Jeb Bush lumbers over to FOX to peddle his "6 Ideas to Save America."

[seafan]

Blech


From the Orlando Sentinel:

Apr 9, 2009 12:07:51 PM

Former Gov. Jeb Bush will pop up on national TV tonight -- on FOX NEWS, of course -- talking about education reform with Sean Hannity. He'll be featured on an hour-long Hannity special called “6 Ideas to Save America.”

According to a release from Jeb's Foundation for Excellence in Education, Jeb and Sean will discuss:

Raising academic standards to meet international benchmarks

Continuing and expanding annual standardized testing

Holding schools accountable for student achievement

Financially rewarding educators for their expertise

Protecting and expanding school choice programs

Outcome-based funding: finding that recognizes and rewards progress

Creating electronic school records and digital curriculums.



Sounds like 2005. It's on at 9 o'clock tonight.

The release says that besides education, Hannity "will also highlight conservative solutions to economic recovery, housing, energy independence, healthcare and illegal immigration."

Here are 6 of my ideas to save America, Jeb:


1. Let's strip your brother Neil's profiteering from his Ignite *educational* software, propped up by your other brother's No Child Left Behind ripoff.


2. Let's examine your role in Lehman Brothers' bad paper that was shoved into Florida's investment funds while you sat on their board.


3. Let's set the record straight about your carefully shrouded business dealings, some of which ripped off the people of Florida. Start with your Broward Savings and Loan ripoff; Nigerian water pumps deal; Medicare scam; Broward Hospital District deals. There are others.


4. Let's hear why you are so determined to gut public school education; force religious school vouchers down the nation's throat; force students in Florida's public schools to take the FCAT, while letting charter schools off the hook; destroy the smaller class-size amendment; plant your stooges in obscure state government panels to push your educational agenda, long after you left office in January, 2007.

And yet, you still bang your drum about your educational legacy, when Florida's graduation rate was dead last during your tenure. Let's talk about that, shall we?


Not to mention how *pleased* we were to hear that John McCain asked *you* to assist him with his educational agenda during his presidential campaign.... yeah, that was a real hoot.


5. Let's hear why you think anyone other than your most extreme right wing base, now headed for extinction, would actively promote your candidacy for any more elected offices? We all know it's your mission to steamroll your way into the White House.



6. My best idea is retiring the entire Bush Family from American politics for all time, but, short of that, we'll still never forget what you've done.


Fair warning: Do not let Jeb Bush slip off the radar. Ever.


Enjoy your FOX-fest with Hannity, Jeb!. We don't want what you're selling.

[SalviaBlue]

1. Wow - great post! Your response to his insanity is great.

I knew about Jeb's sliminess, but you laid it out perfectly.

Recommended

NO MORE BUSHES... EVER

[redqueen]

2. Does anyone really like standardized testing?

I thought most people were pretty much united in their dislike of this trend toward 'teaching to the test'.

So yeah jeb by all means, go push that.

[Johonny]

18. nope I like it

You have to have some standards. NY state has had a pretty good standardize testing program for years. Teaching to the test isn't always bad since in theory the test has the information you were suppose to be teaching in it. In general people dislike more for profit testing companies and the general negative of using the tests to strip poor performing schools of all their funding and giving it to for profit charter schools. As always there are merits to many different programs but in general Republicans use them to move money from public programs to for profit unregulated programs.

[tabbycat31]

23. I'm a product of NY public schools

I graduated in 1998 before the Regents testing got really bad. And I was taught to the Regents exam all through high school. I actually had teachers say 'I don't care if you want to learn this or not but it's on the Regents"

Since when does a teacher not care whether or not their students learn something?

[kenfrequed]

30. I am unsure

It might occasionally be useful to determine math skill or literace, but it should only be used to determine if ciriculum improvement is needed.

A school should never be deprived of funding for having students that are not meeting standards. That is assinine. It's like giving Physical Fitness tests to people and then if they fail taking away their sports equipment. It makes no damned sense.

