Photograph by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Graduating students listen as President Barack Obama delivers the commencement address at Morehouse College on May 19, 2013 in Atlanta, Georgia.

By Oliver Staley

Public spending per student on U.S. education fell in fiscal 2011, the first annual decline since at least 1977, as tax revenue dried up.

The U.S. spent an average $10,560 per student in public schools in 2011, down 0.4 percent from 2010, the Census Bureau said. It calculated the spending of all 15,345 U.S. public school systems. Total school spending was $595.1 billion, down 1.1 percent.

Most school systems are funded through state and local property taxes, and tax collections fell 2 percent from the third quarter of 2010 through the third quarter of 2011, according to census data. The decline in per-student school spending is the first since the Census records began in 1977.

Illinois had a 7.4 percent decline in per pupil spending, the largest drop in the U.S., followed by Maine’s 6.7 percent decline and New Jersey’s 5.2 percent. The biggest increase in spending was in New Hampshire, where it climbed 6.8 percent per student, followed by 5.6 percent in Alaska and 4.7 percent in Connecticut.

New York spent $19,076 per student, the most of any state, followed by the District of Columbia with $18,475, Alaska with $16,674, New Jersey with $15,968 and Vermont with $15,925. The New York City School District, the largest in the country with 995,336 pupils, spent $19,770 per student, the most among the 100 largest school districts and almost twice as much as the $10,804 spent by the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest.

Original post is Student Spending’s First Drop Since 1977 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray in this file photo.

Washington Mayor Vincent Gray, who is under investigation for allegations of misusing campaign funds, was upbeat and optimistic about his tenure over lunch at the Georgetown Ritz Carlton.

Gray was the guest and interview subject of Washingtonian editor-at-large Carol Joynt as part of her “Q & A Cafe” program, which is aired on local television.

Gray cited progress in the field of education, saying the District of Columbia has “the most robust early-education program in America.” He also said that unemployment has declined to almost 8 percent from more than 11 percent when he took office.

When Joynt questioned him about how his administration is seen by investors in the wake of his scandals, he saidm“I haven’t had one question from Wall Street. They look at the books.” (Two Gray aides pled guilty in federal court to misusing campaign funds and lying under oath. He is still under investigation.)

Gray acknowledged “the hugely changed population” in the District, but dodged questions about the possibility of a white mayor. City Councilman Jack Evans is among the likely white candidates to run against Gray next year. If Evans should prevail, he would be the District’s first white mayor.

At the lunch, Gray also waded into lighter subject matters, such as his fondness for bulk-shopping at Costco (he buys his cat food there) and his preference for San Francisco to win the Super Bowl.

Original post is Washington’s Mayor Sees Bright Side by Political Capital.

Photograph by Michael Okoniewski/Bloomberg

Graduates wearing mortarboards attend Syracuse University’s commencement ceremony.

That’s the number of Americans age 25 and older in 2012 whose highest level of education was a bachelor’s degree, according to the Census Bureau.

That’s about one-fifth of the civilian non-institutionalized population of 204.6 million, Census data show.

Women outnumbered men by 21.1 million to 19.4 million among people whose highest level of education was a bachelor’s degree. There were also more women than men with master’s degrees last year. There were more men than women holding doctoral and professional degrees.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 40.6 Million by Political Capital.

Photograph by Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/MCT/Getty Images

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference.

The divide between the impoverished and privileged in the United States is widening, with a society of once great ideals following a disturbing path toward an unsustainable future — a nation in need of “restoration.”

A new regime of educational accountability is the solution to changing the nation’s course — with stringent standards and testing for schoolchildren, appropriate pay for the most talented teachers, a choice of schools for children attending inadequate classes and an embracement of technology.

This was the message that Jeb Bush, a former Florida governor, delivered this morning in his keynote address to nearly 1,000 people assembled for a two-day national summit of his Foundation for Excellence in Education in Washington.

There is an unmistakable political message in this as well.

Bush, whose two terms as governor in Florida from 1999 to 2007 were distinguished by his commitment to an “A-Plus” plan for education that rewarded higher-performing public schools, is widely viewed as one of the Republican Party’s top prospects for a presidential campaign in 2016. And, while he has remained mum about any plans for that following the loss of Republican Mitt Romney on Nov. 6, Bush did meet with some of his longtime political and policy advisers in Washington on the eve of this annual conference — including Neil Newhouse, a Washington-area pollster who campaigned for Romney this year and has served Bush in the past.

(Newhouse polled for Bush’s gubernatorial campaigns in 1998 and 2002, and his partner at Public Opinion Strategies, Bill McInturff, polled  for Bush’s first bid in 1994. The gathering of Newhouse and other past advisers here is a regular event for Bush when he’s in town, Bush associates say — calling any reading of the meeting of the “alums”  as a political sign ridiculous. Newhouse called it an informal gathering of about two dozen mostly policy-oriented people over drinks, with no speeches by Bush or anyone else in that open-doored room.)

