Mackinac notebook
Bush on education: ‘We embrace school choice’ for parents
By Kathleen Gray and Matt Helms Detroit Free Press Staff Writers
MACKINAC ISLAND — It was a speech that hit many of the right notes for a potential Republican presidential candidate. Kicking off the Mackinac Policy Conference on Wednesday, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush talked about the need for education reform free of the constraints imposed by teachers unions.
“We must give parents a choice on where they send their kids to school,” Bush said. “We embrace school choice across the board.”
He also praised Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder for appointing an emergency manager for Detroit, calling the city “a looming fiscal calamity” that makes it hard for businesses to move to the city.
He heralded Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for taking on unions, and Snyder for signing right-to-work laws last year that dealt a serious blow to organized labor.
“He wasn’t reading the polls when he signed right-to-work into law,” Bush said. “He knew the payoff would come over the long haul.”
But Bush diverged from many Republicans when he talked about Common Core standards for education, which the Republican-led majority in the state Legislature refused to fund in the 2013-14 budget, and immigration reform.
“Common Core state standards are clear and straightforward,” he said. “Do not pull back from these high, lofty standards.”
Common Core is a set of educational standards developed by the National Governors Association and adopted by the Michigan Board of Education in 2010. It is an effort to standardize educational achievement goals nationwide, but is voluntary.
Because the administration of President Barack Obama has tied some educational grant money to the Common Core standards, some critics have called it an overreach by the federal government into local education.
That happened in Michigan this week, when the Legislature inserted language into the Department of Education budget that prohibits the department from spending any money on implementing the Common Core standards.
Both Snyder and Bush said they were talking with legislators about the benefits of Common Core.
“We really need to get the facts out of what Common Core is all about,” Snyder said. “The federal government has nothing to do with Common Core.”
As for the 2016 presidential race, Bush said he’s not going to make his decision about a possible run for 12-15 months.
“It’s a hard decision. It’s about family and whether I have the right stuff to run,” he said, adding his mother, Barbara Bush, complicated the issue a bit when she recently said that America doesn’t need another Bush in the White House.
“What can I tell you? We all have mothers,” he said. “When moms get to that age, that little regulator that most people have — she didn’t have one to begin with. She is totally liberated, and God bless her.”
Also on Mackinac Island:
Schauer on Snyder: He’s ‘just another politician’
One of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer’s first priorities is to “immerse myself in Detroit.”
Well, he traveled 250 miles away from Detroit on Wednesday to do that. He came up to the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference to meet with some of southeast Michigan’s biggest business and political leaders.
“I didn’t vote for him, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt,” Schauer said of Snyder. “I thought he was going to be different — a moderate. He’s become just another politician.
“And I don’t think there’s a corporate solution for every problem,” Schauer said.
ÿ Conference attendees were greeted at the docks of Mackinac Island by women handing out “I’m a Rick Chick” stickers, and a Snyder impersonator wearing a huge papier-mâché Snyder head handing out air fresheners shaped like a skunk to take a poke at the so-called “skunk works” group secretly looking at education alternatives.
Was Jeb Bush setting stage for a run at White House?
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush hasn’t said for certain whether he’ll run for president in 2016, but his speech to the 2013 Mackinac Policy Conference was little more than a recitation of the kind of GOP talking points any presidential candidate will have to articulate in the run-up.
He praised the power of “opportunity,” condemned the politics of waste and excuse-making in Washington and cities like Detroit. He pumped education reform that focuses on achievement rather than “self-esteem,” and praised Republican Gov. Rick Snyder for being a practical, rather than ideological, leader.
If that sounds all over the place, it’s because it was. And if it sounds surface, it’s because it really was — an explication of GOP values divorced of the practical limits of feasibility or execution. It was a flag-waving address meant to persuade that if only we would let the markets run free but hold government accountable, everything will be all right.
Bush’s speech added little to the on-the-ground realities of the issues he addressed.
He slammed Detroit — justifiably — for having ignored the perils of unending debt for decades, then being surprised that the bill has now come due.