[malaise]

3. Get thee to the greatest page

Great post

[Siwsan]

4. My six ideas are easier and faster

All 6 members of the bush family leaves the country. Papa, Mama, w, jebb, neil, marvin, and what ever the heck the sister's name might be. I think they should GO NOW!! Unless, of course, we can just put them in prison. Then they can stay.

I get ideas like this when I hit the Shiraz, too early in the evening.

[SammyWinstonJack]

10. Wouldn't wish the bu$h family ie BFEE on the rest of the World...opps... to late for that.

[KamaAina]

5. Read my lips: No new Bushes!

[Iris]

6. wait - the party of individual responsibility doesn't think students should be held accountable for

their own achievement?

[TheCowsCameHome]

7. Too bad his idiot brother didn't have any good ideas, either.

[lpbk2713]

8. After his fuggup brother ruined it.

Oh this family is a laugh riot.

[rocktivity]

9. So he IS still involved in that education software business!

I didn't forget about that, either!

:headbang:
rocktivity

[rhett o rick]

11. Watch out for Jeb. His poppy said he is the smart one. nm

[blogslut]

12. Ha!

Fox sure is pimping the bullet point saviors these days.

[Frustratedlady]

13. The BFEE has ruined a decade's worth of children's education with their...

idiotic NCLB. Until this family is gone, we will continue to suffer. If they aren't in the limelight, they are working behind the scenes to do their dirty work. To never hear the name of another member of that rotten family can't come soon enough and probably not in my lifetime. Their poison has all but destroyed this nation.

Did I say I don't like that family? Just askin'.

[Gregorian]

14. Note to Jeb: The Arian thing has already been tried. And failed.

It sounds Arian to me. Like a white society trying to get whiter. Like trying to eliminate those who need help. Like a bad scene. Like punishment. Like another Bush scheme.

Get thee behind me you lumbering fool.

[pacalo]

15. Ummmph, gag...the gall of these creeps.

I don't live in Florida, but even I've heard about his preference toward corporations at the expense of community needs.

There's not a philanthropic bone in any of the Bushes' bodies.

[lib2DaBone]

16. Jeebus God.... Can We Spray Bug Repellant On THis Asshole? Please?

[Avalux]

17. No Child Left Behind on steroids and the perfect verhicle to peddle bro's learning software.

Bushies want to take over educating our children so they can rewrite history. All of them need to be thrown out of the country.

[gratuitous]

19. Conservative solutions!

To a host of problems - economic recovery, housing, energy independence, healthcare and illegal immigration - that they spent the last 30 years exacerbating! In a just society, Seanie and Jeb! would be having this discussion while hanging by their thumbs in a dungeon. No television, cameras or microphones, though.

[mitchum]

20. Too bad his boozehound mother was too stinking drunk to fight off Poppy's advances

[Olney Blue]

21. His lips keep getting thinner

[seafan]

22. Jeb, *the education Governor*. Yeah, he's a sure-fire expert.

Florida dead last in graduation rate study, St. Petersburg Times, November 21, 2002 (Jeb Bush, Governor)

.....

A prominent researcher has stirred up the debate over Florida's high school graduation rate, ranking the state dead last in the nation based on a new way of looking at the data.

Researcher Jay Greene of the Manhattan Institute analyzed graduation numbers for the class of 2000 and concluded that 55 percent of Florida's students graduated in the traditional four years. That's well below the national average of 69 percent and close to numbers estimated by the federal government. But it's well below the state's own calculation of 67.9 percent.

.....

Schools still rank near the bottom, St. Petersburg Times, March 6, 2005 (Jeb Bush, Governor)

.....

On teacher pay, we trail Georgia.

On graduation rates, Alabama is better.

On eighth-grade reading scores, South Carolina just moved ahead.

Despite six years of major changes by Gov. Jeb Bush and a Republican-dominated Legislature, Florida still ranks with its Southern neighbors near the bottom of the education rankings.

.....

2005: Florida's public school graduation rate 50th in US. Thanks, Jeb!, October 11, 2006 (Jeb Bush, Governor)

.....

