Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) is making it clear that he does not belong to the establishment — in this case, the “education establishment.”
Bush criticized Hillary Clinton (D), who recently announced her presidential run, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and teachers unions in an op-ed in the New York Post on Tuesday, positioning himself as someone who fights for parental control against the “education establishment.”
Bush and Clinton have both received money from the same education company, however. Bush served as a paid adviser for Academic Partnerships, a company that converts traditional degree programs for public and private not-for-profit colleges into an online format. He resigned last year after working with the company since 2011. Clinton has also received a quarter million dollars from the company for a speech she gave, according to The Intercept.
He continued to link de Blasio with Clinton, calling de Blasio “her protégé,” and wrote:
“The Clintons, who have an outsize influence in New York politics, have largely stood by as Mayor de Blasio has attempted to undermine the benefits that the Success Academies and other school-choice programs have provided to low-income children. Will former Secretary Clinton continue to put the interests of the entrenched education establishment above the interests of kids in America?”
Colocation, or the housing of traditional public schools with charter schools, most notably Success Academy, is a contentious issue in New York City. Under the former mayor, Michael Bloomberg, many colocations were approved, but de Blasio appointees on the Panel for Education Policies have been less supportive of colocations.
The op-ed was an opportunity for Bush, who is the only Republican candidate left to support for Common Core standards, to makeover his image from that of a supporter of federal intervention in education to a supporter of state control and parental control of education. Common Core standards are not actually a federally mandated curriculum but it is often portrayed as such because the federal government gave Race to the Top money as an incentive for adoption of the standards in 2009. States were not forced to adopt the standards.
Bush is taking a lesson from Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R), Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R), former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina (R) by limiting the U.S. Department of Education’s influence on states’ education policies.
Although he did not say he would abolish the department, as many 2016 presidential candidates have, he wrote that he would “reduce the power and authority” of the U.S. Department of Education.