Oh, Jeb...

Bush’s education foundation gives him a platform from which to defend his education policies. He’s speaking there Thursday in Washington.

“The secret to education reform is not letting adult angst about ending the status quo interfere with what must be done to advance student achievement,” he recently told Education Next, an education policy journal.

Activists in Florida have given Bush a selection of discussion points. Parents, education advocates and policymakers in both parties say some of the measures he enshrined as governor from 1999-2007 have given rise to a culture that values testing over learning and an accountability system that confuses students and teachers.

Superintendents and school board members, meanwhile, are asking the state for a two-year delay in the use of new Common Core-based tests to grade students, teachers and schools. The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers created the standards to improve academic achievement and increase accountability. The Obama administration embraced them.

“The pendulum swing of accountability is now moving back with equal force and strength,” said Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of Miami-Dade County Schools and the 2014 national superintendent of the year. He oversees the fourth-largest district in the country.

“It has gone too far, too fast and it has to a certain extent abandoned the transparency and simplicity the state’s accountability system used to have,” Carvalho said.