Latest News and Comment from Education

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Jeb’s Education Racket | National Review Online

Jeb’s Education Racket | National Review Online:

Jeb’s Education Racket 
The former Florida governor and his GOP cronies have lowered standards and increased corruption. 


Former Florida education commissioner Tony Bennett
Text   
Michelle Malkin 
The resignation of Florida education commissioner Tony Bennett couldn’t have come at a better time. His disgraceful grade-fixing scandal is the perfect symbol of all that’s wrong with the federal education schemes peddled by Bennett and his mentor, former GOP governor Jeb Bush: phony academic standards, crony contracts, and big-government and big-business collusion masquerading as “reform.”
Bennett stepped down Thursday after the Associated Press reported that he had meddled with charter-school accountability ratings in Indiana last fall while serving as that state’s schools superintendent. The beneficiary of his intervention? Big GOP donor and charter-school operator Christel DeHaan, who has forked over nearly $3 million to Republicans (including $130,000 to Bennett).

DeHaan’s Christel House Academy charter school magically went from a “C” rating to an “A” rating despite failing tenth-grade math scores. An abysmal 33 percent of the school’s tenth-grade Algebra I students passed. Note: The school uses the