[Reposting in case you missed this story last night, DR]
The Néw York Times tells the sad story of the life and death of Jeb Bush’s charter school. Bush now recalls his involvement in the school to demonstrate his prowess as an education reformer. But the actual experience of the school shows the perils of Bush’s free-market ideology.
In 1996, Jeb Bush co-founded Florida’s first charter school, called Liberty City Charter School, in an impoverished black neighborhood in Miami. His co-founder was head of the city’s Urban League. Two years earlier, he had narrowly lost the governor’s race. When asked what he would do for blacks if elected, he responded, “Probably nothing.” Looking ahead to the next election, he needed to “soften” his image. The founding of a charter school for poor black children was his vehicle.
After he was elected governor in 1998, Jeb Bush created a model of tough accountability, pre-dating his brother George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law. Among other things, Jeb graded every school, A-F. His charter school won an A in 2006, and he was very proud.
However, the school sunk into financial trouble, and its grade plummeted to D. Bush’s second term as governor ended in 2007, and he did not do much to help the school as it struggled with debt. In 2008, it closed.
What did Jeb Bush learn from the failure of his model school? Not much. He certainly didn’t learn about the limits of the free market in education.
Nonetheless, the now defunct school still remains valuable to Presidential candidate Jeb Bush.
Times’ reporter Jason Horowitz writes:
“But with Mr. Bush all but certain to be running for office again, this time for the White House, the school he once championed is again useful. As he tries to sell himself to the conservative Republicans wary of his support for the testing standards they consider emblematic of government overreach, he can speak with authority on charter schools, funded largely by taxpayers but run by private companies, as a free-market antidote to liberal teachers’ unions and low performance.
“And his firsthand experience in the education of underprivileged urban grade-schoolers lends him credibility in a party that has suddenly seized upon the gap between the rich and poor as politically promising terrain. In his first speech as a likely presidential candidate in Detroit last month, Mr. Bush credited Liberty City Charter School with helping “change education in Florida”
“But Mr. Bush’s uplifting story of achievement and reform avoided mentioning the school by name or its unhappy ending. For all his early and vital involvement during his 1998 campaign for governor, and for all the help he offered from afar in the governor’s office, Mr. Bush’s commitment to his school project was not as enduring as some students and teachers might have hoped.”
Others might view Liberty City Charter School as a symbol not of “achievement and reform,” but of the impermanence and empty promises of charter schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The unsuspecting, earnest kids who believe “getting a good education is possible” get played yet again, even as they are used as pawns by forces way bigger then them with other motives.
And fortunately for Jeb Bush and his ilk, there is a never-ending supply of unsuspecting, earnest kids who believe getting a good education is possible…and are sold on that promise by others who have already moved on.
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Education is a marathon, not a sprint. Something free marketers can not understand. You do not want to look behind the masks of the Bush, Christie, Kasich, Walker, et al, it is not a pretty sight. Handlers and branding experts keep up appearances, but it is all about greed, self enrichment, and power to these edufakes.
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Libertarians and Neo-Liberals can’t seem to grasp the idea of a public good that the free market doesn’t handle better than people charged with impartially maintaining it (though they would argue their positions are biased towards maintaining their employment and not the public good).
I finished reading a book today called “The Internet is not the Answer” and it posits that the answer to neo-liberal and libertarian greed is government regulation. It is an interesting read though as to the history of the internet, which is itself grounded in government development and was co-opted by the private sector that turned it into the e-commerce bazaar we see today.
However, I followed it up with reading on Bill Moyers as we’re all first hand witnesses to the corruption of our politicians vis a vie the revolving door between government and the private sector, if not outright illegal quid pro quo at times. Regulation is being used against the public good rather than to enforce it.
His answer to the corruption of government private/public relationships is more democracy.
The funny thing is, I don’t think people are staying home from voting because they don’t care. I think it’s because they are readily fed the belief that at this point their votes don’t count and there’s no one worth voting for who represents their interests.
Jefferson believed a democracy needed a strong educated populace to survive. He’s being proven right by the intentional dumbing down of society and how valuable that’s proving to people who thrive on power, money, and a supply of people and properties they can consumerize. People being walking talking wallets rather than humans.
People like Bush, Cuomo, Snyder, Walker, formerly Corbett, Malloy, Christie, and others, are the walking epitome of government corruption by eschewing the government role of regulation in favor of selling out to the private sector in the name of the public good.
