Commenters At NRO Respond To Jeb Bush

 A commenter responds to Jeb Bush's call for an education marketplace to improve public education:

"The reason there has been little innovation in public education is there has been little competition. We are confronted with opposition from unions and bureaucracies because they fear the loss of jobs and bloated pensions. We need an education marketplace that gives families a myriad of options. The presence of a competitor forces improvement."

Really? Why don't we start doing this with doctors and dentists and see how that mess would turn out. This will never work and I think you know it. The only people this will benefit is companies like Pearson making millions of dollars off of this snake oil you are trying to sell. It sounds great but it's a bunch of baloney.

Kids are human beings. Not products you can turn out with an expected outcome and result. They are not cell phones where one company is trying to make the better one so said consumer will buy it. You do this with education and it will blow up in your face I promise you. There are dozen of influences on a kid that determines whether or not said kid will be successful. You have to be an idiot not to know this. They are not tangible objects you can measure.

What's wrong with unions and job security? Who doesn't want to be paid well knowing that their hard work will pay off come retirement time? You need to put blame where blame is due and quit blaming ONLY schools and teachers and the unions that protect them from people like you.

Shame on you Jeb, shame on you.

Here's another commenter's response:

As the spouse and child of teachers, I cringed as I read this article. I would argue that application of many of the principles has hampered public education. There is really nothing new here.

1. States and the Dept of Ed. have long held high standards--graded by annual testing--which many students fail to meet. In fact, the teachers spend at least the whole second half of the the year trying to prepare students for these tests, teaching to the tests, instead of working to empower and develop students to be independent, creative, critical, and analytical thinkers.

2. Technology, though it can be a useful teaching aid, is often hugely distracting for students who don't have the discipline to work on their schoolwork instead of surfing the web. Also, technology doesn't fix the problem that many students lack basic skills like spelling, grammar, addition, multiplication, etc., etc.

3. I agree that teachers should be held accountable and be rewarded when they succeed. But how do we define success in the classroom? Is it based on how well the students perform, student evaluations, something else? In any given public school you will find different class levels, from honors kids to special ed. The honors students will likely have the highest performance, making their teacher look good, but the teacher who works with special ed students has likely put in the most work to get the lowest performance (particularly on the standardized tests).

4. This article fails to talk about student/parent responsibility. Everybody always points to the teachers and maybe the administrations, and they do play a part, but what about the actual learners and the people who should play the biggest individual role in their progress (the parents)? I am convinced that we will not see meaningful gains in education until we hold students and their parents accountable in education.

 And one more:

Hey Jeb, education is about nourishing the mind and intellect of the human person not to be a cog in some factory wheel or only suited to be a part of the next technology play. It is about forming the person to be the person they were created to be. They need to decide what and why they were given the talents they possess and how they want to use them. That does not belong to the State. I am surprised you don't see the good a classic liberal arts education has brought to the history of the world. Screw the Common Core! It is a ticket to the road to serfdom.

Paul Thomas did a classic take down of the Bush piece at @ The Chalk Face.

Bill Keller, Paul Krugman, Jeb Bush - all defending Common Core in the same couple of days period.

Common Core proponents must really be worried to have to pull out this kind of fire power.

Alas, it doesn't seem to be convincing many people on either the right or the left.