Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will announce his candidacy for president on Monday, but many conservatives have continued to raise questions about whether or not his position on Common Core will hurt him in 2016.
After former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced their opposition to Common Core, Bush is the only Republican left who supports the standards. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who will likely announce a run for president, also previously supported Common Core before it became so-called political poison for Republican candidates.
Common Core
Publications ranging from The Washington Post to the National Review say Bush’s support of Common Core could hurt Bush’s presidential run in 2016. Bush has made small changes in his rhetoric, saying the standards need to be “state-driven,” since the popular conservative argument against Common Core is that it is the result of federal overreach. The standards are already state-driven, since they come from the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers and the states choose to adopt them.
Common Core may not be the kryptonite some argue it is, however. According to Nate Silver’s breakdown of microdata files provided by the Associated Press and NORC, as much as 44 percent of Republicans said they believed the standards would improve the quality of education and only 13 percent said they would decrease the quality of education. Even among “strong Republicans,” more of them said Common Core would improve education quality than decrease it, at 29 percent versus 22 percent. But there is a possibility that Republicans would oppose the standards even if they believe those standards will improve education.
Among registered voters in Iowa, 65 percent said it was either totally or mostly acceptable for a candidate to support Common Core standards. In addition, likely Republican caucus-goers were not really worried by Bush’s Common Core stance but rather his loyalty to his brother and statements on the war in Iraq, according to a recent Bloomberg Politics/Purple Strategies focus group.
Negative perceptions on Common Core are enough of a concern for its supporters that The Collaborative for Student Success, a nonprofit that has pushed for the standards, spent $764,000 on under 1,500 ads in the state according to The Sunlight Foundation. That amount is higher than ad buys from super PACs created by supporters of 2016 presidential candidates.
But the focus on Bush’s stance on Common Core has also overshadowed his position on other important education issues, where his support may be less strong. For example, Bush has been supportive of for-profit colleges which recently garnered bad press for abusive practices.
For-profit colleges
Bush spoke at an annual convention of The Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, a trade association for for-profit colleges, last year. He opposed the president’s gainful employment rule, which required that in order for schools to qualify for federal student aid, they would have to show how their institution prepared students for “gainful employment in a recognized occupation,” which uses debt-to-income ratios to measure employment.
That may hurt him at a time when the public discussion on for-profit colleges is ramping up and unlikely to go away any time soon. After the immediate shutdown of Corinthian Colleges’ campuses and the gradual closure of several Art Institute campuses, and Corinthian students’ movement to get The Department of Education to relieve them of student debt, the public image of for-profit colleges is looking worse than ever.
Teacher tenure
Bush also supports the elimination of tenure for teachers. In an October 2013 interview with ABC This Week’s Jonathan Karl, Bush said:
“In states like Florida we’ve eliminated tenure for new teachers. It’s clear that we have to do this. But great teachers need to be rewarded more. Bad teachers, they should get out of the classroom. And those in the middle, there ought to be teacher development to help them enhance their skills. It’s hard to do that in a system where collective bargaining based on longevity of service for all employees in school districts, not just for teachers, is the organizing principle.”
Christie and Walker have also been vocal about their opposition to teacher tenure, though conversations about how to reform the practice has been popular with both Republican and Democratic politicians. Cuomo advocated for and won a deal to make the probationary period for teachers longer, to four years instead of three years. In a 2010 poll of 1,000 U.S. adults, 66 percent opposed tenure for teachers.
Online courses
Bush has also been supportive of businesses that encourage universities to host more online courses through a revenue sharing model. Bush resigned from Academic Partnerships, a company that converts traditional degree programs for public and private not-for-profit colleges into an online format, last year after serving as a paid adviser for the company since 2011. Hillary Clinton (D), who recently announced her presidential run, has also received a quarter million dollars from the company for a speech she gave, according to The Intercept.
Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education has also offered three massive online courses, or MOOCS, as part of the EdPolicy Leaders Online initiative, on how to implement and communicate education reform policies. The proliferation of MOOCs has been slightly controversial, as some argue it will help level the playing field for students with difficult schedules and less resources while others say MOOCs aren’t the democratizing force some education reformers make them out to be.
A 2013 Gallup poll found a majority of Americans considered online education equal to or better than traditional education, but a report on the poll said that support of online courses is still pretty lukewarm. A report in the same year from Public Agenda, a nonpartisan nonprofit, also found that 56 percent of employers preferred candidates with a traditional education from an average university compared to an online education from an Ivy League or other top college.
Charter schools
Bush has encouraged the growth of charter schools throughout his career. In 1996, he co-founded a charter school, Liberty City Charter School, in Liberty City, an impoverished neighborhood in Miami, by using his connections to raise money for the school. The school closed in 2008 after it experienced various financial problems. Bush visited the school less and less over the years, according to a New York Times account of the school’s history.
In an op-ed for the Miami Herald last year, Bush referenced the Success Academy charter schools in New York as a great example of a successful charter school system, saying its academic results were “remarkable” and superior to traditional public schools. He also touted the KIPP, Noble and Aspire charter school networks.
Support for charter schools went up recently, with a 2014 PDK/Gallup Poll showing that 70 percent of those polled supported charter schools compared to 68 percent the year before. A majority, 54 percent, said charter schools had a higher quality of education compared to public schools, with Republicans being even more likely to believe that at 65 percent versus just 42 percent of Democrats.