> Originally published by Miami New Times August 24, 2000
>
> Schoolhouse Knocks
> Although the Liberty City Charter School helped make Jeb Bush governor,
> four years on it's barely passing
> By Ted B. Kissell
>
> The Liberty City Charter School is difficult to find, nestled as it is
> between a middle school and I-95 among the tree-lined streets and neat
> ranch-style houses of the tiny city of El Portal. It presents an unassuming
> face, one two-story building with an entry flanked by fluted white columns,
> adjoining two nondescript one-story classroom buildings painted a modest
> cream color.
>
> But in the realm of ideas and ideology, this school has been painted with
> the bright concentric circles of a target, in which the bull's-eye is the
> smiling, tanned visage of Gov. John Ellis "Jeb" Bush.
>
> When it opened in 1996, it was inundated with press coverage. Not only was
> it the first school founded under the state's new charter school law, but
> it was cofounded by Bush, whom everyone knew was going to run for governor
> in 1998. (By the 1999-2000 school year, there were 112 charter schools in
> the state.) Sure enough, once Bush declared his candidacy, the press was
> all over the school again, often at the candidate's invitation.
>
> After his victory Bush withdrew from the school's governing board, ending
> his formal relationship with the experimental school. His experience there
> had given him a pedigree -- albeit brief -- in the realm of "school
> choice," and he proceeded to propose policies that went further down the
> path of reinventing public education. His A+ Plan instituted a standardized
> test, the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test (FCAT), the results of
> which would grade schools from A through F. Students from F schools would
> be eligible for the political conservative's favorite cure for public
> education's ills, vouchers.
>
> When the students at Liberty City Charter School took the FCAT for the
> first time in 1999, they got a D. The enemies of school choice and of Jeb
> Bush (often the same people) howled at the inescapable irony. Chief among
> these detractors, the United Teachers of Dade union, renewed its calls for
> Liberty City to be closed down. In interviews with the Miami Herald,
> principal Katrina Wilson-Davis spoke of her disappointment but also of her
> determination to improve.
> { http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/2000-08-24/feature2.html/page1.html }