{"id":7441,"date":"2014-08-05T21:59:52","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T01:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=7441"},"modified":"2014-08-07T10:18:27","modified_gmt":"2014-08-07T14:18:27","slug":"elected-vs-appointed-state-chiefs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=7441","title":{"rendered":"Elected vs. appointed state chiefs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last weekend, the Arizona Republic<\/em> published an op-ed by conservative education writer\u00a0Matthew Ladner<\/a>, arguing for an appointed state superintendent. Arizona has an elected superintendent, like California. Florida has a commissioner of education appointed by the state board of education, itself appointed by the governor; before 2002, the position was elected. The majority of state superintendents or education commissioners are appointed, either directly by the governor (as in Virginia) or indirectly by a state board (as in Florida). Arizona and California are in a distinct minority.<\/p>\n

Ladner’s op-ed mixes two different arguments. ((The majority of the op-ed focuses on demographic issues rather than the governance issue.)) Let me focus for now on the argument over the selection of a state K-12 education chief. I don’t see appointing superintendents as something that automatically leads to better education policy, in contrast with electing them. An appointment regime\u00a0doesn’t even\u00a0guarantee political agreeability: witness the current spat over the Common Core<\/a> between Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and the state’s appointed superintendent, John White. ((Louisiana has an indirect system; the state board appoints the superintendent.))<\/p>\n

On the other hand, there is one critical argument in favor of appointed superintendents\/commissioners: separately-elected executives create more chaos by the structure of separate elections. For the past 20 years, we’ve seen what happens in Washington as a fractious political system finds and uses as many veto points as possible<\/a>, and that’s just in the legislative branch. Imagine if we also had national elections for Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and the whole cabinet. There would be the foreign policy of the president, the foreign policy of the Secretary of State, and the foreign policy of the Secretary of Defense, and each would claim political legitimacy.\u00a0But you don’t have to imagine. You can look at California, where former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger<\/del> Pete Wilson had his own Secretary of Child Development and<\/span> Education<\/a> to compete with the elected Superintendent. It was sort of a Two Education Popes period for California for twenty years,\u00a0a\u00a0bit of extra mishegas that was a symptom of California’s woes at the time. Jerry Brown abandoned the separate structure when he became governor in 2011, in part to save money and in part because he thought he could work well with the elected superintendent, Tom Torlakson. If Marshall Tuck beats Torlakson this fall, that could well change, though I doubt Brown would resurrect the two-popes policy of his predecessor.<\/p>\n

That split in political authority is not just division of powers; once it’s in the executive branch, it’s escape. For 35 years, many state governors have won campaigns on education promises, and I doubt you can find a candidate for governor anywhere who wouldn’t happily wear the label “education governor.” Ladner is correct: we should be able to hold politicians accountable for the promises they make when campaigning, and part of that requires giving them the authority to enact what they promise. Within constitutional limits, that is\u00a0as true for bad policy ideas as good ones.<\/p>\n

For now, I live in a state with an elected superintendent. I’ll vote in both the primary and general election, since that’s the current structure and I’d rather have the best superintendent possible under the current system. That’s not to say it’s the preferable system. Even or especially if I disagree with a governor, I want her or him to have clear responsibility for implementing K-12 education policy.<\/p>\n

(Note<\/em>: Edited to correct the chronology. Pete Wilson owns the credit\/shame for creating the two education popes chaos in California.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the last weekend, the Arizona Republic published an op-ed by conservative education writer\u00a0Matthew Ladner, arguing for an appointed state superintendent. Arizona has an elected superintendent, like California. Florida has a commissioner of education appointed by the state board of education, itself appointed by the governor; before 2002, the position was elected. The majority of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arizona","category-education-policy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-1W1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7441"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7448,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7441\/revisions\/7448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}