Jeb Bush vs. Matt Damon on schools and testing

Here is an unlikely duel: It’s Jeb Bush, former Florida governor and possible 2016 GOP presidential hopeful, vs. Matt Damon, actor and activist.

The topic: School accountability measures that rely on high-stakes testing to determine which students are learning, which educators are teaching and which schools are working.

Bush supports the tests, Damon opposes them.

Many educators don’t want to advertise to the world how well their students are doing academically because, from there, it’s a short walk to grading teacher performance.

That is what accountability is all about. You probably have it in your job. I have it in mine. But a lot of public school teachers want nothing to do with it.

Accountability includes the No Child Left Behind law, which set forth the radical proposition that all students should be at grade level in math and reading by 2014. The law also broke down testing data according to race and ethnicity, so minority communities could see how well the public schools in their neighborhoods are serving their students.

Enter Damon, whose mother, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, is a professor of early childhood education at Lesley University in Boston. Damon is himself a product of public schools.

In 2011, Damon addressed … protesters [that] had gathered because they were upset with the Obama administration, which has picked up the mantle of high-stakes testing from its predecessor through its own education reform initiative, “Race to the Top.”

In his remarks, Damon looked back fondly on his own educational experience while criticizing high-stakes testing and other school accountability measures.

More recently, Damon — who grew up in the Boston area but now lives in the Los Angeles area — has opened a can of worms by recently revealing to the Guardian newspaper that, his love for the public schools notwithstanding, he made other arrangements for his own kids.

This caught the attention of Jeb Bush, who last week took to Twitter to denounce Damon’s hypocrisy.

Jeb Bush (@JebBush) tweeted: “Matt Damon Refuses to Enroll Kids in Los Angeles Public Schools. Choice ok for Damon, why not everyone else?”

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