Should not the goal of our society be to provide reasonable opportunity to everyone who seeks to pursue it, and reasonable rules to govern our relationships so as to protect from abuses?
What do we call this “creative destruction” if not a destabilizing force that imperils millions of people’s sense of self and security and seems to be on a runaway train to obsoleting the very consumers they’re supposed to be selling to?
The government monopoly is needed, and needs to be run by reasonable people selected by the populace to enforce what is indeed the PUBLIC good. I don’t see at all how given the evidence and data from over a decade of us doing many of these privatization practices especially in education and looking outward to other societies like Chile that have gone this route, we can still conclude that this is the America we communally want.
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Emerson warned us about people like the Bushes. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”.
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M,
This is the America the overclass wants, not what we 98% want or need.
Jeb Bush is as dumb as his brother, and both epitomize how wealth and power and disconnect trump brains and integrity.
Mommy Barbara should be clutching her pearls to the point of near strangulation for her to see yet another Bush in the White House. Poor woman. In a press conference, she states she does not want Jeb to run because there have been enough Bushes in the White House. She’s right.
I’m afraid short of Warren, the pickings are slim, and I still don’t know entirely who Liz Warren is even though so far, I like what I see and hear.
Jeb’s charter failure is no surprise. The business template forced upon schools does not work the way it works for the vested interests in business. But it’s far more important that we little people really understand that.
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Warren is not a savior for public education – http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/04/21/the-warren-brief?currentPage=all favoring a universal voucher system even if her rhetoric on finance and business is tough.
The one thing everyone seems to agree on is public education is irrevocably broken and someone else needs to come up with a better idea – even if it means discarding hundreds of thousands of people who invested their lives in children and whose livelihood would be degraded forever while they suffer through the necessary “disruption” to presumably come out the other side.
Vouchers, charters, tax credits, pick your poison.
Everyone wants to divvy up the carcass of public education and stake out who should get this huge pile of cash next in the name of the children…anyone other than the people who dedicated themselves to being in classrooms day in and day out.
Ironically for everything being about “grass roots” development these days, is there anything as anti-grass roots as figuring a different administration/management will design a better system without the necessary input of stakeholders? Or worse, giving people vouchers and telling them to find a way to make up the difference if a school wants more than the voucher is for.
There’s no way that’s going to lead to de facto segregation, no-sir.
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Ah, but the business template DOES work; follow that money. The edufakers don’t care that there is no real innovation or even for that matter, education or success going on. They take the money and run. They are in it for the ROI, any way it can be had, and love raking in all that taxpayer cash, even if they have to fake attendance rolls, kick kids out, cut every corner and expense, buy and then rent back at exorbitant rates buildings to themselves through multiple corporations, hire relatives for no-show jobs, pay the teachers sub wages without benefits, and when they are caught, or the financial well runs dry, they run and throw the kids back to the public schools, and move on to open up another charter, or manage another charter, or move into a city like New Orleans and spin the “success.” Ask Bill and Melinda Gates and their hedge fund friends how you, too, can “invest” in charters. *wink*
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In order to truly understand the concept of making teachers accountable, perhaps politicians need to be held accountable for things that succeed and those that fail in their own line of work. It would be totally unacceptable if teachers walked out and shut down schools for a week over money (like what happened to the government over a budgetary disagreement). It would be totally unacceptable for teachers to accept money (kickbacks and bribes) from people for any reason, except when given materials to be used in the classroom. Politicians should set the stellar example so we can feel that it is the concept of accountability that is the issue and not just targeting teachers because they can’t find anyone else to point their fingers at. Maybe they need to walk in a teacher’s shoes for a week… the whole week including the work we do on nights and weekends. Keep whipping the horse and eventually there won’t be anyone left that is willing to do that work under the oppressive weight of politics running education.
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Apparently this has been known in Florida for quite a while. Here’s a letter from a former employee:
“He frequently campaigned there, disrupting staff and administration by his visits, and bringing public relations, media and individuals whose sole interest was political gain.
Immediately after he won the race for governor by winning the black vote he abandoned the school and the poor children and families with whom he had developed a personal relationship.
Jeb Bush failed to bring success to his own school. Worse, he abandoned it while it was still in operation.”
