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Mitt W. Bush

By on 5.7.12 @ 6:09AM

For better or worse, Mitt Romney subscribes to George W. Bush’s education policies.

Mitt Romney has never been known for taking strong stances on the issues. But he has proven to be even more artfully dodgy than usual on the matter of federal education policy — and the debate over whether or not to reform America’s woeful public schools. As part of his effort to woo movement conservatives displeased with George W. Bush’s legacy as centrist Democrats’ favorite Republican on education (and longing for halcyon days of federal nonintervention that never were), Romney has avoided mentioning education in his 87-page economic plan; backed away from his support of Bush’s signature legislation, the No Child Left Behind Act; and even backpedalled from his praise of President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top school reform competition after being criticized by equally double-talking Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

As left-footed in his dodging as the former Massachusetts governor has been, he has still managed to confuse otherwise-astute reformers and commentators. Time columnist Andy Rotherham, whose Eduwonk site is one of the go-to sites on school reform, declared the other week that Romney is now to “the political right of President George W. Bush” on education policy; while Fox News commentator Juan Williams suggested last week that Romney should pick Condoleezza Rice as his running mate because of her work with former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein on a Council on Foreign Relations report advocating for school choice and Common Core national reading and math standards.

But like so much with Romney, what you think you see isn’t always what it real. This is especially true when it comes to education. A closer look at his advisers, along with his actual record in Massachusetts, reveals that his tenure as president would more-likely resemble that of still-reviled Dubya (and even the current school reformer-in-chief) than either movement conservatives or teachers’ unions will like. And for children stuck attending failing schools — and the taxpayers picking up the tab to the tune of $591 billion a year — this is not a bad thing.

One hint of Romney’s embrace of Bush-style school reform came last Wednesday when he took aim at Obama for his latest and “inexcusable” effort to shut down the D.C. Opportunity school voucher program. The school choice program, which serves 1,615 students looking to avoid the nation’s capital’s worst schools, was favored by Dubya, who championed vouchers and charter schools as ways for parents to get their kids out of schools “that won’t teach and won’t change.”

The more-obvious hint came later that day when one of Romney’s advisers, former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, appeared with Colorado’s Democratic U.S. Senator Michael Bennet at a confab held in San Francisco by the Aspen Institute and school reform philanthropy New School Venture Fund, where she defended No Child and its success in exposing the extent of the nation’s problems with teaching and curriculum. Although Spellings was technically appearing in her capacity as head of her eponymous education policy consultancy, her prominent status as one of the players in crafting No Child and other Bush education policies (along with her influential role shaping the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s defense of No Child and other reforms) led reporters and commentators to wonder if she was also speaking on Romney’s behalf.

Spellings isn’t the only prominent former Bush education player on Romney’s team. One of Spellings’ charges during her days on Maryland Avenue, Grover Whitehurst (now the education czar for the Brookings’ Institution), is also advising Romney. There’s also Nina Shokraii Rees, a former Heritage Foundation analyst — and now a senior vice president at junk bond mastermind-turned-school reformer Michael Milken’s Knowledge Universe — who led Bush’s education innovation efforts.

But it’s not just Dubya’s influence that will weigh heavily on Romney’s education policies. This was clear last month when former Florida governor Jeb Bush, the ex-president’s brother, blessed the Republican presidential nominee presumptive with his endorsement. Jeb bolstered his school reform credentials during his eight years as Sunshine State governor by expanding school choice, and enacting a series of other reforms that contributed to an 11 percent decline in the percentage of functionally-illiterate fourth-graders, according to an analysis of National Assessment of Educational Progress data by education magazine Dropout Nation. And now out of public office, the former governor is playing an even stronger role in school reform through his masterminding of groups such as Chiefs for Change, whose members include such change-minded state superintendents as Chris Cerf, the tough-talking education czar for New Jersey’s equally abrasive governor Chris Christie.

More than likely, a Romney presidency would include his use the bully pulpit (and the regulatory force of the Department of Education) to push states to allow for the opening of more charter schools — the nation’s most-successful form of school choice — and launch voucher programs. He will also likely bless efforts by reformers and budget-conscious governors struggling with the $1.1 trillion in teachers’ pension deficits and unfunded retired teacher healthcare costs to end near-lifetime employment, ditch degree- and seniority-based pay scales, and embrace performance pay plans. He will probably support the efforts of education groups to develop national reading, math, and science standards. And Romney will likely hold states accountable for improving graduation rates, test scores, and percentages of high school grads going to college and technical school, while allowing them to meet those goals their own way.

