Bush’s “˜tough love’ proposal raises troubling ideas
By Daily Bruin Staff
Oct. 8, 2000 9:00 p.m.
Farahmandpur is a doctoral student and McLaren is a professor at
the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.
By Ramin Farahmandpur and Peter
McLaren
On Jan. 11, in Florence, S.C., George W. Bush stated in his
speech, “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children
learning?”
He also stated last year, “A public education whose
students don’t test well would lose some funds unless its
score improves. If cutting funds won’t help the kids advance,
we could prohibit lunch, or take their shoes” (“George
W. Bush’s education plan,” The Nation, Oct. 4,
1999).
Education will clearly be one of the hotly contested issues in
this year’s presidential election, particularly for
Republican presidential nominee Bush. He has vigorously defended
his education record by boasting significant improvements in his
state’s education system. As evidence, he cites an increase
in standardized test scores during his tenure as Governor of
Texas.
Although Bush attempted to portray himself as the future
“education president” during the nightly choreographed
Republican National Convention meeting in Philadelphia, a number of
troubling questions have surfaced recently, casting a shadow of
doubt over his compassionate conservative education policies. These
questions have, by and large, been ignored by the mainstream media
and press.
 Illustration by RACHEL RELICH/Daily Bruin For example, in
the state of Texas there are nearly 1.4 million children without
health care insurance. The state also ranks second in the number of
children that are living in poverty. It is unclear how Bush’s
“tough love” education policies, such as his support
for ending social promotion, will alleviate the aforementioned
issues and help the staggering dropout rate of high school students
in Texas, currently at 42 percent.
Bush’s school reform agenda follows in the wake of
neoliberal social and economic policies that became popular during
the 1980s and 1990s. Such policies supported deregulation of the
gas, telephone and electric industries, downsizing of the labor
force, “just-in-time” production methods, and greater
flexibility and mobility for capital.
One of Bush’s education reform plans is to require public
schools to have “measurable goals,” quantifiable
outcomes and a particular emphasis on back-to-basics teaching
methods. Maybe this is why he is quoted as saying: “Laura and
I really don’t realize how bright our children are sometimes
until we get an objective analysis” (Meet the Press, April
15, 2000).
Bush favors phonics-based instruction for teaching children how
to read, claiming, “Reading is the basics for all
learning” (speech announcing his “Reading First”
initiative in Reston, VA., March 28, 2000). He goes on to announce:
“We want our teachers to be trained so they can meet the
obligations, their obligations as teachers. We want them to know
how to teach the science of reading. In order to make sure
there’s not this kind of federal cufflink” (speech at
Fritsche Middle School, Milwaukee, Wis., March 30, 2000).
Bush is also pushing for standardized testing to ensure that the
goals set out by schools are achieved. Thus, he aims at tying
educational improvement and funding closely to measurable results
and outcomes.
It therefore comes at no surprise that Bush focuses on
“accountability,” which will hold schools, teachers,
parents and students responsible for the academic success or
failure of students. He also threatens to divert education funds
from public schools to other educational programs (i.e. charter
schools and voucher plans) if public schools fail to demonstrate
substantial improvement in the academic performance of their
students.
Part of Bush’s program is to give parents $1,500 of
federal money to be used toward a charter school or voucher
program. But what remains largely overlooked is that charter
schools are primarily managed by the private sector. Thus, the
danger lurking beneath Bush’s education policy supporting
private-for-profit schools is that they primarily operate outside
of the jurisdiction of state and federal regulation. As a result,
they can easily “screen out problem kids,” particularly
students who have special needs or require additional resources
which may not be cost-efficient for private school.
By focusing on rewarding “schools whose performance is
improving, and (imposing) consequences on schools whose performance
is stagnating,” Bush’s education policy mirrors the
very same operating principles of the free market economy:
investing capital in enterprises which follow the logic of
profitability, while averting capital from markets which fail to be
profitable.
In addition, Bush seeks to align public schools with the logic
of the free market’s flexibility and autonomy from federal
and government regulation. He defines “flexibility” as
emancipating schools from government control by transferring power
to the state and local school boards.
Along with raising education standards and enforcing
accountability, Bush plans to place public schools at the forefront
of competition. In this scheme, parents will have the freedom to
choose which school they want their children to attend.
In short, Bush’s proposal will primarily focus on
funneling public money intended for educational purposes to the
private sector (i.e., Charter schools and voucher programs). In
addition, his education policies seek to abolish or drastically
reduce government funding for educational programs such as Head
Start ($4.4 billion) and Title I ($7.7 billion) that are primarily
targeted for minorities and the poor. He also plans to reduce the
role of the Department of Education, particularly the Office of
Educational Research and Improvement which has an annual budget of
$510 million.
Educators across the country will experience a tough four years
if Bush is elected. For a governor who warns that he will not stand
for the “subsidization of failure” (speech at Florence,
S. C., Jan. 11, 2000), his vision of education recycles the same
disastrous type of challenges as those advanced by his
predecessors.
