Jeb Bush rags on 'seat time'

From his recent Q&A with Tucker Carlson in Esquire:

“Are we educating our kids properly? Are enough of our children gaining the power of knowledge in the current system? The answer is unequivocally no. So we should have more school choice, we should have more pay for performance, we should be raising standards, not lowering standards, we should embrace technology in a radical way, we should have 'seat time' eliminated.”

[Timidly.] Seat time?

“You show up for 180 days, you graduate. It should be based on what you learned ... People learn differently. It's a simple fact that our education system ignores. We're living in a world now where in order to create high-wage jobs, you have to have knowledge-based workers. There is no way to do that unless they have the basic building blocks of being able to think abstractly, understand math and science, be able to read, maybe once in a while express a thought in a three-syllable word, preferably do so in more than one language, and have a sense of history, because it has this crazy way of repeating itself. I don't think our education system in America is acceptable right now.”
(Photo from Esquire.)

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Comments

[Skeptic]

Joke, yes students can "pass" with a D-grade. D-grades, however, don't meet graduation requirements. Students must have an overall 2.0 GPA to graduate.

[Over the abuse --a teacher]

It is really sad, considering it was Jeb's policies from when he hijacked the governor's mansion that put the Florida Education System in danger to begin with. Voucher--steal money from public schools, the FCAT (and its lovely Bush-owned study software-which he mandated every school HAD TO BUY) the lowering of the grade system--yes, lowering, not "raising" as he stated in the interview, all of these things we have JEB to thank for--among hundreds of other issues he screwed the pooch on in Florida--we voted--YOU'RRRRe OUT!

[me]

Did Jeb mention Figlio's study that Florids's voucher system did not produce better learning in its voucher students?

[Teacher]

Follow the money. Look up "Ignite!" the education software business owned by the Bushes.

[terminator]

Jeb is on the "rag" because no one cares about him and his failed education policy anymore!

[Joke]

Look at Pinellas's seat time rule. Students can miss unlimited amounts of time. They never actually have to show up to class. Earn one C and 3 F's and they pass.

[longtime teacher]

Finally, some Bush thinking I can agree with on education! As a longtime teacher, I have always "wished for" a policy that does away with "seat time" (call it 3rd grade, 7th grade, or 12th grade) and moved to a system where students pass based on MERIT (ex: passing a final, or making X progress, or presenting a detailed project to assess achievement, etc.). What we now has not worked in the past and will not work in the future. This "pass on merit" system would surely create high student achievers (knowing that they move on after achieving the required goal) and would essentially rid the school system of discipline problems (I don't move on if someone in the class keeps holding us back because of their lack of discipline) and students in the class would learn faster and help each other more, knowing that their friends can move on again with them. Yes, students learn at different rates at different times so please consider the usage of "achievement goals" as a requirement for passing from one level to another. If the educational system of the United States is ever going to reach higher standards, we must base learning on "achievement/knowledge based outcomes" instead of "seat time" in a classroom!!

[david]

Too bad somebody didn't educate jeb's brother W.