During President Obama's quick trip to Miami on Friday he stopped by Miami Central High School to deliver remarks on education reform and notably shared the stage with Florida's former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush. Afterward, he held a 14-member round table on education, though only one teacher was invited to sit in. That teacher, Jennie Smith who teaches at an unidentified Miami-Dade high school, was none too pleased with some of Obama's remarks and slams the President in a blog post for The Washington Post.
Smith was none too pleased that Obama shared the stage with Bush and seemed to laud the ex-governor's controversial work in education:
I so resented hearing Jeb Bush lauded by the president -- for whom I voted and actively campaigned -- that during the Education Roundtable, I told the president directly that many of us teachers in Florida were very disappointed to see him sharing the stage with Jeb Bush and praising his education "reform" efforts, when the Bush agenda is really about privatization and destroying unions.Smith claims that Obama responded that education ought to be a bipartisan effort.
In the Post blog Smith slams Bush's education reform agenda:
Jeb Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future has worked tirelessly to funnel money out of public education and into very rich, powerful corporate interests. He has pushed the expansion of charter schools, including those for profit, in the face of strong evidence that charters do not generally outperform traditional public schools. He has pushed for vouchers to private schools.Smith also takes Bush and Obama to task with more details on a similar but more detailed post on her Examiner blog.
"THAT is why Florida teachers were disappointed in you, Mr. President, for sharing the stage with Jeb Bush. Public education is the foundation of democracy," Smith concludes. "Why are you betraying it for the foundation of a plutocracy?"
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