Jeb Bush was honored by Betsy DeVos’ organization, the American Federation for Children, at their meeting in Indianapolis. Bush’s Foundation for Educational Ecellence is heavily funded by the technology and Bush loves to attack the schools that don’t adopt technology faster.
On this occasion, he blamed teachers’ unions for standing in the way of the electronic future. He says they care only for adult interests, which explains why they take a low-paying job with difficult working conditions.
Bush, who is funded by billionaire foundations and tech industries, finds it easy to use teachers and their unions as his punching bag and scapegoat.
He did not acknowledge that the nation’s highest scoring states on NAEP–Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut–have strong teachers’ unions, while the state’s that ban unions are the lowest performing.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How close am I with this?: “They only care about adult interests” is replacing “the civil rights of our time” which replaced “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
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Jeb truly believes in the old adage that “Reality has a liberal bias” (Colbert)
It sure makes it easier to ignore it.
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Jeb Bush believes people selling ed tech product are not “self interested”
Which is absolutely ridiculous. Of course they are. It’s a business.
No public school should take purchase decision advice from this man. It’s lousy advice and you will make bad decisions about allocating resources.
Find someone competent and trustworthy.
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Jeb (along with nearly all other politicians) doesn’t believe anything, other than (a) that he is always right and (b) his pocketbook always needs lining. He knows all about self-interest. He doesn’t care.
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I never had the opportunity to join a union, but I know that not all unions are serving as punching bags and scapegoats. When was the last time Republicans and privatizers blasted unions of firefighters, police officers, first responders, nurses, and so on. Why are those unions silent about the attacks on teacher unions?
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Because those other unions are a matter of life and death for everyone. Kids are just kids and because they have no rights, and they don’t vote, they don’t matter. Parents are busy just trying to keep food on the table and shoes on feet with reduced/stagnant salaries. But you have a valid question about why the other unions are silent when it comes to the teachers union?
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Sadly I think there is some sexism in play as well
Those other unions have mostly male members while the ranks of teacher unions are majority female.
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That’s because those unions are dominated by men. Teachers’ unions aren’t.
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Are ed reformers pushing ed tech product on public schools because they realized they have no positive agenda for children in existing public schools?
Or is it because they are seeking a cheap way to educate the middle and lower classes that also benefits a new industry?
School districts need to do their homework. Please don’t take advice from these lobbyists and self-interested consultants. Find someone who actually values public schools and isn’t selling anything.
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They are pushing ed tech because of large donations or financial support. Follow the money.
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and it is very, very big money
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One of the things I find horrible as a voter is how Jeb Bush so drives ed reform and his sole claim to fame in government is as a former Florida governor.
It’s awful that US kids have been subject to the whims and fads of this one person FOR SO LONG. All thru Bush’s two terms and all thru Obama’s two terms.
Enough. No one elected Jeb Bush czar of US public schools.
He’s been shilling for online learning for the last decade. Stop cramming these products down our throats. If this stuff has real value schools will adopt it- we really don’t need an entire ed reform sales force out pushing product and bullying and shaming principals into investing public money in this sector.
Ed tech companies can pay their own sales force, and don’t worry- they will. Bush and Duncan and DeVos don’t need to volunteer.
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Jeb is certainly a candidate for the Mt. Rushmore of Ed Reform. Others I’d consider: MIchelle Rhee, Bill Gates, David Coleman, Arne Duncan, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
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I was amused the other day because my 13 year old and his friends told me everyone is playing board games now. Board games are fashionable.
The only people insisting these kids need more and more devices and canned programs in schools is the adults who stand to profit off it. Kids themselves are much less easily impressed.
They say they hate the online math testing. It literally takes them longer than a paper and pencil and they can’t see their work all at once without scrolling back and forth.
This nonsense that this is “kid centered” has to stop. Is anyone asking them whether they want to sit in front a screen all day? Did kids ever ask for tablets? They all fly on keyboards. Why would they want a tablet?
This isn’t “about kids”. It’s about easily impressed adults who are vulnerable to slick marketing.
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Why are they all pushing kids into online learning anyway? They recognize they’re pushing them into these cheap courses while at the same time they’re all gushing over welding and plumbing. What do they think welders and plumbers do? How do they think they learn it?