Alicia Banuchi, former administrative assistant to the principal, Liberty City Charter School, Hollywood
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article10557896.html#storylink=cpy
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Here he is in Iowa:
“We reformed our education system like nobody’s business,” he said. “We were the state (Florida) that created the first statewide voucher program. We expanded school choice both public and private. We eliminated social promotion in third grade.”
Promoting vouchers and charters and all public schools get out of it is negatives- testing and sanctions.
Boilerplate DC ed reform. Grim, joyless and negative for kids in existing public schools. The only reason he mentioned public schools at all is to crow about a testing and punishment scheme for 3rd graders.
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“We reformed our education system like nobody’s business.”
Well, of course it’s “nobody’s business”. Otherwise he couldn’t get away with the bullshit he has perpetrated on others who are the most vulnerable, the children.
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Here is what I say… Jeb BUSH needs to put his “money where his mouth is”… BROKE. Sometimes broken is broken and no amount of fixing can bring it to where it started from – and even then that starting point was BROKEN. That should be the logo for his audacious campaign.
“Leading” is all about PR these days – leading should be about DARING TO BE REAL and face reality with real issues without the fairy tale of “reality show politics”. And if The People like what you offer then let the cards fall where they may and be elected. These days the biggest and most expensive “reality” show is the never-ending political campaign. Jeb Bush’s reaction to his failures (HIS charter school is a prime example) should tell the public all they need to know about his character and “brains”.
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Politicians love competitions.
You don’t have to pay all participants a living wage, you get to declare winners at the end (positive thinking – forget the losers they couldn’t democratically compete) – and if the winners fail it is on them and not you for choosing them. If they succeed, you win too. Privatize for you and create cover to push off losses.
Political maneuvering at its finest and a way to cheaply get positive sound bites with little risk politically or budgetarily and you win with rich neo libs.
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When asked what he would do for blacks and the crest of the 99% if elected President, Jeb Bush responded, “Probably nothing.”
And he meant every word — except “probably”.
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The real lesson here is that despite multiple failures, missteps and outright lies, plenty of blind, misguided Americans would still consider Jeb Bush a viable presidential candidate. A significant number of the voting public seriously needs a remedial class in choosing a nominee. Even worse, some people in the Republican party want to see Ted Cruz lead us down another rabbit hole!
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I’m sure most of you are aware, but it’s worth remembering in the upcoming election that both Obama and Duncan have completely endorsed Jeb Bush’s education agenda.
In fact, those of you in the middle part of the country may remember Duncan/Obama endorsed Bush again just as Scott Walker (another potential GOP candidate) was attacking Wisconsin public schools and Wisconsin teachers:
“There’s no real surprise in the Jeb and Arne show. Duncan has spoken at earlier Bush summits. Obama himself stood on a stage with Bush — the architect of Florida’s damaging corporate-style education reforms, which have become a model around the country — and called him “a champion of education reform.” This while Wisconsin teachers were protesting for their collective bargaining rights last year. And I wrote a few days ago that Bush’s summit had also booked as a keynote speaker John Podesta, founder and chairman of the Center for American Progress, who was president Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and and co-chair of Obama’s 2008 presidential transition team.”
We may have no real choice again in 2016. We seem to get Jeb Bush’s ed agenda no matter who wins, but at least this time we’ll know there’s no real debate on this in DC- they ALL endorse Jeb Bush’s approach.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2012/11/17/jeb-and-arne-together-again/
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I would like to see a dollar figure on the amount of waste and fraud that has been sacrificed forwarding this agenda. I would also like to know how much money has gone to complicit politicians. Most of all I would like to know what has happened to the thousands of students and families that have had their world turned upside down so Wall St. vulture capitalist can make money off them. We follow the individual disasters here, but I wonder how many people would blindly follow if they knew the total cost. They are not saving money; they are simply redistributing it to the top. Of course, we can’t access the whole truth because there is a media gag order, and the money is shrouded in privatized mystery.
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This is what they’ve done to workers comp:
“Over the past decade, state after state has been dismantling America’s workers’ comp system with disastrous consequences for many of the hundreds of thousands of people who suffer serious injuries at work each year, a ProPublica and NPR investigation has found.
The cutbacks have been so drastic in some places that they virtually guarantee injured workers will plummet into poverty. Workers often battle insurance companies for years to get the surgeries, prescriptions and basic help their doctors recommend.”
