State Board of Education

Bev Perdue must have been reading my post from Sunday. She wants us all to know that "The buck stops with me." That is, even with North Carolina's convoluted educational hierarchy, the governor is the one responsible for successfully educating our children.

What about our Constitutionally mandated and elected Superintendent of Public Instruction? Well, Perdue says "I don't believe an elected statewide official is a figurehead and I resent that on behalf of June Atkinson and the voters of North Carolina." That's not what she her actions indicated. Today she suggested creating a new position of Chief Executive Officer for the Department of Public Instruction. When there's a CEO, what's the Superintendent supposed to do? Perdue has asked her to lead a special commission on career development and workforce issues.

Sure sounds like something you ask a figurehead to do...

Today's N&O frontpage features an issue that I've been meaning to write about for a while... The wacky way North Carolina manages our public education system.

In our strange system, responsibility for education is distributed across at least seven levels. The titular head of our education system, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, has the least power of anyone.

The North Carolina Public School Forum lists this as one of the top 10 education issues of 2009. It's one of those complex issues that has never really been addressed because none of the power brokers have a vested interest in making it better. You can guess at who might suffer from their inaction.

Here's my take on how it works, and what we can change.