Still, Bush is embellishing a message on which his older brother, former President George W. Bush, campaigned for president in 2000: The Texas governor proposed a national regime of school accountability, contending that the nation must combat “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” He pursued that during his first year, winning passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, a law signed as the nation’s attention was suddenly turned to terrorism by the attacks of September 11, 2001. The law was enacted by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, though it since has become a target of ridicule for “teaching to the test,” with states complaining that the federal government never supplied the financing necessary to help them meet the national standards.

It’s a durable message for a post-Iraq, and ultimately post-Afghanistan campaign — with the 2016 presidential campaign offering potential anew for a contest centered on domestic issues. Bush, who today called himself “a Texan by birth and a Floridian by choice,” has been pursuing education reform since 1994, when he lost his first election as governor and started a charter school in Miami with the leader of the Urban League there.

“He was a principled governor, principled politician,” said Phil Handy, an Orlando business consultant who chaired Bush’s campaigns. Handy credits Bush with a series of accolades that sound bumper-sticker-ready: “Persistence, courage, principle, strategic thinking.” He likes to say “the job is never done,” Handy told the ballroom crowd at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington today. This room with representatives from 45 states, he said,“attests to the fact that the job isn’t done.”

That job, as Bush tells it, is getting a nation back on track. And it starts in the classroom.

It is, he said, “a cause greater than ourselves” — the “restoration” of America, founded on education.

“Past is prologue… and history has a way of repeating itself, so learning from history is important,” said Bush, citing a recently read book by the sociologist Charles Murray about “this great challenge that faces our nation.” The U.S., Bush said, has moved from a nation of shared ideals to “a country that is changing not for the better.”

“We have these huge gaps in income,” he said, with “people born into poverty who will stay in poverty.”

“This ideal of who we are as a nation… it’s going away, it’s leaving us,” he said, maintaining that “there is one path that can change this course… a child-centered education.”

“Where is the outrage, where is the shame of this?” Bush asked in his keynote address to the fifth annual series of foundation conferences that have roamed from Washington in election years to other venues such as San Francisco. “This is not the America that we love… We ought to shake the complacency off of us… to challenge the complacency of the time.”

“I would suggest to you that high standards — I’m not kidding standards — is the first step,” he said, calling for a system of common measurements nationally and teacher evaluations based on their professional skills, not their union membership or tenure. Those standards, the offering of choices such as charter schools and tuition vouchers and technology that allows students to advance at their own pace are the key, he said. “If we stay true to these five ideals… we can reverse this trend and shake the complacency.”

“All children are not above average… I know that will be a shock to a lot of people,” he said, yet testing will reveal who needs the most improvement. “We’ll have a challenge — will we have the courage to stay the course, to faithfully implement higher standards… and recognize the fact that too many of our children are lagging behind…. We have to start with higher expectations for the next generation.

“If we’ve learned one lesson from reform, it is this: we continually underestimate children…. It will take some adjustment but our kids will rise to the challenge,” Bush said. “We reward the things we want more of… We are not as happy when there is mediocrity… and when there is failure, we should have no tolerance for it.”

The words are familiar.

We’ve heard them from this Bush since 1994, in Florida and at his national conferences. We heard them from his brother from Texas in 2000. And we heard them again today in Washington, a few blocks from the White House.

Original post is Jeb Bush’s American `Restoration’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush on the final day of the Republican National Convention (RNC).

Updated at 1:15 pm EST

Jeb Bush is in town.

The former Florida governor, brother of one former president and son of another, is encamped in Washington — in a hotel just a few blocks from the White House, as the National Review Online notes  – ostensibly for another national conference of his Foundation for Excellence in Education. It’s the fifth annual conference, the last one in San Francisco. Bush sets the election year parleys in Washington.

While here, NRO’s Robert Costa reports, Bush held a private, one-hour meeting Monday with some political operatives — including Neil Newhouse, a Washington-area pollster who served as Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign pollster and has a long association with Bush.

Neilhouse, of Alexandria, Va.-based Public Opinion Strategies, polled for both of Bush’s winning campaigns in 1998 and 2002. He tells Political Capital that the get-together yesterday was nothing but an informal gathering of a couple of mostly policy-oriented associates of Bush over drinks — the door to their meeting open, with no speechifying.

Bush, Costa reports, was not ruling out a presidential run of his own in 2016: “I am here to catch up with folks and promote education reform,” he said in an interview — with a reported smile. He called the crew with whom he met in the J.W. Marriott hotel’s Cannon room “an alumni group that I like keeping in touch with.” He maintained that he is “here to focus on educational reform.”

