Jeb Bush: Education 'No. 1 issue'

by Mark Silva and updated again at 2:30 pm EDT

Jeb Bush knows how to fill a house.

"Our goal is to arm you with ideas,'' Bush told his audience at the opening of a two-day conference packing the main ballroom of the Capital Hilton today. There were more than 100 lawmakers from around the nation here today, the former Florida governor and son and brother of presidents said - all here to "steal some ideas.''

"Our economy will rebound,'' Bush said, "and when it does, in my opinion, this issue of education will be the No. 1 issue.''

"We're in an education arms race with the rest of the world,'' Bush tells his audiences, attempting to infuse a new sense of urgency about a decades-old issue -- it has been more than 25 years since the "Nation At Risk'' report warned the U.S. that, if a foreign power had imposed the brand of education on the nation that it has, it would be considered an act of war.

"Unlike the traditional arms races of the past, the world wins if America wins,'' Bush said today, and the world wins when others win.

Bush made a point of praising President Barack Obama today for his commitment to education -- ''The fact of the matter is, the guy is on the right track.''

The conference has assembled educators and researchers from as far as Australia to share their ideas. Bush introduced T. Willard "Tal'' Fair of Miami, who co-founded the Liberty City Charter School in Miami with Bush before his first election.

It was education reform on which Bush based his first successful campaign for governor in Florida in 1998, following a failed first bid in 1994 that focused more on fighting crime. The same school reform formula had served his older brother, George W. Bush, well in Texas. Winning his first governor's race there in 1994, he went on to election as the 43rd president.

Jeb (John Ellis) Bush has a prodigious fund-raising list after two campaigns of his own and two winning campaigns for his big brother in Florida (2000, by a disputed 537 votes, and 2004, in a walk). One of his chief and longtime political fundraisers was spotted here at the education summit just a few blocks from the White House.

But Bush has drawn on a different list today: Julia Gillard, deputy prime minister of Australia, the first woman in the post, who has brought some education reforms from "Down Under.'' Peje Emilsson, an education reformer from Sweden here to talk about "the Knowledge School.'' James Tooley, a researcher on improving education for the poor in India, China and Africa. Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York City schools.

And just so we don't forget the place of politics in education: That bipartisan husband and wife team of Mary Matalin and James Carville are on hand to "share their experiences in the world of policy and politics.''

At 56, Bush is asking his audience if it thinks the nation, if it were starting from scratch, would create a school system that looks like the one of the 1950s.

Would it be based on the "agricultural calendar'' -- recessing school to let children get back to work in the fields?

No, he said.

Would it be based on how long children sit at a desk, as opposed to how much they learn?

No, he said.

Would it advance children from grade to grade each year solely based on their age, without regard for what they have learned?

"Hell no,'' Bush said.

"Our education system is an eight-track tape in an iPod world,'' Bush said, making a case for more online education that enables students to advance at their own pace and a system that rewards "achievement instead of seat time.''.

With the technology available now, he said, 'we have the ability to create the iTunes of education,'' Bush said.

All of the traditions of education, starting with the education-school system of credentialling schoolteachers, are under challenge here today.

Bush had assembled a ready choir here.

"In any other business but ours, you could go to sleep for 50 years and wake up and you wouldn't recognize it,'' New York's Klein told the audience. In his business, the school chancellor said, "nothing has changed in 50 years."

Bush credits Obama for bucking the teachers' unions, with a commitment to rewarding schools that perform better - with nearly $5 billion available to schools under a "race for the top'' plan.

"I actually think it's important for political leaders... where it's appropriate, to break away from core constituencies and do what's right,'' Bush said in a meeting with reporters this afternoon. "President Obama has done it... I am very supportive of what he's doing

"In Washington,'' he added, "the danger is, if Jeb Bush says something nice about Barack Obama, then you create criticism from the other side... The fact of the matter is, the guy is on the right track.''

"What Jeb is saying,'' Klein added, "and it's going to take leadership to make the sale, is the future of this nation really depends on a competitive education People don't get that....I think people haven't yet locked their head around the long-term competitiveness issues.''

It's time, Bush said, to put partisanship aside. In Washington, he said, it seems that even when people agree, they have to find a way to disagree.

In his own heyday in Florida, Bush allowed, he was criticized for his "my way or the highway'' approach to change -- he had a Republican-run Legislature.

Klein was complimenting Bush today for his talent at melding politics and policy -- better at it than anyone else, Klein suggested.

"I'd be road kill in New York,'' Bush said.

No doubt, Klein said, but Florida's a great place for a tan and training.

"I haven't lost my mind,'' Bush said of the overhauls to education that he is advocating. "I may be liberated a little by not being in public life.... But I'm not crazy.''