But his solution boiled down to returning the city’s focus to “the right to rise,” what he described as the inimitable basis for the federal constitution and, indeed, America itself.
Bush said schools need to focus on raising skills for kids and paying teachers according to their performance. Here, he has a track record in Florida. Without question, schools made progress during his governorship, but graduation rates and SAT and ACT scores remain far below national averages.
Some of what Florida did — ending social promotion, instituting teacher performance measures — is helping to shape the national conversation about education reform. But much of it is also under fire for being a false miracle.
But in his speech, Bush tied his discussion of education to platitudes, rather than practical solutions. He praised Michigan for aping some of what Florida has done, for pushing charter schools and contemplating online learning — which has a remarkably sketchy track record — but didn’t address crucial areas like funding, or independent school accountability.
When Bush turned to immigration, he came closest to pushing substance.
His book “Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution” is a piercing look at how current immigration policies not only punish those who want to become Americans, but are also brutal on the growth of the American economy.
Comprehensive immigration reform, Bush said, could add a full two points to the nation’s economic growth annually, creating a “new Germany” within a decade. Bush said immigration reform needs to respect the nation’s needs, as well as the rights of those who want to become Americans.
Bush has long been a supporter of a legal path to immigration for undocumented immigrants, but in his book, he distanced himself from that idea. That brought him into conflict with some other prominent Republicans, such as GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who have come to see that as key to comprehensive reform.
At Mackinac, he made no bones about endorsing a way for illegal immigrants to bring themselves into compliance.
Which returned him, in all likelihood, to the subject of his potential candidacy in 2016. No Republican would stand a chance without embracing immigration reform, and the growing numbers of Hispanic voters who have kept the party out of the White House in the past two elections.
Bush may not yet be running, officially. But he sure looked like someone giving it serious thought on Mackinac Island.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush’s speech at Mackinac was full of GOP talking points, but not much substance.
STEPHEN HENDERSON EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
Coming up at the Mackinac Policy Conference
ÿ StudentsFirst Founder Michelle Rhee delivers a keynote speech on making education a top priority in policy discussion at 11 a.m. today.
ÿ Detroit mayoral candidates will debate in a forum moderated by Free Press Editorial Page Editor Stephen Henderson and Detroit News Editorial Page Editor Nolan Finley at 5:30 p.m. today.
ÿ Legislative leaders from both sides of the aisle are to square off with WJR-AM (760) host Paul W. Smith at 9:15 a.m. Friday.
Local commentary
Changing the conversation around early education in state
Government and community leaders, educators and parents are placing a significant — and necessary — priority on improving education throughout Michigan. Early education in particular has been a focus in our state’s conversation, recognizing the value of this early investment in our children. We’ve made tremendous progress in setting Michigan’s children, and our state, on a path to long-term success.
Fittingly, education is a central theme at this week’s Mackinac Policy Conference, where government and business, philanthropic and community leaders are convening for three days to talk about collaborative efforts to create a globally competitive, financially attractive business environment in Michigan.
It’s encouraging to see education’s role in this discussion, particularly early education. At the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, we believe early childhood initiatives represent a high-return investment. While there has been positive momentum, we must do more. We must give voice to children and families from all economic and racial backgrounds in this discussion to help all realize their potential, achieve self-sufficiency and contribute to our state’s economy and future.
Expanding the state’s Great Start Readiness Program is a necessary and welcome first step in ensuring all Michigan 4-year-olds receive the early education they need. However, to affect lasting change we must advance the dialogue around early education to recognize that the education continuum starts at birth. We know that if it starts earlier, we’ll see muchgreater impact.
The first 1,000 days of a child’s life represent the greatest period of brain development, yet during that same period, we make the least amount of investment in that child’s future. As we work to strengthen education, we need to ensure that we continue to support families, especially in this early and critical time in a child’s life. We know that a child’s education begins at home, so we need to make sure that early and effective family engagement is a centerpiece of our early childhood strategy.