In short, it will resemble the federal education policy approach of Bush and Obama. And this shouldn’t be a surprise. Even as Romney obfuscated his positions on education during the Republican primary campaigns, his record as Bay State governor had been one of a moderate reformer. Certainly he was nowhere near as passionate on the issue as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal — who just led the passage of a reform package that included effectively ending tenure and expanding the state’s school choice program to serve as many as 300,000 kids stuck in failing schools — and he wasn’t even a Mitch Daniels. But during his tenure, Romney vetoed a proposed bill to stop the growth of charter schools, supported the creation of a high school graduation exam, and backed efforts to improve academic standards. As a result, Massachusetts is only one of two states whose eighth-grade math standards match up to those of top-performing nations such as Singapore.

Romney made clear his sympathies in a 2003 speech before a group of reformers convened by school reform outfit Rennie Center for Education Policy and Research. Declared Romney: “No Child Left Behind is following principles being championed here. That speaks volumes.”

All that said, Romney’s tendency to flip-flop, along with his background as a centrist corporate executive, makes it difficult to assume he stands for anything. Even if he sticks to the reform approach of Dubya and Obama, Romney lacks the strong intellectual and ideological backbone, firm statesmanship, and rhetorical skill that is required of the Commander-in-Chief, much less be the nation’s leading school reformer.

But Romney will have to embrace the very school reform formula — including holding states accountable for student progress, expanding school choice, and subjecting teachers to private sector-style performance management and compensation — that have been the hallmarks of Bush’s and Obama’s tenure. Which means even more angst for NEA and AFT union bosses who cling tenuously to their still-considerable influence — and more ammunition for the motley crew of conservative, libertarian, and centrist Democrat school reformers, along with the families and taxpayers tired of paying for lackluster schools.

About the Author

RiShawn Biddle the editor of Dropout Nation , is co-author of A Byte at the Apple: Rethinking Education Data for the Post-NCLB Era. He can be followed at Twitter.com/dropoutnation.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (29) |

Jack in Wi.| 5.7.12 @ 6:48AM

The Federal government has no businesss in education period. The business of educating kids belongs to the parents, churches, states and communities. The vast majority of our Presidents were educated privately or home schooled. Maybe that is why they were sucessful in life.

Romney is another disaster just like his pals the Bush's. To them it is all about power.

c. j. acworth| 5.7.12 @ 7:49AM

I don't know if it's all about power, at least for Republicans. (Dems, yeah.) I think it's just a failure of imagination, an inability to see outside the box. We've had a Dept. of Ed. for only, what, 35 years, but it is such an entrenched burocracy that most people cannot concieve of life without it. Stand up and say you want to dismantle it and give the money to the states and the howls will reach the highest plane of Heaven.

Crassus| 5.7.12 @ 9:20AM

OUTSIDE THE BOX!! OUTSIDE THE BOX!!

Dude, I hate that cliche.

Alan Brooks| 5.7.12 @ 11:46AM

"But Romney will have to embrace the very school reform formula -- including holding states accountable for student progress, expanding school choice, and subjecting teachers to private sector-style performance management and compensation -- that have been the hallmarks of Bush's and Obama's tenure. Which means even more angst for NEA and AFT union bosses who cling tenuously to their still-considerable influence -- and more ammunition for the motley crew of conservative, libertarian, and centrist Democrat school reformers, along with the families and taxpayers tired of paying for lackluster schools."

It appears homeschooling wins by default: America is too large and complicated a nation to run public schools. And private and charter schools are not exponentially better than public schools.
We've heard all about holding states accountable for student progress, expanding school choice, and subjecting teachers to private sector-style performance management and compensation for over four decades, and we'll be hearing the same for the next forty.

Dixie Pixie| 5.7.12 @ 7:54AM

So now Mittens Romney is coming into focus when he started to pick Republican Establishment bureaucrats and politicians for his government.
Why was anyone surprised that Mittens is turning out to be a standard North-Eastern Statist Politician.

BBBBBBAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
But he promised in the Primary he was a True Faithful Conservative!!!!
BBBBBBAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Exactly how many times has the Conservative Base been played by the Republican Elite?

Quartermaster| 5.7.12 @ 6:27PM

He said he was a severe conservative. perhaps he mispoke meaning to say he was severe to conservatives.

And, yeah, the GOP establishment keeps acting like Conservatives are fools (where else will they go?). Unfortunately, they have been fools, and they are being fools again.

TrueBlue | 5.7.12 @ 6:31PM

Didn't get played, they got outspent. I have a hard time believing even his supporters believed he was anything more than an establishment candidate, they just had less faith in the remainder of the field beating Obama.

Give Romney the support so he can beat Obama, but focus on getting real conservatives into positions in Congress. That'd be my advice.

Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 5.7.12 @ 8:19AM

It won't be long before a new education model appears and it will not come from the federal government.

