If you let it, it can truly make your head spin.
Rick Scott says the Florida education system is broken and it must be over hauled. He turns to his mentor Jeb Bush who is arguably the person responsible for where education in Florida finds itself to help him do so. Answer this question; if Rick Scott thought the system was broken wouldn’t Jeb Bush be the last person the governor turned to?
Jeb Bush on the other hand uses cherry picked stats in an attempt to prove to everyone who will listen that his way of doing education is the right way to do education. Say he is right, then shouldn’t he be urging Rick Scott to stay the course, that his reforms are working? Well he’s not doing that, instead he is giving Rick Scott the thumbs up to radically change how things are done.
Are they both trying to have their cake and eat it too and are the citizens of Florida going to let them?
Governor Scott how can you think the education system is broken and then turn to the man who broke it for guidance and advice?
Mister Bush how can you tout your reforms as working then sit back and encourage Rick Scott to blow the system up?
Which is it? If you believe the system is broken you should want the governor to stay as far away from Jeb Bush and his ideas as possible. If you believe Florida is on the forefront of reform as Jeb Bush says you should want the governor to leave things alone. Which is it or are you like me and believe it’s neither.
The truth is we are in trouble and a lot of that is because of Jeb Bush and his reforms. This despite what his cherry picked facts say because all he can truly claim as an accomplishment is graduating a generation of kids, who can pass the f-cat but do little else. Furthermore it looks like we are going to be in deeper trouble with Rick Scott’s market based reforms which are designed to punish teachers and help only those well off enough not to need any help. Make no mistakes, their concern is not for the average citizen and their children and these two men know very little about public education and schools.
Citizens of Florida, friends, am I the only one who sees how incongruent the two positions Rick Scott and Jeb Bush have, yet there they stand hand in hand. Hello is anybody out there, is this thing on?
Wake up Florida before it is to late and we have doomed another generations worth of children.
You are bang on and there are people out here listening, talking and trying to change things. Poverty is what hurts kids. And we have seen greater poverty in this country over the last decade under Republican leadership. What Scott touts as Education Reform will be the demise of public education in Florida. There will be a tax break for corporations and a tax break given to those who already send their kids to private schools. And for the rest of us, we won't be able to educate our children for $5000 and any decent private school so we'll take our kids to the public schools where the funding is even less. People need to wake up. I am all for the American Dream - work hard and get rich. But not at the expense of our society. Have we become so egocentric that we cannot see the harm we are doing. When there is no longer a middle class there will be the rich and the rest of us fighting violence and poverty - like a third world country. I don't want to give people a hand out - but a hand up is sometimes necessary to ensure we educate, innovate, keep people employed and keep kids out of jail.
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