In this editorial, Charlotte Observer associate editor Mary Schulken makes the following claim:
The oversight of arguably the state’s most influential resource [education bureaucracy?] is in the hands of … no one in particular.
That’s made it difficult to decide and enforce public school priorities. It has made broad-based changes in school organization and operations tedious. And it has squelched the sort of collaboration between the state’s universities, community colleges and public schools that can confront shared, systemic problems such as teacher training, teacher retention and preventing drop-outs.
There is absolutely NO evidence that the governance structure of the State Board of Education and the Department of Public Instruction ever impeded the implementation of any school reform policy. Why?
Consensus abounds between DPI staff and members of the SBE members. They don’t disagree about much – they are like-minded, cut from the same cloth, separated at birth, and so on. So, I would challenge Ms. Schulken to show me one (1) State Board of Education priority that DPI has failed to dutifully carry out.
One last thing. For those who dare use the public school governance issue as an excuse for the state’s incompetence – I’m coming after you next.