Bush, who served two terms as governor and has long been involved in education reform,  opened his two-day education summit of workshops and speeches at the Marriott this morning as the “keynote” breakfast speaker. They counted 950 people from 45 states.

They’ll be talking about many of the same issues that Bush has explored since starting another foundation following his first, losing, campaign for governor in 1994, when he opened a charter school in Miami with the leader of the Urban League there, T. Willard Fair: School choice. Tuition vouchers are on the agenda today.

True to form, Bush has an ecumenical guest list: With Arne Duncan, President Barack Obama’s education secretary, and John Podesta, a former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, on the speakers’ list. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, who had been seen as a potential Republican presidential candidate this year, will deliver the keynote breakfast address tomorrow.

And the keynoters tonight at dinner include: Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state in the administration of Bush’s brother, former President George W. Bush, will join Joel Klein, a former education chancellor for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Original post is Jeb Bush: `Here’ for Education by Political Capital.

Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Ann Romney, Mitt Romney and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondhi during a rally at Tradition Town Square in Port St. Lucie, Florida.

Ann Romney wants to `throw out’ the education system.

At least, that’s what she says in an interview with Good Housekeeping magazine which, a little more than one week before the presidential election, is likely to get plenty of attention from Democratic activists in the swing states where Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama are campaigning.

Or, it could prove to be another campaign “oops” moment on the question of education — (except Texas Gov. Rick Perry meant what he could remember).

“Can you tell me,” Good Housekeeping asks Romney in the interview posted online, “what campaign issue is closest to your heart?”

“I’ve been a first lady of the state,” the wife of the former Massachusetts governor replies. “I have seen what happens to people’s lives if they don’t get a proper education. And we know the answers to that. The charter schools have provided the answers. The teachers’ unions are preventing those things from happening, from bringing real change to our educational system. We need to throw out the system.”

The partisan bloggers already are all over it, with one tweeter calling it “jaw-dropping.’

Now, the Republican presidential nominee does not propose to eliminate the Department of Education. He does propose more “school choice.”

“Mitt Romney will pursue genuine education reform that puts the interests of parents and students ahead of special interests and provides a chance for every child,,” his campaign Web site explains. “He will take the unprecedented step of tying federal funds directly to dramatic reforms that expand parental choice, invest in innovation, and reward teachers for their results instead of their tenure. These policies will equip state leaders to achieve the change that can only come from commitment and action at the local level.”

To promote “choice and innovation,” he proposes “giving students trapped in bad schools a genuine alternative… (1) such alternatives must exist, (2) parents must receive clear information about the performance of their current school and of the alternatives, (3) students must be allowed to move to a new school, and (4) students must bring funding with them so that new schools can afford to serve them. ”

For that matter, the Obama administration’s Education Department has promoted local alternatives with federal subsidies for states proposing their own blueprints for education — Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s efforts supported by no less a Republican authority on education reform than former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

And neither Obama nor Romney wants what Perry thought he wanted, when asked during the Republican presidential primary debate which federal agencies he’d eliminate.

“I will tell you, it is three agencies of government when I get there that are gone. Commerce, Education, and the — what’s the third one there? Let’s see,” Perry said in that November debate in Minnesota. “The third agency of government I would — I would do away with, Education, the… Commerce and, let’s see… I can’t. The third one, I can’t. Sorry. Oops.”

The response to Good Housekeeping may prompt some corrective action as well.

Original post is Ann Romney: `Throw Out’ Education System — Good Housekeeping by Political Capital.

President Barack Obama will pay for his health-care act, if one of the super-PACs backing Romney has anything to do with it, its ad declaring: “Obama is the problem.”

The Priorities USA Action-sponsored ad draws its criticism for Romney from Ryan’s proposed federal budget cuts:

“Take away his toys and he’ll play with a stick,” the ad says of children who stand to lose from cuts in education funding. “Take away their bikes and they’ll still find a way to get where they’re going. But if you take away early childhood education… Slash K-12 funding… And cut college aid for middle class families they won’t go far. Yet that’s exactly what Mitt Romney wants to do to pay for a $250,000 tax break for multi-millionaires. If Mitt Romney wins, the middle class loses.”

The ad draws on outside analysis from nonpartisan and partisan groups alike projecting cuts in Head Start, Pell Grants and other federal programs, should Congress pass the budget that Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, has proposed. It overlooks the fact that there is a long road from that bill to law, with a divided Congress, and it ignores the fact that federal funding represents a small share of public school financing.

The claim about the $250,000 tax cut for millionaires comes from a Tax Policy Center analysis of the impact of Romney’s plan to cut taxes by 20 percent. Romney contends that he will offset his cuts with the closing of loopholes, particularly for high-earners, but hasn’t specified the exemptions.