Someone has to do something about the level of pay to play and corruption.
It’s absolutely disgusting what they are doing to working people.
http://www.propublica.org/article/the-demolition-of-workers-compensation
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60 Minutes just did a story on victims of Hurricane Sandy that still haven’t been paid because the insurance company changed the engineer’s report to say that the house suffered minimal damage. These are homes that have been knocked off their foundations! Corruption is rampant. Corporations can write their own rules.
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Lesson 1: The rich get richer.
Lesson 2: The ones with the most money get to make the rules.
Lesson 3: Lie through your teeth; most people will believe you.
Lesson 4: Choose your bought politicians well.
Lesson 5: When your ideas fail miserably, close up shop and keep the $$$$$.
Lesson 6: Rinse/repeat as often as needed, whenever and wherever you can.
Lesson 7: The masses are asses; they’ll catch on eventually, after you’ve run off with the $$$$.
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Not only did Jeb Bush help to charter Liberty City, but was regarded as the Father of Florida Charter School Legislation. I was the Campus Provost for Friends of Children Charter (90% Black) in Ft. Lauderdale which was to become Florida’s fourth charter school to be operated in August 1997. However, its stair egress was questioned by the City of Sunrise Fire Department as a hazard for students on the 2nd floor. Jeb Bush came for our curriculum. – – JH
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Time will tell if the electoral college is “taken” by the dog and pony show, when THEY
elect the next CEO…
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The self-styled “education reformers” don’t like to be pinned down to specifics because the rhetoric of their promises don’t match the reality of their results.
Using google I found the following [one of many] that remind us of the real world accomplishments upon which Arne Duncan’s ‘education expertise’ rests.
[start quote]
When President Obama in 2008 named Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan to be the new U.S. education secretary, he cited approvingly Duncan’s willingness to close down struggling schools and replace their staffs. In fact, the president made his speech in one of those schools, hailing its progress.
Yet now that school, the Dodge Renaissance Academy, and three other schools that Duncan closed and reopened are either slated to close again or are threatened with closing.
Dodge will be moved over a mile away to share a building with another school. Among others that Duncan closed and reopened with new staffs, the Williams Elementary and Middle School will be closing and the ACE Tech Charter School is on an academic warning list and in danger of closing. And, four years after every staff member of Bethune Elementary was fired and the school was reopened by a private, nonprofit organization, it is also closing.
While no Chicago Public Schools official would comment on the apparent failure of Duncan’s strategy with these four schools, an official who ran the Office of New Schools for Duncan until 2005 said, “I think we have to keep trying until we find some things that work.”
One mother whose children will be affected by the closings said: “Sometimes I think that we are all pieces in the game that they’re playing, and the game doesn’t affect their lives. It affects our lives.”
A study by the University of Chicago in 2009 found that school closings under Duncan did little, if anything, to improve student achievement.
[end quote]
Link: http://www.uft.org/news-briefs/schools-created-duncan-close
But, unlike most folks that hold themselves responsible for walking their own talk and changing their words and deeds when necessary, the leaders of the self-proclaimed “new civil rights movement of our time” think that the proper response to failure is to, well, here’s the NJ Commissioner of Education in a blog posting on this blog of 3-4-2015, “Lindsey Layton: Governor Christie Falters in Newark”:
[start quote]
What’s astonishing is to read defenders of “reform” finding silver linings or straws to grasp at. Some claim that Cami has plenty of supporters, others say that success is around the corner. Just be patient. Christie’s state commissioner says, “Christie, through a spokesman, declined to comment. According to Christie’s education commissioner:
“It will take time to see the type of progress we all want,” he said. “Whatever we’re doing, we need to double down.”
Astonishing. If they double down, they are likely to face open rebellion from the parents of Newark.
[end quote]
Double down.
Yes. On double talk. On double speak. On double standards.
Even John Maynard Keynes got this right:
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
¿? What’s that?
“I reject that mind-set.” [Michelle Rhee]
😳
Be honest, folks, you know she was going to say that.
😎
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I could see this being spun as a success story because a failing charter was closed and that is how the system is supposed to work. This is the simple message I have heard from pro-charter people – bad schools will be closed.
I guess that is the simple part, but where do the children go when a charter closes mid-year? Where do they go the next year?
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