Jeb Bush: Worse than We Imagined Robert Weissberg
Jeb Bush is struggling. Conservatives loath his support for the Common Core and open borders but let me suggest that his RINO (Republican In Name Only) credentials hardly stop there. Despite frequent claims of being a “real conservative” on his signature issue of improving public education, don’t believe him. More alarming, Jeb seems oblivious to the liberal character of these proposals. No wonder so many conservatives are uneasy—he talks one way, acts another and seem oblivious to the perniciousness of what he is trying to accomplish.
Consider Bush’s plan to reform K-12 education recently offered in Manchester, NH. He began by claiming—“I am the most outspoken Republican candidate for president in favor of high standards and accountability for public schools.” He then turned to a problem that bedeviled policy-makers for half a century while soaking up billions, all to no avail—the dreadful academic performances of inner-city black and Hispanic students, the academic bottom of the bottom.
Consider the implications of targeting the illiterate and innumerate as the paramount aim of educational reform. Not only is this crusade central to today’s egalitarian agenda (recall its origins in LBJ’s Great Society) but it is a guaranteed recipe for financial prolificacy. Moreover, it rests on a non-sequitur: how in the world will uplifting the worst students strengthen America’s economic competiveness? Yes, education and economics may be linked, but only at the most general level. Not every uptick in educational test scores translates into out-performing the Chinese. This link must be proven and Jeb blithely treats it as self-evident. Perhaps somebody should also remind him that his brother’s billion dollar No Child Left Behind made this quest central and it failed.
Apparently, Jeb fails to grasp the idea of opportunity costs–one more dollar spent on the elevating the bottom crusade means one less dollar less to help the smartest of the smart. So, instead of boasting about how he as governor helped boost test scores of struggling inner-city kids, he should have instead pushed for greater funding for the intellectually gifted or built Florida universities to rival MIT or Caltech. In a nutshell, a good conservative would have put excellence above levelling.
Jeb’s underlying liberal/ Left mentality becomes even clearer in his solutions to closing this achievement gap. He invokes the favored terminology of free-market conservatives—vouchers, charter schools, tax credits, clear standards and rewarding top performers while punishing the bad ones—but along with this conservative lingo comes a vision absolutely bereft of any personal responsibility. Like all liberals, Jeb faults “the system” as if youngsters and their parents were incapable of helping themselves. His “solution” defines the problem of bad education as millions trapped in failing schools where they are denied “leaning opportunities” that would permit them to escape poverty and to achieve a rewarding life. Not said is that many of these students—probably most—lack discipline and put little effort into learning while ruining the education of others. Similarly unsaid is that these “traps” are typically lavishly funded and abound with special programs plus the latest expensive technology.
Think about what Jeb is implying: if only these trapped youngsters were rescued and allowed to enter top (and largely white and Asian) schools the achievement gap would vanish. No more intellectual indifference, no more disciplinary problems, no more schoolyard violence and so on. Yet one more time: zero responsibility for those who will be uplifted by these programs. Youngsters who skip school, socialize during lessons, fight with classmates and so on are absolutely blameless for their failure to learn Unfortunately, the sad truth is that troubled inner-city kids bring their problems with them; they are not created by some “bad school.” Multiple integration schemes have been tried for a half century, and they just don’t work as advertised.
Elsewhere Jeb endorses policies associated with the likes of New York’s radical mayor, Bill de Blasio among many other Progressives: more federal funding for pre-K programs, albeit run by private firms. As with improving public education by helping laggards escape bad schools, this solution is an expensive dead-end. Head Start and similar early intervention programs have been around for decades and while they initially do bump up test scores, their long term impact is zero. They are not education programs though they usually provide other benefits such as decent meal for children and jobs for adults.
Now comes the unspeakable truth that goes to the heart of Jeb’s plan and may help explain the sudden popularity of the outspoken Donald Trump. Jeb’s nostrums, top to bottom blithely skips over anything that might in some way offend blacks or Hispanics. This avoidance is cowardice and at some visceral level voters recognize this fecklessness though they would be hard pressed to explain just why Jeb lacks a spine. Imagine the very different reaction from voters if Jeb had instead said that America has spent billions on schools with little to show for it and students need to behave themselves if they want to learn and teachers should have the freedom to punish miscreants? In other words, put the blame where it belongs: the troublesome students themselves, most of whom are black or Hispanic.
Alexander the Great said it best: I have more to fear from an army of sheep lead by a lion than an army of lions lead by a sheep. In today’s political climate it is all too easy to pick out the GOP sheep. And there are so many of them, all the while denying politically incorrect truths. They see guns as the source of murder, imperfect policing as instigating crime and violent hellhole schools as bringing about academic disaster. Jeb (among many other GOP candidates) is just a sheep pretending to be a lion.
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