Priorities USA says the ad is airing on TV and online in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The Crossroads ad, one of many produced by a group co-founded by George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove portraying Obama as “the problem,” attempts to blame the health-care law that Obama won in 2010 and other actions Obama has taken for a reluctance by small business owners to hire more people. It closes with an older man presented as the owner of a longtime family business saying the nation can’t afford four more years of this.

It lacks much in specifics to challenge. The message is the pointed part:

“If he has four more years, I don’t think we’re going to want to see what they look like

Original post is Obama-Romney Super-PAC Duel by Political Capital.

David Chavern, chief operating officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said today: “I don’t love China-bashing.”

“Without regard to what party you are, picking fights with trading partners probably isn’t the best way to have expansion of the global trading system” said Chavern, who also serves as executive vice president of the largest business lobbying organization in Washington.  ”In terms of the China-bashing that everybody seems to love, we think has a long-term negative effect in terms of the debate.”

What he does favor, Chavern said at a Bloomberg Government Breakfast in Washington, is investing in education.

“We favor federal activism in the area of education,” he said. “We are not producing the people we need for this economy.”

He noted, for example, that wherever he goes he is told it is hard to find skilled welders.

Brian Wingfield contributed to this post

Original post is Chamber’s Chavern: ‘Activism’ in Education, not ‘China-Bashing’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush takes the stage to speak during the final day of the Republican National Convention.

Jeb Bush has said that this was his “window of opportunity” to run for president.

Instead, the former Florida governor is on stage tonight to speak for former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, in a bellwether county that has voted the way Florida has — Florida, the biggest swing state of all — since the 1960s. No one has won the presidency without this state”s support for 88 years.

“Welcome to Florida! Bienvenido a Florida!” said the bilingual former governor.

“This election is about the future of this nation,” he is saying. “We can shape that future with what we do here, with what we do Nov. 6.”

He is talking a lot about educational reform. Bush first won the governor’s office in 1998 with a proposal for an “A-Plus Plan” for education — steering state money to schools whose students perform well. He won that in the Legislature. In 1999, he helped ward off an attempt by Ward Connerly to place an anti-affirmative action initiative on Florida’s ballot with an executive order decreeing that the top-20 high school students would gain state university admission. Both plans were controversial.

He left office at the end of 2006 with a 65-percent approval rating.

“We must have high academic standards that are benchmarked to the best in the world,” Bush is saying tonight. “All kids can learn. Governor Romney believes it, and the data proves it. While he was governor, Massachusetts raised standards and today their students lead the nation in academic performance.”

“Here in Florida in 1999, we were at the bottom of the nation in education,” Bush is saying. “Today, more students are reading on grade level, passing rigorous college prep courses and graduating from high school. And perhaps most exciting, those traditionally left behind are showing the greatest gains.”

While citing a number of Republican governors’ interest in educational reform, including Romney’s, Bush tonight is saying:

“Remember this: Our future as a nation is at stake. Fact is, this election is not about just one office. It is about one nation. If we want to continue to be the greatest nation on the planet, we must give our kids what we promise them: An equal opportunity. That starts in the classroom. It starts in our communities. It starts where you live. And it starts with electing Mitt Romney the next President of the United States.”

This, Bush has concluded, is Romney’s window.

Original post is Bush on Romney: `Nation at Stake’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jae C. Hong/AP Photo

Mitt Romney and Ohio Gov. John Kasich arrive for a roundtable discussion with students at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, on April 27, 2012.

President Barack Obama’s campaign is telling Mitt Romney to“get real” in a television ad that paints the Republican challenger as out of touch on higher education funding.

“Take a risk. Get the education. Borrow money if you have to from your parents,” Romney is shown saying in the ad, which alleges that Romney’s policies “could” cut college aid for about 10 million students.

“Get real, Mitt,” a narrator concludes.

The campaign’s source for the 10 million figure is the Obama White House, specifically an Office of Management and Budget analysis of a budget blueprint promoted by Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Romney’s running mate.

The Romney footage comes from an April appearance at Otterbein University in Ohio, where he praised the risk-taking of successful businessmen including Jimmy John Liautaud, the founder of a sandwich chain.

The Obama ad first aired in Ohio this morning, according to New York-based Kantar Media’s CMAG, which tracks advertising. It will also run in Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and Virginia, the Obama campaign said in an e-mail.

Today also saw a new ad from the pro-Romney super-PAC Restore our Future that says Obama is attacking Romney because he has “no record to run on.” The Republican National Committee also introduced a spot that tells voters they have “the power to make a change.”

Original post is Obama to Romney: `Get Real, Mitt’ by Political Capital.