Scorpio51| 5.7.12 @ 9:27AM

Well, color me surprised...........NOT!
Romney is an extension of the Bush doctrine. Just look who has endorsed him. This is going to be a set up to have guess who? Jeb Bush in 2016.
Doesn't everyone now recognize how politics is such a farce? Elections are just merely a formaility to appease the people.

Romney is such a joke as the presumptive nominee. Apparently, the media hasn't been paying any attention to Ron Paul out there collecting all the delegates.

Just sit back everyone and get some popcorn. This should be really hilarious.

Alan Brooks| 5.7.12 @ 11:48AM

"This is going to be a set up to have guess who? Jeb Bush in 2016."

Yikes, this hypothesis might be crazy enough to be valid.

Clint| 5.7.12 @ 3:06PM

Never happen.

Alan Brooks | 5.7.12 @ 6:03PM

Whew, thanks, Clint, my blood pressure went pretty high this morning.

Quartermaster| 5.7.12 @ 6:28PM

The GOP establishment is dumb enough to try.

Alan Brooks| 5.7.12 @ 10:58PM

Some things are better left unsaid, unheard, unwritten: if the GOP establishment is dumb enough to try, I don't want to know about until the dreadful day arrives four sad years from now.

Bill| 5.7.12 @ 10:17AM

Attacking Mitt Romney is an endorsement of Obama's "dirty politics."
Romney is not perfect. But he is no socialist. He is the GOP nominee.
Michelle Bachmann endorsed Romney, and it signals the importance of unifying conservatives to defeat Obama in the Fall election.
HELP Mitt Romney. He is the MAN.

JimP| 5.7.12 @ 11:25AM

Shouldn't you have said, 'Help Mitt Romney because Obama is even worse'?

Romney is "the MAN"? Only if one is already a well connected country club Republican who has made it and does well even in depression times and will do very nicely without really having to compete with another Bush/Rockefeller style Republican at the helm of state.

Bill| 5.7.12 @ 12:22PM

Agreed.
Here's the thing.
GOP is controlled by northeast liberal Reps, and Romney is one of them.
We can have senators like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, who voted against Obamacare and supported DADT.
I agree with you that fact that "RINO" politics is in the DNA of the GOP establishments, mostly in the northeast corridor.
We're in the business of changing that trend.
Look at the 2010 midtrem, Sen. Mike Lee, Sen. Rand Paul, Sen Kelly Ayotte, Sen. Ron Johnson.
And the next batch will be: Josh Mandel of OH, Murdock of IN, Linquesttes of UT, etc.
the Tea Party is in control.

Al Adab| 5.7.12 @ 3:32PM

We too often refer to them as RINO when in fact they are, as should be obvious by now, the GOP. It is only the Conservative Movement operating within the GOP which has brought success over the last fifty years. Nixon and Bush 41 ran as Conservative but did not govern as such. Only in 1980 and 1994 as well as 2010 when Conservatives preponderated has the party won elections.

The GOP continues to accept the legitimacy of the administrative social-welfare state. They promise to better manage it, but they do not question or oppose it. Dewey, Ford, Dole, McCain have led us to defeat time and again. G. Romney and Rockefeller opposed the Movement. Is there any reason for Conservatives to follow another now?

Bill| 5.7.12 @ 4:38PM

And the answer is the Tea Party.

JimP| 5.7.12 @ 11:47AM

Maybe someday the pundits and pols on the political right will actually come to understand that public education is as much the responsibility of the parents as it is of public school teachers. Only local control can fix bad school systems, not sweeping federal programs/initiatives like NCLB. NCLB has hurt good school systems by turning teachers into paper pushing bureaucrats for the feds in search of the impossible dream of 100% success 100% of the time. The paper pushing takes that much more time and energy away from accomplishing the goal of the intiative. Can you day DUH politicians? Meanwhile crappy systems like DC's are unaffected by such initiatives for various reasons, one of the major ones being that the parents do not take adequate interest in their children's education. Please see "Chinese Mom" for reference about the right parental attitude.

Good luck with that performance based pay system for teachers also. Unless they find a way to put equal numbers of kids in each classroom with the same IQ, learning disabilities, disfunctional families, bad attitudes and psychopathologies they will never be able to have a fair performance based pay system. This will lead to even less qualified people becoming teachers than now. I know lots of we conservatives, and Republicans, like to think that even a monkey can be a really good teacher and will work for just a few bananas a day, but that is sorely inaccurate.

Here's a typical NCLB scenario. Pulik Skrool 'A' has a few kids who fail to get adequate scores on their standarized NCLB tests. NCLB punishes Skrool 'A' by taking away teachers/program benefits thus diminishing Skrool 'A's ability to teach the kids to pass the standardized tests.

