Bush is a major figure in
the conservative education reform movement, and now heads the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a think - tank seeking to overhaul the country's educational systems through policies like ending teacher tenure, expanding the use of charter schools and school vouchers, and the increased use of virtual education.
Not exact matches
For our efforts to go beyond such survival - mode, and to actually do what
conservative pundits are calling for, depend a great upon a broader
reform movement to restore genuine liberal
education to the general curriculum and to give its champions real power.
What's worrying, though, is to see
conservatives grow soft on what has arguably been the most successful and transformative part of the package:
education reform, particularly the charter school
movement.
Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said the unions» strategy on testing follows years in which they have been under assault, by
conservative leaders and by the bipartisan
education -
reform movement that has painted unions as a central obstacle to improving schools.
As Dropout Nation has documented over the past three years, the administration's No Child waiver gambit is already damaging systemic
reform efforts on the ground; the administration's declaration last Saturday that there is supposedly too much testing, has also given ammunition to traditionalists and
movement conservatives otherwise unconcerned with
education policy.
TFA, suitably representative of the liberal
education reform more generally, underwrites, intentionally or not, the
conservative assumptions of the
education reform movement: that teacher's unions serve as barriers to quality
education; that testing is the best way to assess quality
education; that educating poor children is best done by institutionalizing them; that meritocracy is an end - in - itself; that social class is an unimportant variable in
education reform; that
education policy is best made by evading politics proper; and that faith in public school teachers is misplaced.
This is why
movement conservatives not engaged in
education discussions are naturally be more - supportive of measures such as the expansion of school choice (because they conform to their views that markets and private actions by families should be the deciding forces in
education) than of other
reform efforts that seem to involve what they may perceive more - robust federal or state government roles, or involve what they consider to be an abrogation of roles they think should be in the hands of families or local governments.
As with centrist and progressive counterparts,
conservative reformers must decide if their greatest concern is with building brighter futures for all children (and working in the big tent that is the
reform movement), or with adhering to first principles that may not always match up with the reality of the
education crisis (as well as disturbing the relationships they have with their ideological counterparts).
The second wave of
reforms needed to transform American public
education involve supporting policies such as implementing Common Core that are considered anathema for many reasons by many of their
movement conservative fellow - travelers.
The recriminations over the excesses, perceived and otherwise, of George W. Bush's tenure as president (as well as the defeat of Republican nominee John McCain by Obama seven years ago) even extend to
education policy as
movement conservatives otherwise unconcerned with
education policy are accusing
conservative reform outfits such as the Thomas B. Fordham Institute of being apostates.
Given Trump's general opposition to criminal justice
reform, the antipathy among Republicans and many
conservative reformers to the Black Lives Matter
movement (which has championed Obama's efforts), and the skepticism among so - called
conservative reformers (most - notably Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and his amen corner at
Education Next) on school discipline
reform, expect nothing more after January.
Such a point also shines light on the fact that EdTrust and other centrist Democrat reformers backing the plan have been silent about the Obama administration's sloppy and shoddy process for granting waivers, especially as President Barack Obama struggles to keep office; it is hard for waiver gambit supporters to complain about Florida's implementation of one of the alternatives to AYP they support without pointing out how the Obama administration's own mishandling of the effort allowed for such antics in the first place (or giving
movement conservatives more reasons to oppose a strong federal role in
reforming American public
education).