By significant, national academic measures, Florida students don't make the grade. In 2005, the state's public high school graduation rate was 50th in the nation -- worse than in 2003, when it was 47th. Florida students underperformed on the ACT, which measures general educational development and the ability to complete college work. In 2006, the state average composite ACT score was 42nd in the nation; average math score, 37th; average ACT reading score, 39th. In 2006, Florida high school students' average scores on the SAT's were 49th nationally in math, 40th in critical reading, and 48th in writing.

By national funding standards, Florida's investment in public elementary and secondary schools adds up to down. In 2006, the average salary of Florida public school teachers sank to 31st in the nation -- down from 29th in 2004. In 2005, we were 40th in estimated per capita public school revenue, 32nd in per pupil revenue, 47th in per capita current expenditures, 40th in per pupil expenditures. Between 2000 and 2004, adjusted for inflation, Florida schools were 35th in percent change in current expenditures.

THIS is the *Jeb Bush Education Legacy*, presiding as Governor from 1998-2006.



That he has the gall to pollute the media with his education superhero fantasies is utterly pathological.

[The Gunslinger]

24. And so it begins

Campaign 2012. Bush for President.

[MadHound]

25. Interesting, except for the first one, those sound very much like programs that Duncan, and his boss

President Obama are pushing. So much for change in education.

[QC]

26. Shhhhhhhhh! n/t

[AzDar]

27. This family is a cancer.

:puke:

[seafan]

28. Jeb on FOX: Obama 'pushing down the previous president is a bad thing.'

:eyes:


Clip from Jeb and Hannity's FOX-fest:

.....

"If I had one humble criticism of President Obama, it would be to stop this notion :eyes: of somehow framing everything in the context of, 'Everything was bad before I got here,' and focus instead on his duties, which we all want him to succeed,' Bush says in the second part of an interview with Sean Hannity of FOX News Channel that will air in two parts, this evening, and Friday on Hannity.

"But constantly pushing down the previous president to make yourself look good, I think is a bad thing,'' Bush says in a brief excerpt of the interview that FOX released today.

.....

But, but, Jeb, members of your party are whining that President Obama is moving 'too fast' on 'too many issues'. And you say he needs to focus MORE on his job. Can't your party march in lockstep any more?

[and-justice-for-all]

29. Sorry Jeb, the only people listening to you now...

are the very people we stopped listening too.

[WI_DEM]

31. First idea: STOP ELECTING BUSH'S TO OFFICE (OR STEALING ELECTIONS)

[Dogtown]

32. K&R n/t

[Sebastian Doyle]

33. Hey Jeb, you want to know what my number 1 idea for saving America is?

Take every last member of your stinking rotten corrupt criminal fascist family out of this country and lock them up in that shithole on the south end of Cuba that your idiot brother thought was good enough for others.

And take every last dollar from every Bush Crime Family bank account and return it to the people you all stole it from, as not one dime of it was earned honestly.

Hey, I guess that's two ideas. I'll come up with more, but it's still early here.

[Quantess]

34. I love this!

K & R

[seafan]

35. Pathetic.

So you don't have to click over there:

.....

HANNITY: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah


BUSH: Well, I think we're in an education arms race with the rest of the world because knowledge will drive job creation, high wage jobs are only going to be created by people that can acquire knowledge, and our education system is not up to the standards that it needs to be, so the debate shouldn't be about whether the current system is good or bad and whether the alternatives that I think are better are good or bad, it ought to be where do we need to be? We need to be a lot better.

And so I think the principles that — the reform principles that could be applied start with accountability, that we need to measure things so that we know when we're doing right, when we're doing wrong, that we should have more school choice to put pressure on the current system, but more importantly to empower parents and get them actively involved in their children's education, we should pay teachers for performance, and we should have a customized learning system for the student, not focused on the system, but focused on kids that uses more technology, that allows for more options for them, that doesn't — isn't driven by seat time, it's driven by what you learn and when you learn what you need to learn you must on to the next level, and there is intervention early to make sure that kids don't lag behind.


