The complete failure of Jeb Bush’s education reforms

First let me say I have thought they have been a failure for quite some time. He however doesn’t as he travels around the country extolling their virtues.

I am also not in favor of using standardized tests to give us a snap shot that we base education policy around, but you know what, Jeb does as the FCAT was the center piece of his reforms.

With that out of the way let me explain how his reforms have completely and utterly failed using his own metrics of success.   

We are a decade into his education reforms, for a decade we have been selling vouchers, charter schools, high stakes standardized test, merit pay and blame the teacher evaluations in order for us to make our students internationally competitive and where has it gotten us?

Nowhere!

Florida, ground zero for his reforms performed poorly on the PISA international tests while two other states that have thus far resisted his reforms Massachusetts and Connecticut (who like Florida did ponnied up 600k for its own results) and fared much better.

Some might argue that they have fewer kids in poverty and should be doing better to which I respond duh! And maybe its time that we stopped filling the coffers of testing companies and charter schools and instead invested in ways to mitigate poverty in our public schools.

We have had a decade of his reforms where Jeb Bush screamed to anybody who would listen that we need to prepare our children for international competition, well Jeb your reforms aren’t doing it.

To read about Florida’s PISA scores, click the link: http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/florida-gets-state-specific-pisa-results-finds-

The Guardian is running a piece about the failure of Market reforms so if you would like to read more, click this one: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/08/pisa-education-test-scores-meaning