PS: don't tell me this doesn't happen because it happened in one of my kids' school and it was designed into the system to be this way. Luckily I am not only a 'half breed' native American but a half breed Chinese Dad too, so my kid did ok anyway.

Graham Rogers| 5.7.12 @ 12:52PM

Mitt is a big government Conservative, a progressive, just like the Bush family is. Sure, he believes in Business, less regulation, but he also believes Government IS there to help. Education is one area BGC's really show their true colors.

Dave Williams| 5.7.12 @ 1:21PM

As the Police so memorably sang "There is no political solution" to our educational crises. People won't learn unless they want to, and since the gummint will take care of them from cradle to grave (according to the Socialist In Chief), why should they want to? Say goodbye to America, folks....had a pretty good run, only to be done in by its own stupidity.

David| 5.7.12 @ 2:28PM

Just remember folks, we have to go out and vote for Romney if for no other reason than to keep Bam Bam from choosing our federal judges at all levels for the next 4 years.

Does anyone remember the names Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor???!!!

And Bam Bam got them through at the Sup Ct level. Can you imagine how much more radical his choices will be for the district and appellate court levels? In those courts is where the real damage will be done because only a tiny fraction of the cases ever reach the Sup Ct.

The fact is that Romney is our nominee because there are lot of really stupid people in the Repub party who can't think for themselves.

Pete| 5.7.12 @ 3:47PM

Romney does not get a pass because of Obama. That is how we get RINOS who can work with Democrats.

JimP| 5.7.12 @ 3:55PM

Stupid Republicans. Wow do I agree with that. We can't blame the establishment for Romney being the pick. Nor can we blame Romney on the conservative vote being split like happened with McCain in '08. Nope. The Florida primary proved that the majority of Republicans are S-T-U-P-I-D, stupid. They had a chance to stop Romney in his tracks and what did they do? They believed his super PAC attack ads against Newt and Rick. Newt and Rick were not ideal candidates, but the ads against them were lies and distortions. Still, the majority of Republicans believed the ads and voted for Mitt. It worked in other states as well. Throw in the bandwagon effect [people who are too feeble minded and weak willed to not go along with the majority] and VOILA, another Rockefeller Republican gets the nomination. Florida was supposed to be full of Tea Party activists, but I saw one report that said even the TPers voted for Mitt in the majority.

S-T-U-P-I-D! Now we know why it's called "The Stupid Party", because it truly is.

I'd like to think a third party would be successful in ending the long twilight struggle to overcome the GOP establishment, but with voters as stupid as the ones we've seen in this year's primary, they would still reject another Reagan, even if we could find one.

Aces and Eights| 5.7.12 @ 5:53PM

"But Romney will have to embrace the very school reform formula -- including holding states accountable for student progress, expanding school choice..."

The US government has no constitutional authority to hold the States "accountable" for education whatsoever. Education is not a power delegated to the United States by the Constitution. Congress should not be funding schools, or lunches, or standards. Get the Feds OUT of education altogether. All the Feds do is corrupt the system and waste billions of tax dollars.

MorrowRosanna| 5.7.12 @ 6:52PM

what Kenneth said I cannot believe that a mother able to earn $7775 in four weeks on the computer. have you seen this web page makecash16.cøm

PCP Smoker| 5.7.12 @ 9:16PM

How could it be for the better, you dumbshit?
If you are a conservative who supported anyone by Obama, skip this news and concentrate in getting that fucking socialist out of office. A liberal scumbag mormon is better than Obama.

POST American| 5.8.12 @ 12:14AM

AS the chillingly ANTI-American
NDAA 1021 is put into place with
scarcely a murmur

---AS Nancy Pelosi calls for full-spectrum
police state surveillance while in RED China
---------and sitting justice Ginzburg commits
TREASON by dissing the very Consitution
in capstone 'RA'--dick--ALL--ized' Egypt

---AS RUSSIAN TROOPS, even now,
are jointly training, in Colorado, to
'help take on American Terrorists'

-------AS it's announced MICR-chipping it
to be made mandatory for ALLLLL
American servicemen

-------------AS the 'first of several' RED China
'soveriegnty zones' (50 square miles--!) oens
south of Boise

----------------AS the unnaturally 'timely'
death of Andrew Breitbart is 'memory holed'
right on top of John Wheeler

------------------------AS Breitbart's very coroner
is found dead of poisoning just days ago

"Notice, as the REAL campaign approaches,
---the REAL issues ---'disappear'."

---But NEVER FEAR! --O'Reilly's watchin'
out for ya'!

-------And OPRAH REALLY CARES!

HUAC ---is NOW ----------------Nuremberg 2012.

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