The Kellogg Foundation — working with the United Way for Southeastern Michigan, Excellent Schools Detroit and the Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative in Grand Rapids — supports large-scale efforts to train family, friends and neighbors caring for children. But ensuring the strength and vitality of our community and the health and well-being of our children requires many partners.
Fortunately, business leaders and policy-makers statewide are coming to the realization that work-force development starts at birth. While high-quality early education is just one component of addressing the issues that confront children and families living in poverty, it is an essential element in creating conditions that prepare them for long-term success and independence.
We have momentum around the critical needs of early childhood education, and we must continue working together to ensure that all children are able to achieve and succeed.
Carla Thompson is the vice president of program strategy at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, where she leads the foundation’s Education and Learning and Family and Economic Security portfolios.
Local commentary
State must recommit to public education
Many Michigan “firsts” in terms of innovations are well known, like the automobile and assembly line.
Less known is that Michigan helped create the great public education system that is one of America’s miracles and strengths. The first public land grant universities, offering high quality, low-cost education for all — were born here. So were innovations in K-12 education: Kalamazoo created the first, free public high school paid for by local residents’ tax dollars. Flint brought us the community school concept, the school as a “lighthouse” and center of community life and learning.
Today, this commitment to great public education is in tatters. Our public universities are being priced out of reach of working people. And when Albion has to close the doors on its community high school, 49 school districts are in severe financial distress, and districts like my own in Ann Arbor are cutting teachers, arts, music and charging for enrichment programs — we’ve lost our way.
The State Board of Education just conducted more than a dozen public education forums with residents across Michigan. Certainly, there is tremendous anxiety about the current push by the governor, the Legislature and their allies to turn public education into a competitive free marketplace. Rapid expansion of charters without quality control (the fastest growing are those that deliver poor quality education); opening the education market to for-profit, online-only providers (even as other states are rethinking this given poor results), and secret plans for more of same (skunkworks), all contribute mightily to Michigan’s education funding crisis and chaos.
But more important — we heard loud and clear at our forums that the public is yearning for a positive agenda to rebuild our schools; to figure out how we pay for a rich education for all students, and to lift up, not run-down and demoralize, our educators.
The great tragedy of the current debate is that the education-free market crowd says openly, “You can’t trust educators to support innovation.” This is exactly the opposite of what the public intuitively understands, what all education research confirms, and what the governor himself said in his 2011 special-education message: “To get the student learning, we expect nothing matters more than great teachers and great teaching. Every body of research confirms that the biggest contributor to learning gains and good school and life outcomes is the great teacher who inspires student learning.”
It’s been almost 20 years since Proposal A. The ambitious plans of the Oxford Foundation to rewrite Michigan school finance ended with a whimper, not a bang. The list of schools in distress and schools cutting classrooms past the bone grows daily. We need to remake our public education finance system.
The State Board of Education is committed to help lead the public discussion of how we rebuild and finance great public schools again. We look to work with the governor, Legislature and all comers. But I would suggest these three first steps as a guide:
ÿ Let’s have a moratorium on new school creation until we can agree on how to ensure new schools educate children well and don’t undermine learning for others.
ÿ Let’s forge new ideas for how we spend money differently to support rich learning and better outcomes for students, including creating positive financial incentives to personalize learning plans. Let’s also consider how we use school finances to create incentives that deliver better outcomes. For example, we should pay much more for full-service schools — with in-person teaching, career counselors, arts, music — versus online-only schools. We could pay more for robust career-technical programs, early/middle colleges and dual enrollments that deliver high school and post-secondary credentials. We could pay more for high schools than elementary schools.
ÿ And most important, let’s make the priority to better support, equip, train and aid those most central to great public education: our teachers and educators. The public knows, and research shows, that great teaching is the key to great learning. Let’s make this our focus.
In 1874, the residents of Kalamazoo fought in court for the right to tax themselves to provide free public high school education. Now, 139 years later, they created the Kalamazoo Promise, guaranteeing free higher education for all Kalamazoo school graduates. Let’s forge anew our commitment to do the same for all Michigan.
John Austin is president of the Michigan State Board of Education.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.