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Remember those public school parents in Chicago who told ed reformers their schools were “more than a score” and were completely ignored and rolled over?
Jeb Bush says the same thing about voucher schools now! Will you look at that!
“At this week’s gathering of school choice supporters, there was an awkward fact in their midst: A wave of new studies had shown that students receiving a voucher did worse, sometimes much worse, on standardized tests.
That was the inconvenient verdict of studies examining programs in Louisiana, Ohio, Washington, D.C., and in Indianapolis, where the advocates had convened for the annual conference of the American Federation for Children. U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, the group’s former leader, gave the keynote address.
But many of the school choice proponents, who had long made the case that their favored reform works, had an explanation at the ready.”
They’re delivering the same grim litany of how public schools suck based on test scores WHILE arguing that the private schools they prefer should get a nuanced analysis.
This isn’t “science”. It’s politics. We went from “better schools” to “different schools” the moment the data became inconvenient to the narrative.
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Their messages change with the political wind. Yesterday, DeVos was saying that any student who switched schools due to vouchers was de facto an improvement for those individuals because their parents had chosen those schools for the kids. But would she say the same thing about parents who chose to keep their children in public schools?
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DeVos knows nothing other than her own bias.
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DeVos knows one thing, and that one thing is wrong. She was brought up in a special billionaire bubble and is ignorant of the lives of other people. She thinks she knows best because she is richer than everyone else.
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Unions are a convenient punching bag for privateers. Profiteers like Jeb always attack and attempt to discredit that which is under assault. Jeb’s goal is to turn teaching into a McDonald’s job. A number of states are working to reduce requirements for teachers. What Jeb will never say is that states with strong unions produce more students that attend and are successful in college. Unions are a convenient target for this corrupt profiteer.
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Jeb Bush made a disgrace of himself in the presidential primary elections proving what a jerk he truly is. Donald Trump made Bush look like a spoiled little brat who still holds mommies hand. Jeb Bush is a low energy goon.
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These deformers who push online learning are sooooooo transparent and ridiculous. Wonder who paid Jeb, another bafoon.
Granted, I too use the screen, but I pick and choose.
My take:
The screen is making us dumb, dumber, dumbest!
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“On this occasion, he (Jeb Bush) blamed teachers’ unions for standing in the way of the electronic future” to turn children into cyborgs isolated from other real people and tethered to the internet and controlled by algorithms owned by corporations that do the bidding of the wealthiest 0.1-percent that owns the most corporate stock.
In other words, teachers’ unions are the only defense children have to grow up as well balanced individuals with real friends and real problem-solving and critical thinking skills – children that become adults and citizens that vote who also think for themselves and have learned to tell the difference between the racist, segregationist, conspiracy theory loving, hate-filled industry of the Alt-Right media controlled by lunatics and fascists (think Steve Bannon) and learn how to find the facts that reveals the Alt-Rights endless Trumpish lies so they can make decisions based on facts that guide them to the truth based on reality.
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Silly me. I always thought that the lack of technology in my classroom had more to do with the unwillingness of the Florida legislature to fund it than with my union membership.
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I was working a project in New Jersey in 1997, and my firm (Lucent) had a program where Lucent would provide engineers and technicians, to wire local public schools for the internet.
I would like to see more cooperation between private sector firms, and public schools.
The Masonic Angel Fund, has a terrific program, where they accept old, discarded computers, and strip them for parts. Then they reassemble functioning computers, and provide them to schools, who otherwise could not afford them.
NGO’s and public schools need to work together.
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Results from online and e-learning are so bad that it will never gain long term traction. I’m not sweating this one.
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FOOL,I was a teacher for 30 years and never have I heard of such an irresponsible,ignorant response from him except for the one from his sister in law,Laura Bush when she said on Larry King that her proudest moment was withnessing the NCLB ACT mandated. I watched that interview. Put him in a classroom and then let him say that. Unions are the best defense we teachers have and we so need them unless Jeb wants to donate his oil money to education.
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Jeb Bush is a washed up politician who is too dumb to realize it.
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