Jeb Bush's Cyber Attack on Public Schools

Jeb Bush's Cyber Attack on Public Schools

via Politics | Mother Jones by Stephanie Mencimer on 10/13/11

In June 2010, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush traveled to Columbus, Ohio, to give the commencement speech for the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, the state's largest virtual charter school. ECOT, which provides K-12 online education for kids who never set foot inside a classroom, was celebrating its 10th anniversary and its largest graduating class—nearly 2,000 kids. Naturally, the event, held on the campus of Ohio State University, was webcast for those who couldn't make it.

Bush served up the usual graduation platitudes about the future. Then he hit on the reason he was saluting this particular school: digital learning. It was, he said, nothing short of a revolutionary approach, a way to meet "the unique needs of each student so that their God-given abilities are maximized, so they can pursue their dreams armed with the power of knowledge."

It wasn't the first time Bush had praised the wonders of online education. Over the past year, he's emerged as one of the nation's most prominent boosters of virtual schools, touring the country to promote technology as an instrument of creative destruction against the public school system. Last December, he teamed up with former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise, a Democrat, to launch a new initiative called Digital Learning Now, which is aimed at tearing down legal barriers to public funding for virtual classrooms.

As part of this investigation, Stephanie Mencimer also wrote about Rupert Murdoch's major move into the education business and rounded up some of the many ways crooks have cashed in on the charter school boom.

Bush has couched his initiative in the bipartisan language of reform, claiming it will strengthen public education by making it more efficient, affordable, and accountable. It's the kind of "21st-century thinking" that had Republicans begging him to run for president earlier this year—and if it helps position him for national office and connect him with potential corporate donors, so much the better. But beneath the rhetoric, the online-education push is also part of a larger agenda that closely aligns with the GOP's national strategy: It siphons money from public institutions into for-profit companies (including those that are supporting Bush's initiative). And it undercuts public employees, their unions, and the Democratic base. In the guise of a technocratic policy initiative, it delivers a political trifecta—and a big windfall for Bush's corporate backers.

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