagan who wrote A Nation At Risk.
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“At some point, a light goes on and you realize that there is “reform” has nothing to do with children, nothing to do with education as such, and everything to do with politics, power, and money.”
A powerful, insightful observation! The current “reform” is perhaps, a form of capitalist child abuse.
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It’s just too easy to say “a form of capitalist child abuse.” Sometimes public schools are a “form of socialist child abuse.”
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