HANNITY: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

BUSH: Absolutely, and if you look at emerging nations like China and India, there's a command focus on education, and so our long-term threat is directly related to our ability to make sure that more and more of our children can learn, to acquire knowledge, and then create a new means by which this happens at an accelerated rate. So not only do conservatives need to adhere to principle as you stated in the preface of our conversation, but I think conservatives need to be on the cutting edge of reform. The world has changed. The 21st century is dramatically different than the 19th century, but we still apply a 19th century system of organization on education. It's 180 days. It's that way so that kids can get out into the farms in the summertime.

It should be — it's driven by seat time which makes no sense. It does not harness technology to the extent it could. So my hope is that, yes, let's adhere to conservative principles but let's have a passion for reform so that we can transform the things that we need government to do right. It doesn't have to be a government system, but it can be a government financed application so that no child is denied an opportunity to pursue their dreams.

HANNITY: Let me give some other statistics to show people what will happen should we not act and if we don't have educational reform which is the key idea to help save America. We know 40 percent of dropouts under the age of 24, they don't even have a job. We know that more than two-thirds of inmates in the American prison system are high school dropouts, two-thirds, we know that individuals graduating from high school literally save the government $14,000 a year in health care costs. High school dropouts earn about $250,000 or less a year than those that graduate high school, and so we will pay a price financially as a country by creating dependency and the higher proclivity toward crime and drugs if we don't fix it, and the statistics bear this out.

BUSH: These statistics are so compelling, you would think that we would all pause, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans and say if we weren't doing it this way, how would we do it? And the answer is we would have a totally different system that's focused on the students rather than on the adults. Right now the fight in Washington and most state capitals is focused on which adult is going to have to change their lifestyle, and the focus needs to be on a customized learning for kids.

So my hope is that there could actually be common ground between people of differing ideologies to focus on systemic change. In Florida we've started along that path and we're one of the few states that has actually closed the achievement gap. We've gone from the near bottom results in terms of academic achievement as measured by the NATE (ph) which is the only standard I know of comparing state by states to being above the median, and our graduation rates have been going up every year, but there's so much more that we need to do.

HANNITY: Well, let me ask you this. Because this is now where we meet resistance, and there's a lot of resistance with teachers' unions. I've gone through the seven principles that you believe we should follow for education. Number one, we should have high academic standards. We should have measurement standardized testing. I agree with you on that. Data-driven accountability. In other words, we'll be able to tell how well you're doing. Teacher quality, school choice, which I've always been a fan of. Out-come based funding, and, for example, innovation, technology, and all this. As I look at all these things, most of them have been resisted by the left in this country and by teachers' unions, and there's this unholy alliance between Democrats and teachers' unions, so politically how do you convince people that that unholy alliance needs to be broken and we need to create new paradigms? We can talk about it all day but if it doesn't get passed politically, it's not going to happen.

BUSH: First, I think we need to be constantly reaching out to reform- minded Democrats so that they cannot embrace the dogma that you described very accurately, and I think there's some hope in that regard. I've visited with Secretary Duncan on several occasions. I've talked to him. He was a superintendent of schools. He's seen the frustration of parents and teachers in a system that hasn't worked, and he's made changes in Chicago that have helped kids, and so my hope is from that platform he can do a lot more, and when he does Republicans and conservatives should applaud him, and when he doesn't, we should have alternatives, but we shouldn't be engaged in a 1950s discussion about this. This ought to be about the here and now because it is a pressing national issue for our long term survival and our prosperity.

The Code Words:


Standardized testing (Jeb's holy grail)

Teacher pay tied to standardized test scores (Jeb's way or the highway)

School vouchers (Florida Supreme Court smackdown never stopped Jeb)

Computer software (Jeb's brother has some he's hawking)

*Government-financed* privatization (Like Jeb's pet CSX deal in Florida)

Break up 'unholy alliance' between Democrats and teachers' unions (Jeb's reason for living)



We don't want what you're peddling, Jeb.


You are obsolete.





If I only had a brain...